I’m so good with goals and TERRIBLE with routines. My poor plants have probably gone months without water…in fact, it’s probably been a month this time. Since acquiring a mild traumatic brain injury, I have no concept of whether I did something yesterday or a month ago. In fact, foods I felt I’d bought in the last six months expired before I moved into my house two years prior!
So how can someone like me ever remember to clean out her fridge? I asked a house plant pro…my mother. Additionally, I asked my therapist but she wasn’t very concerned if I remembered to water my plants.
You thought I was kidding. I asked my therapist, psychologist, for advice on tracking home management tasks as well as health occurrences. The health items include occurrences of sleep paralysis and migraines among other things. They are occurrences that could be as often as daily but are critical for management.
For this, we devised a tracker Google spreadsheet that I can check the day if it happens and a few places to list the date of migraines or sleep paralysis because they are less often. I also have used MigraineBuddy for tracking all things migraines. It’s great.
This article is about the other tasks. I also needed to do routine things like clean out my fridge and meal plan. Additionally, I wanted a way to get more seasonal items covered like changing the oil or air filters, etc. I also needed to get laundry and budgeting done regularly.
In comes Mom. My mother lives by routines. They are not restrictive for her or others. She’s also a fantastic plant mamma. She’s the one that you bring your sick plant to and she’ll nurse it back to health (not rare or tropical ones). So naturally, I asked her “how do I remember to water my plants now that I can’t remember when I last watered my plants?”.
Her answer was to set a day of the week to water my plants. After all, you can always check the soil moisture before adding more water if the plant can’t be overwatered. This is the structure of the plan to manage all of these homeowner/plant parent/car owner/human/etc. maintenance activities.
The common things that I forget to do:
- Sanitize the kitchen
- Cleanout the fridge
- Make meal plan
- Grocery shop
- Water plants
- Cleaning different rooms
- Lawn or tree care
- Clean the gutters
- Refill medication
- Laundry
- Budget update
- Action Items from “Sunday Basket“
- Taking out the trash
- Blogging
Simplifying The Tasks:
Many of these tasks include several other tasks. It’s unrealistic to expect myself to be able to do all of this every week. It’s also unnecessary to do everything weekly. So then I generalized some of the tasks like mowing the lawn into “Lawn Care” and have “Home Maintenance” and “Car Maintenance” which would include cleaning, replacing filters, cleaning gutters, etc.
The intention is that these categories will be assigned days of the week and much like a meal plan the days can be swapped as needed. I have a general idea of the tasks that fit into these categories. So when “home maintenance” comes around, I will look around for what needs to be done or pick from a list already created. There may be five things, but next week I’ll see the next one that needs to be done.
Thankfully, many devices, including my refrigerator, have a button that you reset when the water filter is replaced, my furnace has a log, and for anything else I want, I can use HomeBinder. There are some issues with how photos are managed but as far as reoccurring tasks go, it suggests some and you can add anything you want to. You can also keep a home inventory, so part of the list may be to look at the photos for my home inventory and see if they need to be retaken.
Revising the list based on what’s most important:
I take various medications and vitamins and insurance only gives me a few days buffer to refill in advance of running out, so it’s very important that I stay on top of this. Therefore I added “Refill Medication” to my list on Tuesday so I can get through a weekend and it’s a weekday when I have it refilled. Even if I can’t pick it up yet, the request would get put in on Tuesday when I knew I was running out after the week or during the week. Eventually, I wouldn’t find myself out when filling my weekly medicine containers.
How well does this method work:
Much like meal planning, it’s a skill. Additionally, some weeks were fuller than others. While I do run out of time or forget a category or task, I do all of it more often so I’ve run into fewer emergencies. I’m able to schedule my car for maintenance because I checked for a leaking tire and it’s not stressful because I know what I’ll be sacrificing to get these things done.
It works well for plants, laundry, refilling medication, and blogging. I still find myself floating the tasks around a bit but I know which ones pair well together. For instance, I set a load of laundry and then do the “Action Items” like paying bills or sorting mail. I can easily update my budget or download bills if I don’t fall more than 1 month behind.
The drawbacks:
This isn’t a magic fix. It doesn’t do the tasks for you or actually make them easier. What it does do is allow you to prepare for the task, anticipate growing problems, know what a busy schedule does to your routine, and take much of the decision-making out.
How this worked when I was unwell:
I was fairly happily following the list in the fall until I caught COVID-19. Overall the first week knocked me down to doing none of the tasks and genuinely no harm was done. I may have watered the plants but I don’t remember specifically. Trash built up in the living room and I only ventured out to pick up a delivery or take the trash to the bin. This is very similar to what life looks like with multiday migraines.
The next week I was able to return to doing some tasks such as laundry, watering the plants, vacuuming the floors but that’s about it. More and more I was able to add things back. To some degree, I know what makes life feel out of control for me. When those weeks come I do those items first.
The future of weekday routines:
My sleep routine is still affected and having to delay treatments and with changing weather multiday migraines were triggered regardless, but the fatigue is much less significant now. It will be interesting to see how this holds up through the Christmas season as I travel. I typically find it very stressful to do these routines around traveling because I’m afraid food will rot or I’m just too busy with shopping, wrapping, packing, etc.
If you haven’t checked out my Meal Planning series blogs, you can do so here. I feel like the skills I gained through building my meal planning process built the foundation for this system to be successful. I will be posting about modifications to this and other things I’ve been trying this year in next week’s post.