I am a procrastinator. I put off doing things that I find unpleasant, tedious or just plain boring. This is a life long trait that I doubt I will ever completely conquer. But my current guru of quilting, Karen Brown of Just Get It Done Quilts suggests, that when you're faced with doing something you don't want to do, that you set a timer for 30 minutes and work on it 30 minutes at a time. Set a day during the week (or more) and do that thing for 30 minutes. That way you will make progress without being overwhelmed. After all you can do anything for 30 minutes. So I took her suggestion and ran with it.
30 - House. I hate doing housework. I push it off onto my children and have been doing so for far too many years. Now that they are growing and up moving away, I am going to have to start doing it myself or hire a house keeper. And I'd have to get the house clean before I could hire anyone. So I try to come in the door, change my clothes and pick a chore to do. This week it has been folding clothes and making the bed because my husband has been doing the laundry. But the laundry is folded and put away and not sitting in a basket waiting to be worn. That is progress. Now to be honest, it hasn't happened every day so I still have room to grow. But it is a habit I want to develop. If I can just keep doing it for 28 days or more maybe it will be come one.
30 - Studio. I am terrible at putting things away when I am done with them, especially craft supplies. So as I am sure you deduced, my studio is a mess. I am slowly and surely finding a way to keep the things I need handy and yet out of the way. I need to find the proverbial "place for everything". this week, I started just picking up things in the studio. I am trying to put things that do have a home in their home. I've cleaned up one corner of the studio. Now there is a clear path to my front door and it has been swept. Yesterday, I cleared off my work surface and organized the shelf of tools above it. I even cleaned out the desk drawers. Of course this took much more than 30 minutes, but I found once I started, I wanted to keep going. And that is totally acceptable. This week I hope to clear behind the long arm. I have a shelf that I want to put up and a wall quilt to move. I would also like to get some pictures framed and hung up. That or I may organize the parts bins I have on the wall. Who knows how much I will accomplish at 30 minutes a day. I might even go past the 30 minutes again. It all depends on how I feel in that moment.
30 - Sewing/Quilting. This is my reward. I feel my best when I take the time to sew or quilt everyday. It is a stress buster for me. It helps fight off depression so it is a need as well as a reward. I try to keep a piecing project going. I also need to work on UFOs. So I usually do this for more than 30 minutes. This week, I cut the sashing strips for the batik strip quilt. As I was cutting them I made a design change. I'm not going to put corner stones on the outer edges of the quilt, just in between the blocks. The outer edge will just be a white strip. Fortunately I made that decision before cutting the sashing strips. I've gotten sashing on one side of all the blocks and corner stones sewn to the remaining sashing strips. Now I need to find a place to do the lay out. I've also cut the Borders for the Pretty in Pink quilt. So progress on a UFO. I really need to settle down and do some planing. Maybe work on UFOs every other day. I am feeling a need to get the UFOs to the finish line. They are starting to stack up. I think that part of it is, I am stalling. I think I may be a little intimidated about starting the long arm back up. I just need to get on with it. So this week will be about getting a quilt ready to go on the long arm.
So for now it's go to work. Come home & change clothes. Set my timer and do my 30-30-30 and then repeat it all again on the next day.
How are you getting everything done? When do you work on UFOs? Do you have a plan or schedule?
No comments:
Post a Comment