ufyh*

A couple of months ago, I read a post on Rachel Wilkerson's blog where she mentioned the website Unf#@k Your Habitat.  The title alone peaked my interest and I suddenly lost an hour looking at before and after pictures and reading tips.

Despite her ability to hold my attention, I didn't immediately start following any of the suggestions from the site.  But I did keep checking it...for at least two or three weeks.  Then one day when I was looking around my apartment and observing the near disaster state that had taken over, I thought to myself "I wonder what I can really get done in here in just 20 minutes?"

And then a couple of days later, when I was in the middle of a working-weekend marathon, I started dividing up my time into 45/15 minute segments - work for 45 minutes and then take a 15 minute break.

These instances started seeping into my everyday life; any time that there was something that I really didn't want to do, but I knew that I should do it, I would tell myself that I only had to say.....clean my bathroom...for 20 minutes, then I could stop.

And - not shockingly - my place started to be much more clean on a regular basis with what felt like very little extra effort on my part.  I dropped my previous practice of letting everything hit a chaotic point and then having an eight hour cleaning frenzy that would inevitably leave me tired and annoyed with myself.

And then I started to take the advice to make my bed each day.  Really...it takes sixty seconds (if that) to pull the blankets up on the bed properly....why was that ever hard to do in the mornings?

That being said, there are a couple of aspects of the site/habit that I do not take part in.  I don't think that I need the app; I like living in a clean home and that's motivation enough for me now that I have some proof that it doesn't require huge amounts of my time to maintain.  I also don't follow all of her tips to "Unfu@k tomorrow morning", because I don't really want/need to do all of those things and I like my morning routines just fine as is.

But overall, this site has been so very helpful.  Who doesn't have one, or two, or six spots in your home where stuff builds up?  How many people keep putting things off because they don't know where to start or they just don't have the time they think they need to do the job well?

I told my mom about the site a couple of days ago.  Her response?  "I tried to get you make your bed and clean up at the end of each day for years!  How did this woman and her website manage to make you do it now?"

I truly don't know how, but I love it.

Check out Unf!@k Your Habitat