Time and motion. Multi-tasking. Do it once-do it right. Do it your way.

But how do you manage all that they say. You have a farm and all those gardens and all the cooking from scratch, baking bread, chopping wood, old fashioned stuff and your husband works, you write a daily blog and you are inherently lazy. Well, people don’t actually say I am inherently lazy,  I mean I did not inherit the laziness,  but they just look at my hair and my filthy gumboots and my mismatched mens socks as I draw them out of the dog chewed gumboots and they try to sigh quietly.

So how do I fit all this together. Well, it is like this.  I do at least two things at a time and I do them fast. I try not to waste motion. I always carry a return cargo.   So if I am walking to the barn with one thing, (e.g. water)  I ensure I am carrying something else back,(armload of wood in one hand, empty buckets in the other).  Fast. My grandmother hated washing dishes so she went into overdrive at her little sink. The clatter and noise meant she was just getting it over with so she could get onto the next thing. 

I get up very early. 5.30 dressed and  on deck is usual. 6 am is late. I wake at 5 and think and read my list and make notes, then John brings me my coffee at 5.15 and I get up, get dressed and start writing straight away. Sometimes I carry my clothes up to the studio and dress AS I write. Still I multi task-I can get piles of laundry folded  as the computer warms up.  Yoga as pages load. (We have a slow connection.)

Another useful tool is that I time the parts of my day.  I work on the days blog page until dawn every day, then I stop. So I write watching the sky. The moment I see a blush of pink I wind it up. By the time the sun hits the windows of the barn I am already in there  dressed in 17 layers of clothing with my note book in a stray pocket and a pen in my pom pom hattie.

Then back inside it is coffee, kitchen and laundry, floors, bathrooms, all that dull stuff.   Someone has to do it and I don’t have a wife so I guess it is me. Have you ever played that golf game where they run from hole to hole, swinging their clubs on the trot?  Well this is how I do dull housework stuff.  I go as fast as I can.  I jog around the house! Because any time left over I fill by  visiting my friends in the blog world until 9 am. At 9 am I turn off the laptop.

After 9am I  proceed onto the Work of the Day. Then I slow down.  Yesterday  morning it was learning how to make fresh pasta!  Then eating it.. oh the joy! Then ordering some more seeds.    Chopping wood, Carting wood.  Drying laundry without a dryer.  (Racks in the loft)  Dinner onto the woodstove.  Making 100 paper pots. Working on the plan.  This is a winter regime though. Summer is very different. 

Do everything properly the first time.  And don’t expect to do everything perfectly every day.  Set yourself challenges. Choose to accept a level of weeds, or coats on the chairs. Any time I go near my bedroom I have to put away 10 things.  I do this in every room and the basement and the barn and the sheds.  Fast. Everything has a place and I try very hard to keep everything in its place. This saves a lot of time.  And keeps me, kind of, in order. And when I cannot remember what I was meant to be doing, I clean.

Multi task. I was drawing pictures for the builder as we stood in the kitchen yesterday and lifting my head to think, I saw a spray of blood up the kitchen wall.  Earlier I had been grating the hard as nails, home made parmesan cheese for my lunch  and naturally I had grated myself.  I do this kind of thing all the time. I am surprised I even HAVE knuckles let alone legible finger prints. We have discussed that Celi is NOT allowed within 6 feet of a mandolin ( and I am not talking about the musical ones unless you count the screams- but you will all remember That episode), I may have to outlaw graters as well.  Anyway acting nonchalant, as you do when you discover blood on the walls of your kitchen, I stuck the pen in my hair,  reached for the cloth, wiped, opened the basement door and threw the rag down the stairs into the waiting enamel dirty-cloth pot.  (I only ever use a dish cloth once so those nasties never get a chance to grow in the damp cloths.  Shortly I am going to make a hole in the kitchen floor so I can just drop the dishrags straight into the washing machine!  It is that kind of multi tasking game. And yes they are actually rags.)  Then I pulled the pen back out of my hair and went back to work. The builder did not even raise an eyebrow. He has been here before you see. But there you are, when in doubt, clean –  like a cat.

11 – 2 is farm stuff or fun work stuff.  I don’t do housework in the afternoons. If it is not already done it has to wait for tomorrow.

From 2-4 pm I write or work with images. I build the skeleton for tomorrow mornings blog and then work on the Work in Slow Motion –  ok,  Work in Progress.  At four it is back outside to feed and collect eggs and carry water and finish up the barn work.   This is the work I enjoy.  So I do the farm work slowly. Then making dinner while multi tasking with a glass of wine and chatting to all my friends (oh that is right I have no friends.)  Well the dog then.

I shop in the Big Town once every two weeks and this day also has to be planned and organised around the farm and the writing. So I do not waste time driving here and there. I hate the driving.  I am not a shopper.  On Tuesday and Friday morning I visit my old people and deliver eggs.

Dinner  is always served at the table, so that we can sit back and chat while we eat the beautiful food and have another  glass of dubious wine. Talk now John, this is communication time!  Then from 7 – 8 back to the studio and I am allowed to cruise about the blogs again and visit people. Then at 8 I stop. Power off, power down  and proceed with my evening which is usually early to bed with a book and the writing.  I don’t watch TV, or cruise the internet reading rubbish. Those vacuous black holes are not for me, and  5 am comes around again pretty fast. Plus I still have to stoke the fire a couple of times in the night or we will freeze, literally.  If I have not visited every one for my blog friends every day, I know that you all understand. Blogging is not a race.  It is a really fun way to learn new stuff.  We can relax and enjoy it. 

I always take a notebook to bed and make tomorrows plan, jotting down anything that is pertinent to the next days writing and work. This notebook stays beside the bed. I take the page with me in the morning.  You don’t have to lay out your clothes but when I was working fulltime and raising a family I did, so it is a hard habit to break. In fact John has said to me on numerous occassions don’t you ever put your clothes away and I am like, But each of those little piles is a complete bundle of fresh clothes for one of my  tomorrows. Everything is in the bundle, from underwear to the jumper.   This way I can put them on in the dark and not have to root about for stuff in the morning chill.  Remember we only heat the living area with the fire. The rest is cold. And when did you get so tidy.

So I Make a Plan the night before. Then get up very early. And most importantly  I set time and motion limits.  I will write for two hours. I will clean one stall each day.  I will tidy the kitchen until the bench is clear. I will do relocation housework for 40 minutes at speed. I will pick up 10 things and put them away at speed remembering to have a return cargo.  In the summer I will weed one garden at a time thoroughly.  Take all the weeds to the chickens and then do another one tomorrow. Or mow until half past then stop.  It will still be there tomorrow. Then on to the Big Job of the Day! This way I get piles of time to lounge about with Daisy, or sit in that wee smidgeon of winter sun, or play with TonTon in the snow and take photographs. Or gaze at the colour of my undrinkable wine and think about it.

I know that sounds quite, quite mental but you did ask. And I do not try to get everything done every day. I just finish this corner, my days challenge, my biteable objective, and never go over the time limit on the computer. I could actually write for hours and hours if I did not stop myself, so I have to have limits.   And when you just do TWO specific things fast for a short amount of time you will be amazed how much you get done.

Ok, it is dawn I am off outside! Daisy is calling! Temp this morning is 10F. More snow coming in later.

See you in an hour or so.

c