" Mommy, what do you do all day while we're at school?"My Day in Photos

Back in January as my kids were heading back to school after the break, they had asked me, "what do you do all day while we are at school?" Of course I sighed and told them, "I play with your toys all day!"

 Well, as I sent them off to school each day and dug into my daily task of digging out, I often thought of their question. I pondered,what did I do all day? How come, if I spend all of my time cleaning, it is never actually clean? I could tell that my husband also wondered. What does she do all day, of course there were things that he knew I did and that he was appreciative of. However, surely that must not take me ALL day. And! how come it is only fleetingly clean?

 I had already decided that indeed, there was too much. It was my resolution to figure out how to keep a clean house. My husband had long been saying it was a matter of too much stuff--although never really implementing a reduction effort. I had been working towards this goal of reducing and taking pictures to log my efforts--which were not immediately evident in looking at my surroundings. It was a way to make my work tangible after the stuff was gone, I could look at the pictures and say, "wow, I got rid of all that" even if the house was not in perfect order I had a record of my work. My husband kept poking fun at me with my pictures, when he would see me whip out my phone to take a picture of something I had decided to get rid of. He kept saying, "what are you going to do? write a blog? you should write a blog."

 After a particularly hairy night with the fam, I decided that I would not only take pictures of what was gotten rid of, but everything that I did! Of course this cut my efficiency way down. However, I was motivated to actually finish project. i.e. rather than putting some of the items on the counter away and then being distracted by the laundry , I finished the counter and washed it and took the photo. I then texted my husband with each accomplishment in real time. Ironically, I had done less actual work than an average day. Yet my husband kept texting back appreciative words of encouragement. When he arrived home, he was soooo impressed with all the work done.

 For the kids, I was just intending to sit down and show them the photos and tell them about what I did all day while they were at school. As I sat down for a glass of water and to check my e-mail before going out to the bus, I had the idea to make a slide show for them. The result is below. They thought it was great.

my day in photos 1-25-12 - making a free slideshow