You Can Do Anything for 15 Minutes! Babystep Challenge to a Peaceful Home Day 10

You can do anything for 15 minutes.

Yes, anything. Things you don’t want to do. Things you think you can’t do. Things you think you shouldn’t bother with because you think it won’t make a difference.

You can. You should. It WILL make a difference.

How do I know? I learned from Flylady. Over and over I am amazed at what 15 minutes of focused time will do. And then I don’t do it (see, it hasn’t become a habit), and then when I do it again, I am amazed. Again.

This is my entrance hall. The view from our dining table (lovely for ambiance, isn’t it?) and the view as you walk in the front door.

How welcoming.

FOUR minutes it took me to make it like this. FOUR.
Including quickly spraying it down & giving it a wipe. I’ve been looking at that stuff for DAYS, thinking I didn’t have time to do anything about it and wishing someone else would, feeling a little sorry for myself that I have such a messy place and obviously I can’t handle this by myself…


A little more welcoming, don’t you think?

What am I going to do with 11 more minutes?

This. This is our liquor cabinet & we also keep our keys&sunglasses basket here. As you can see on top, it’s also got bottles up there. I hate that. Besides looking messy, it makes it seem like we must drink a LOT. Which we don’t. And off in that little nook there is stuff piled on those drawers.

And here’s what it looked like afterward. Notice the CLEAR SURFACE!

Still 3:33 on the timer. (yes, I stopped it to take the pictures!) What else?

This is our hall closet. It has a curtain that falls down when my toddler plays with it because it’s not really attached. It’s been down for days, and I just “haven’t had the time” to fix it.

And here it is with the curtain. Much better.

Still 2 minutes on the timer. I guess I can take care of this little hot spot.

You can do anything for 15 minutes. I dare you!

Hotspots–Babystep Challenge Day #6

Time for Flylady’s Babystep #6: spend 2 minutes putting out a HotSpot. What is a Hot Spot, you ask? Well, it’s a cluttered area that tends to attract more clutter. It’s your dumping ground. It’s the first thing you see when you walk into a room that makes the room look messy and makes you feel…YUCK. Here’s where Flylady explains what a Hot Spot is on her website.

This is my biggest and most frequent Hot Spot: our dining table. Here is a picture of what it looked like before 2 minutes of clearing it.

You can see that my “desk” area is so cluttered that I’d have to clear a spot just to be able to work. And even if I did that, it would hardly be peaceful enough to promote productivity.


But, after just TWO MINUTES, now look. Pretty, peaceful. And I even changed my location to have a better view, lit a scented candle, have the flowers in sight, and a cup of herbal tea. MUCH better.
And it only took 2 minutes.

Well, 2 minutes plus the time to move & light the candle & make my tea. Still. 😉

In our homes, hotspots can take over. But deal with it regularly, when it is small, and it changes everything.

It’s a good babystep for me; I need to do it regularly.

“Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.”

How are your babysteps coming?

Wanna join in? C’mon, it’s fun!

In case you missed it, here’s why I’m doing this.
And my posts on Babysteps #1, #2, #3, #4.

If you’ve posted your hotspot babystep, Leave a link with your comment so that we can all share in each other’s progress.