#toh20day challenge - did your family notice?

I am ready for week #2 in The Organised Housewife's 20 days to clean and organise your home challenge ;-)

On Sunday, Mr Fixit noticed I was doing something with my 20 Days Journal and asked what I was doing.  I showed him that I was making up the dividers for the A5 folder I was using for this project.  He then commented that he thought it was so funny that I would spend so much time on the organising of the journal and would probably spend less time on the organising of the home.  Don't get me wrong, he said it nicely ..... seeing it written down here makes it sound really bad, but in his defence, I have been known to 'organise the life out of' a lot of things as a form of procrastination rather than do housework.  ;-)

At this point, I put my pen down and asked if he had noticed anything different over the last week:  his answer was "nooooooooo ............. that's the wrong answer, isn't it?".  I had to laugh ;-)  

So, he had not noticed that:

• the bedroom was the cleanest it has been in 6 months (last Christmas was the last BIG clean because we were hosting);
• the kitchen was the neatest and tidiest it had been in such a long time - in that the dishwasher was stacked every night, and only a few hand washing items were left on the sink overnight, only to be washed the very next day;
• the pantry was a little better oganised;  or 
• we weren't tripping over the magazine rack

But, what he DID notice was that:

• I had changed the quilt cover and sheets and cleaned the TV screen in the bedroom
• there was actually less loads of laundry to do over the weekend as I had made a start during the week.

I must say that Mr Fixit has never been one to complain or even notice if the dishes weren't washed straight away, or if the ironing was not done immediately, or if tea was a little late or a 'throw together' at the last minute, or that there was dust everywhere (except on the TV, if he thought there was too much dust on the screen, he would grab a cleaning cloth and clean it ............. nothing else, just the screen  ;-).  

What is important to him, is that the clothes get washed on the weekend, so that he has clean clothes to wear to work.  Mr Fixit will regularly pop into the laundry on the weekends to check on the progress of the washing - if there was a fresh load finished in the washing machine, he would pop it in the dryer, and put the next load in for washing - but leaving me to hang up my 'girly stuff' ;-)

The general run of the household has been left up to me and now that I am not in paid work any more, I find I am almost enjoying it ;-)  This 20 Days challenge has given me the impetus to 'pull my finger out' and get some of the jobs I have been procrastinating about for the last 6 months or more done and dusted!

I had tried following the US FlyLady system in the past, and whilst it worked for me in the Decluttering Tasks, I didn't really follow it for the general housecleaning.

So, a big thank you to The Organised Housewife  for doing this in an Australian Time Zone ;-)