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Time management - cooking, cleaning, and exercise

Discussion in 'Spotless Kitchen' started by kkrish, Apr 22, 2012.

  1. veeramachaneni

    veeramachaneni Platinum IL'ite

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    Sunday - I woke up early, Finished Laundry.
    Made Breakfast, Dusted the whole house. DH vacuumed the house.
    Prepared Lunch, Chopped veggies for tomorrow.

    DH is travelling next 3 days and I will be busy next 3 days.
    Ironed clothes for work (5 sets for me and 5 sets for DD)
     
  2. Bubbles

    Bubbles Silver IL'ite

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    My two cents..
    Setting a timer, either on phone, or you can open a new tab, and go to google.com and type set a timer for x minutes. Or you can install a timer extension to your browser.
    You have to close the browser though - you need to have that much self control.. ;)
    Or you can install one of these browser extensions that do the same job for you - close the window after x minutes...

    I confess, browsing on despite has been MY speciality:facepalm: But now, baby takes care of it :p
     
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  3. kkrish

    kkrish IL Hall of Fame

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    Wishing everyone a Happy Deepavali.
     
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  4. kkrish

    kkrish IL Hall of Fame

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    Good morning

    Trust everyone celebrated a wonderful Deepavali with family and friends.

    Instead of just posting my daily routine, I have decided to refocus on how to manage time. Towards this goal I may be repeating some of my earlier posts – I don’t remember what I posted in the early days of this thread. So please bear with me.

    Also you will find that in my posts I’ll be mentioning what I think is important to me. This does not mean “do as I do”. I do not believe in giving advice, as each of our lifestyle is different. I only expect my posts to trigger the reader’s mind in applying some of the strategies that may work for them and/or modify them according to their needs.

    Time management is really not about managing time. Time itself cannot be managed. We all get the same 24 hours every day and every second that passes it is gone – forever! We cannot save time! How tobuse that 24 hours diligently and wisely to keep us stress-free and happy is the goal.

    Therefore looking at this as managing our lives around time would be the better approach.

    The key factors, according to me, in managing our lives are - prioritizing and planning.

    Let us look at prioritizing.

    Priorities change over time.

    I remember that learning to cook new dishes to work my way to my husband’s heart via his tummy was my priority in the early days of my marriage. After my children were born, providing them healthy home-made meals and focusing on their growth and development took priority; now priority is given to healthy light meals.

    This is what I have written down as my priority in order of importance today. Four years ago when I started this thread my priority was different.

    Health – Physical and mental

    The moment I wrote it down I realized that everything fits under this.

    Physical health:
    How do I achiever this?

    1. Physical exercise
    2. Healthy meals

    Mental health
    How do I o achieve this?

    1. Part of it will come from being physically healthy
    2. Maintaining a routine
    3. Clutter free environment
    4. Good thoughts and deeds
    5. Positive Attitude and approach towards life.

    I also strongly believe that points (4) and (5) will improve as we focus on others. Hence they are listed as the last two. So I am not going to get into how to achieve them (if I do they will fall under the dreaded “advice” category :))

    ********

    Physical health

    1. Physical exercise.

    At first I allotted one hour a day to get my exercise. One hour out of 24 hours- not bad, quite possible. I was very diligent for many months. But one hour turned out not to be one hour but two hours – changing to workout clothes, selecting a music to listen while I work out, cooling down, and shower. Slowly, I was finding excuses to not give up this huge 2-hour chunk. There were so many other things waiting for my attention. Eventually one day/week exercise abstinence grew to months. I did pay a price in reduced energy, but I knew giving up two hours of my day was not going to last.

    After going thru a plethora of exercise schedules which I never stuck to, I realized that allotting a major chunk of time for exercise is not working out for me.
    So how do I get the benefits of exercise without allotting time for it? That is when my office walking challenge came into play. I enjoyed walking in small chunks and stuck to it through the duration of the two week challenge. After the challenge ended I still continued the walks with the help of my smartphone app.(Downside - without pockets in skirts and some pants, very awkward carrying the phone) The wearable Fit Bit helped.

    I am trying to build walking as something I don’t think about (such as breathing). It is still a work in progress. Some days I do need to allot 30 – 40 minutes in the evenings to achieve my 10K steps goal. However, because they are not every day, I don’t feel time deprived.

    The plan to achieving my first priority – physical exercise – is walking 5-10 minutes (more if possible) whenever there is opportunity to reach a minimum of 10K steps.

    Two weeks ago, my exercise regimen has been upgraded - I am attending lunch break yoga class once every week. After a couple of months I will increase it to two classes per week. Taking it slowly, I am.

    Have a great week.
     
  5. chithirainilavu

    chithirainilavu Gold IL'ite

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    @ kkrish mam,

    Absolutely thought provoking. Made us think about time management from a different angle.

    Perfectly penned. Bang on esp on physical exercise.

    Due to my back problem , i don't do other exercises. It's just walking. I get ready in such a way that after i drop kids in the bus stop and board them in the bus, i go for a walk for 30 minutes to 45 minutes. I don't over do this, my back and leg starts aching. Same i do in the evening, i drop the kids in their hobby classes and then go for a half an hour walk. this gives a self satisfaction that i have done some physical exercise and i am doing something for myself. As you said both physical and mental health is taken care off.

    shara
     
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  6. kkrish

    kkrish IL Hall of Fame

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    @chithirainilavu . That's great Shara!
    Yours is a great example on how to find/create the opportunity to do exercise, and how you are putting this time to best use. A great way of managing life around time. :thumbup:
     
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  7. Lakshmi6197

    Lakshmi6197 Gold IL'ite

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    @kkrish After reading your post, I visited flylady. Both your post and flylady are very helpful and inspirational. A heartfelt thanks to you :blush:
     
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  8. chithirainilavu

    chithirainilavu Gold IL'ite

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    Mam,

    I am overwhelmed. You made my day. Motivated to do more.

    shara
     
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  9. kkrish

    kkrish IL Hall of Fame

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    Thank you @Lakshmi6197 .
    FlyLady inspired me to do work in small increments. I apply this to almost everything nowadays. Just focusing on one room a week. There are some things that I can't do what FlyLady says - she cooks only dinner whereas I cook all three meals :). So had to tweak that part.
    Best Wishes.
     
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  10. kkrish

    kkrish IL Hall of Fame

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    Healthy meals

    I am not sure about others; for me the biggest mental block always is “what to cook?” So much so that whenever the days’ meals are planned and finished, miraculously I feel lighter and the whole day opens up to accomplish other things.

    For the homemaker – man or woman – the biggest challenge is providing meals that are nutritious and also delicious. If there are children in the family the food has to be child-attractive too. Every day, every meal! Head spinning, right?

    But this is only a challenge and therefore not impossible.

    I had addressed this earlier with a plan for the week. That still works well for me.

    As the meal plans and tips are already in the sticky thread; do not want to repeat them.

    My other problem has always been food itself.

    On one side I was battling the bulge and towards that end had stocked up on the many, low-fat, non-fat, low cholesterol, non-cholesterol, no-sweet, no-this, no-that, and all of them no-taste, foods.

    At the same time with the explosion of food blogs, and TV shows I wanted to try pizzas, pasta, salads, Continental, Chinese, Mexican, and other types of Indian meals too. So those ingredients also were in my pantry.

    As with exercise, my initial euphoria slowly waned. That's because only I would eat those foods, never felt complete as my ethnic meals, and my weight was...well... less said the better :)

    Eventually I settled down to cooking my ethnic meals and with so many websites and smartphone apps, am able to determine how much of these foods to eat towards my achieving healthy weight.

    Whenever I want a pizza or pasta, the kitchen is closed and I enjoy time out.

    The upside - Nowadays I am not worried of lack of discipline and falling off diets, because there is not “diet”, and my taste buds are happy.
     

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