The Cure for the Lazy Bug

I really don't like cleaning on Saturdays.  I realize that this is a day that a lot of people make their "work" day and they get a lot done.  Something about Rock being home, and the schedule being all off, makes me feel rather lazy.  I always think that we will get a lot done and then I put it off all day because it seems like so much and I don't even want to start.

I especially don't like starting when I've put it off all morning, and I feel bad for putting it off, and I figure I might as well not even start because it's already lunch time and I've wasted the whole day...

Have you ever noticed that when you have a choice, and you choose the thing which seems harder at the moment (often the right thing) - you are suddenly filled with a desire to do more good things, but when you choose the easier way - it seems to get harder and harder to change course?


It's so true that, like a magnet, we will attract what we are facing towards - light or darkness.  The great news is that we choose, at every moment, which way we are facing.

Last weekend, I was feeling bad because it was noon and and I felt like we had just finished cleaning up from breakfast and nothing else had gotten done.  I had planned to do so much that I didn't have the gumption to get started.  I decided that we would just have a really fast pick-up-any-clutter time.  After all, doing, at least, something would be better than neglecting everything all day. We would start upstairs and pick up anything out of place and work our way down.

I called everyone upstairs. There were grumblings since I interrupted some very interesting things they were playing. I told them we could just go quickly and try to pick up everything in 10 minutes on each level.

We got started & and guess what? Where just minutes before, none of us had felt like cleaning, all of a sudden, like a magnet that had been facing laziness and turned to face cleanliness, we all felt like cleaning. Don't get me wrong, there were a few disagreements and grumbles, but for the most part, everyone was happy to get all of the clutter out of the way.

Since I really was anxious to get all of the clutter out of the way, we ended up spending over three hours just on really putting everything, throughout the house, away. Sometime near the end, one of the kids (the chief complainer in the beginning) exclaimed, "Cleaning is so fun!" I felt the same way. It was like magic.

So here's what I learned:
-I shouldn't make the goals too big or I'll put off getting started
-We should start small, and once we start, we may just feel like doing more

I suppose the cure for the lazy bug is just to start. As soon as we start to work - we do the hardest part - we turn from facing dark to facing light - our desires change - and things get easier.

This post is part of my thoughts on how to teach the kids to work.