Challenge: Time Yourself

Do you find yourself not doing certain chores because you think they take a long time?  I do.  I'm talking about unloading the dishwasher, making the bed, folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms, sweeping the floor.  I avoid doing those things sometimes, because they seem like such arduous tasks.

Wait.  Are you laughing at me right now?  OK, go for it.  Laughter is good for the soul, and I'm glad I'm able to provide that for you.

But even if you are laughing at the thought of those things being arduous, I bet you have things too.  Things that you avoid doing because they'll take too much time or are too involved.

These days I'm heavily influenced by Nony (who is actually Dana) of A Slob Comes Clean.  If you read her work, you may recognize the container concept and rules, which I've touched on in previous posts.  Well, another of Nony's concepts is the concept of Time Passage Awareness Disorder, or TPAD.  TPAD works in a couple of different ways.  One way is not knowing how long it's been since you last took on a cleaning task.  You feel like it was a couple of weeks ago, when in reality it was a couple of (or more) months ago.  Another way TPAD works is in making you think tasks will take longer than they really do.

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So the challenge is to time yourself doing the tasks that you avoid because they "take too long."  The clock doesn't lie, and when you see that it actually takes less than 2 minutes to make the bed (that's including arranging a boatload a bedload of unnecessary, but mood-elevating, decorative pillows), and about 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher, it's a lot easier to convince yourself to actually do the thing.

I timed myself folding laundry this morning.  It was a load of towels, so I knew it would probably be faster than a load of clothes, but it took 2 minutes and 20 seconds to fold the towels, a mixture of bath and hand towels for 3 bathrooms, kitchen towels, and washcloths, and an additional 2 minutes and 3 seconds to put them all away (including one in the basement).  That's it.  Less than 5 minutes to fold and put away a load of laundry.  That's hardly arduous.

Do you have Time Passage Awareness Disorder?  What task or tasks do you need to time yourself doing?  Go ahead, do it, and report back.