Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Mama, I'm In Love With A Vacuum

As a housewarming gift, we received a robot vacuum.  I thought I'd like it.  Instead, I love it.  And I'm not much of a housekeeper.  I grocery shop, meal plan, cook, do laundry, etc., but cleaning I despise.  This machine has taken the effort out of vacuuming, all we have to do is empty the container when it tells us it's full.

My Heart's Desire dubbed it R2D2.  It has a timer so every morning at 10, R2D2 turns itself on, vacuums, then puts itself back in the dock.  It's loud, like a regular vacuum, but I couldn't care less.  On the weekends sometimes I don't want to hear it, so if I'm home, I'll turn it off at 10 and then tell it to go when we leave the house. 

Because we know it runs every morning, it forces us to pick stuff up off the floor every night.  We already lost one of Babyface's books when he left it in his box fort and R2D2 tried to clean it.

Here's the thing that's wonderful about R2D2: it does every single thing, every single time.  Under the furniture.  Around corners thoroughly.  It has a low profile so it slides right under our beds, chairs, sofa, sideboard, actually all of the furniture. Even when we think the house is clean, it's amazing how much schmutz R2D2 vacuums up.

When I come home, our house looks clean because of these carpet lines.  I never knew that I liked carpet lines so much...but I really, really do. It cleans in a random pattern.



When my mother visited last month, she was also impressed with R2D2.  She's a senior and vacuuming isn't an easy chore for her.  I was going to buy her R2D2 for her birthday, but she liked it so much she bought one for herself.  Considering that I get my thrifty gene from her, I was surprised.

The R2D2 we have is the fancy one, the iRobot Roomba 880 Vacuum Cleaning Robot For Pets and Allergies.  I have tons of environmental allergies and between taking off our shoes in the house and R2D2, it's helped.  I wouldn't have bought it just because of the price point, but now that we've used it, I recommend it.  My mom bought an earlier model, the Robot Roomba 650 Vacuum Cleaning Robot for Pets and likes it just as much as I like mine.

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Thursday, June 11, 2015

Grateful Thursday

Today I am grateful for going to bed early, that Babyface loves to listen to Oh, Happy Day, lemons, high-quality problems, bug repellant, texting, being able to laugh instead of getting mad, comfy shoes, flexible spending claims, sunglasses, protein bars, and summer fun to look forward to. 

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Grateful Thursday

Today I am grateful for: waking up on time, electricity, light traffic, being able to laugh instead of getting mad, it's not so freaking hot, enjoying simple things, flexible spending claims, protein bars, comfy shoes, and a great afternoon with my sister yesterday.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Better Than Before

Something about Gretchen Rubin's Better Than Before really clicked with me.  I enjoyed her two previous books and even took some of her suggestions.  I regularly read her blog and when I first read Better Than Before I was disappointed that there wasn't very much new material.  I know this already, I thought many times.  I've even read these exact same examples.

When I was finished with the book I kept mulling over how I could play to my strengths. And I saw why some of my attempts at habit change were successes and others were spectacular failures. What I found useful was the information about self-knowledge and how I can (and have) apply it to make small and big changes.  It was a good reminder that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

Since I read this book, I tried Dr. BJ Fogg's tiny habits session and created a new tiny habit, a threshold ritual when I get home.  When I get home, before I put my keys in the door, I say: How happy I am, how grateful I am, how wonderful it is to be home.  This simple sentence helps me feel grateful instead of grumpy.

A-

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