Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Little Progress Over Time

On my post two weeks ago, I admitted that I had shifted my priority on changing myself into focusing on dramatic before-and-after pictures. I certainly set myself up for disappointment when I cannot appreciate small changes.

Your comments reminded me that this is a process and every little progress is a step forward. Not only am I touched and encouraged, but also more aware on areas that I made small, tiny, little improvements...



Making Dinner

When we first got married, both my husband and I had our first real jobs. We felt rich and ate out often. Then, I had my first child. Inexperienced, I took the message: "attend to your crying baby immediately" to an extreme and we ended up eating a lot of "microwave dinners".

Now, I could at least manage making dinner on all weekdays.


Dishes

Back in the time when we had "microwave dinners", for the same reason that I could not cook, I also could not manage doing dishes. I often woke up to a sink of dirty dishes.

Now, it only happen on rare occasions.


Laundry

Not too long ago, I posted about how I hate laundry and a few more posts about my struggle with it.

Nowadays, laundry does not seem to be as overwhelming any more. Although I have not quite reached my goal to do a load whenever there is enough for one yet, I rarely have 4 or 5 loads of laundry waiting on me and I feel great!

Emails

Last August, Simple Mom had a post on emails, sharing how her inbox could get out of control pretty quickly and how she handled them. I confessed in the comments that I have 4 figured unread emails. In fact, I had 4000+. At the time, I began to unsubscribe emails from lists that I did not want. While I was at it, I also search all earlier emails from those list and delete those "old newsletters" together.

Now, I have just under 2000 unread emails. It is still 4 figure, but more than half is gone. From an increasing number to a decreasing number, shouldn't I be proud?


More Progress to Come

Perhaps, this exercise of tracking little progress has motivated me. While I was still working on this post, I found myself cutting up whole chicken to save money and not letting them sit in the fridge untouched.

Then, my kids began their spring break and we started to get their toys more organized. As always, things get worse before it gets better.


But I am seeing more progress on the way!


4 comments:

  1. I love to see the dramatic change as well. Taking out everything, cleaning, and then putting it away in an orderly manner seems to always be the best option in my book. Yet, here I am, sitting in my new office room, and my table is piled high with binders and books that need a home. And I am instead sitting down and looking at everyone else, and what is going on in their lives :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I see the later part of what you are describing as a tool for us to de-stress ourselves and to satisfy our "craving" for some adult interactions. Well, at least, that's how I feel sometimes.

      I often imagine that, if we were living years ago, we ladies would have been chatting near the river doing laundry instead of checking out others blog :)

      Delete
  2. I love this! You are doing awesome!! And just to make you feel A LOT better about those emails - I have 114,446 unread emails! You are inspiring me!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! You are always so encouraging. I really appreciate it.

      On the emails, one bite at a time, given what I have seen you accomplished on your site, I am sure you can do it too if/when you want to deal with them.

      Delete