What's on your Lifetime To Do List? It may not be what you think.

Yesterday, I ticked not one, but two things off the Lifetime To Do list. The Lifetime To Do List is that ever-accumulating list of things that you're constantly getting around to, but never actually seem to get there. Hence, they seem to take a lifetime to achieve. Things on this list for me tend to include such things as getting the carpets cleaned, getting the pictures framed, dusting under the bed, having the blinds cleaned, hanging the pictures... all those things that you're forever 'getting around to'.

Well, no more. On a few items anyway. The Fibro is currently beaming under the weight of freshly steam-cleaned carpets (bonus: under the bed no longer requires dusting - result!). I realise now why I put it off for so long as well. It took one hour to do and yet the furniture is still cluttering up the hallway, awaiting the moment when the carpet is truly dry. I have a bad feeling that once you wet the carpet it will forever feel 'slightly damp', either in reality or in my mind. Jumping over the magazine rack to get to the bathroom is rapidly growing old though.

My second achievement was to arrive at the framing shop with two lovely prints that Mr4 received for his first birthday. Time moves slowly in the Fibro. After half an hour of discussing frames and matting and foamcore and wires, the pictures are in the hands of the expert and will be returned to me, ready to hang, in a fortnight. Are you wondering why it took me so long to get around to this? I know that I am.

So there you have it. An achieving kind of day. I feel ready to tackle anything. Well, anything but the next item on my Lifetime To Do List, that is.

What's on your Lifetime To Do List? Are there things that take you an apparent lifetime to get around to doing?

[image: how cute are these notebooks from ShePinTea/etsy - just the thing for a Lifetime To Do List.]

How do you clean your house?

I clean the Fibro one day at a time. Which means that it's rarely all clean at the same time. I do the bathroom one day. The bedrooms the next. The floors as rarely as I can get away with. Every day, the living room gets a general tidy and the washing up gets done. But sparkling from top to bottom is not something the poor old Fibro gets to experience that often.

Unless we're having people to dinner. Or to stay. Then it's all hands on deck for a thorough cleaning frenzy. We even remove the Scalectrix-style race track from the dining table for the guests. We have standards.

I do wonder if I'm going at it all wrong with this piecemeal effort. But it makes it all feel less arduous. A bit here, a bit there. Squeezed in when I'm trying to avoid work through my writing. Much better than four hours in a row.

And, yes, I could get a cleaner. But I just know that I'd be one of those sad folk who clean for the cleaner. I'd rather live with the knowledge of that than the reality.

How do you clean? Bits and pieces or all in one hit?

[image: Tumblr.com] 


PS: Maxabella has been nominated in the People's Choice Awards for the Sydney Writers' Centre's Best Australian Blogs 2011 Competition - she needs praise and love and votes. Go visit her. She'll tell you.