I’ve just done two things in quick succession. I’ve demolished some chocolate and I’ve cleaned the top of the freezer. The confectionery I’m going to just admit to and let go. It’s the other that interests me at the moment.
I’ve known the top of the freezer has needed cleaning for some time. The freezer isn’t in the kitchen. It’s in the laundry where the washing machine would normally go (except that it’s more convenient in our home to have the washing machine in the en suite at the other end of the house). I don’t actually use the laundry much. It only houses a sink with a cabinet underneath and the freezer. It’s mostly used for cleaning really, really dirty hands when coming in from the outdoors. My hands don’t get really, really dirty (think grease, oil, and other grungy boys’ stuff) so most of the time I just give this room a cursory clean of floor and sink.
The point is, I had to get a chair, a wet sponge and a rag for drying. I had to move a couple of things so I could clean the top. And it took two minutes. Two minutes! For something I’ve been looking at for a couple of weeks and feeling an underlying guilt about. That is ridiculous. And so are many of the other decisions we make by not doing something right now, this moment, when we see that something needs to be done. We all usually have two minutes to spare. But what do we do? We have an internal conversation that goes something like this:
That needs doing.
I should do it.
But I can’t do it now
I’ll do it later …
Then come the excuses:
Because …
I’m too busy at the moment (I am so super busy that I don’t have two minutes to spare … wow, that is b-u-s-y!)
I don’t feel like doing it now (not worth the pain of doing two minutes’ cleaning to get it off my mental To Do list?)
It would take too long to get the supplies together to do it (yeah right, when I said two minutes, that included this step)
So it’s worth looking at the little things we usually let slip through the cracks. We often have a background discomfort about not doing them, and that guilt uses up a heap more energy than just getting in and doing the tiny chores would have.
There are two lessons to take away from from this.
Don’t leave chocolate lying around from the dinner party you held the night before.
Do little jobs when you see them the first time.
When you decide to do nothing, you’re still making a decision. And that goes for every solitary thing in life.