Little Irritations

Newsflash! It’s N week! I considered doing nothing/nada for N week, but there was no way that would fly around here. I remember listening to organization guru, Peter Walsh, one day and he said you would be amazed at how many little inconveniences and irritations people live with day after day, and they just accept it.  They will step over a box in a hallway for months without moving it.  They will live with dim light rather than change a light bulb.  They will lose their keys every day before hanging up a hook, etc. etc.

When I heard Peter Walsh say this I laughed because I see this crazy pattern in my own life. For example, I have had a moving box sitting in front of Chad’s dresser since January.  Rather than move the box to the garage, he has struggled to open his shirt drawer every day for 10 months now.

I have many more little irritations in my life like my moving box.  And not only are they annoying, but they suck time and energy as well.  So I finally wised up and fixed a few:

School Time

My kids have gone to the same school for 6 years but I still can’t remember their schedule on early out Mondays.  And having a Kindergartener just threw me off even more. So for the first 4 weeks of school I had to look up the Kindergarten start time every Monday.   And I didn’t even have our school’s website bookmarked to boot.

Finally, I realized this was one of those small irritations the organizational guru was talking about.  I looked up the time once and for all.  And I wrote the time on a post it note on my calendar.  I haven’t had to google our district’s schedule since. It’s embarrassing how simple the solution was.

Baking Goods

In an effort to be more nutritious, I have started baking a lot more — pumpkin whole wheat muffins, whole wheat waffles, pizza crust, etc. But all my baking supplies were on a top shelf in my cupboard that I had difficulty reaching. It would require the top of my tip toes and a full stretch to reach the baking soda and that was if it was right on the edge of the shelf.  Then I would have to do a full out stretch to get the salt.  I would repeat this annoying reach several times to get out the rest of the baking supplies.  And of course I had to put them all back this same way too.  This laborious process was not helping my baking mood.

So I finally wised up.  I grouped all my healthy baking supplies in one basket and moved the basket to a more reachable level.  Now all I do is open the pantry, grab one basket,  and then put one basket back.  Much better!

Suitcase Zipper

I got a new suitcase last year and it has lots of zippers and compartments. Every time I would go to open it, it would be a guess on which zipper to pull to open the main body. Sometimes it would be the third zipper try before I actually found the right zipper.

After wasting one too many seconds of my life, I decided to add a little ribbon to mark the zipper that opened up the main part of my suitcase.  Now I just grab the yellow zipper and wha la I have 10 seconds of my life back.

Sharp Sharpie

I like my Sharpies sharp.  But I have so many Sharpies and my kids use them too, so I would never know if I were going to get a sharp tip or not.  I was tired of de-capping Sharpie after Sharpie to find my sharp one.  So I finally marked MY sharpie with a piece of blue painters tape around the bottom.  This was a signal to my kids to back off mom’s Sharpie, and I could find my sharp Sharpie at a glance.  Easy peezy.

Recipe Book

I told you about my new recipe books back here.  I have loved them by the way and they work great. But since I had two binders, I wouldn’t know which one to grab and neither would my family.  It was always a guess which binder had the dinner recipes and which binder had the treats, appetizers, beverages, etc.

After pulling out the wrong binder one too many times, I finally took 3 seconds to label the spine with a sticker letter. D is for Dinner and O is for Other.  I have not pulled out the wrong binder since.

These are just lame examples of how we can really make our lives better and easier– how we can conserve precious energy and time– how we can remove little irritations by doing small things.  All it takes is a little energy and maybe a post it note, ribbon, tape, label, sticker or another simple, cheap solution.

What are your small little irritations and time suckers?  And what simple idea could you do to make them all go away?

(I think I will go move that box for Chad.)

3 thoughts on “Little Irritations”

  1. This is so true! My comments would be WAY too long to list all my time suckers, but I am going to try to take care of one every day…baby steps.

  2. Love this. Tomorrow is my kid-free day and now I think I will allot some time to go around the house and clear up a few of these little irritations. thanks for the inspiration!

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