Little things make a difference

I'd like to share the last hour of my life with you, because it illustrates some of the little and yet not so little changes that are taking place in my life.

Say six or even three months ago, I would have come in from work, utterly shattered, and spent an hour, or maybe two, slowly recuperating my sanity through distractedly browsing the net, reading blogs, or rereading some of my favourite old books either physically or as ebooks on my laptop. I would have accomplised precisely nothing, felt bad about it, procrastinated about doing the washing up and finally gone to bed late, and not really very refreshed.

The first difference: I put my work clothes away. I never normally do this, because my wardrobe is such chaos that it's a hassle. I wear my work clothes until I go to bed, and then I shove the clothes in a crumpled pile to the back of the wardrobe. Now, there is space for every garment in the wardrobe so I hang them up as soon as I get home, and put on my jeans.

The second difference: I folded and put away the clothes from my last laundry batch. Normally I wait until the space is needed, which often means trying to remove clothes while my boyfriend simultaneously hangs his gym kit to dry. There's not really enough space. Today I didn't mind doing this because there aren't many clothes to put away, and I no longer need an MSc in Jenga to fit them into the wardrobe.

The third difference: Looking at how crumpled my shirt was, I decided to iron it. And a few other items. Once I'd done one, it looked so much better than the others that I even ironed one of the shirts already hanging in the wardrobe. I haven't ironed a thing in months, but when you only have four or five items to do, it's surprising how little time it takes.

The fourth difference: When I made my tea, I realised that the bin was full. So I emptied it. I know it sounds pathetic, but this is kind of amazing for me. Normally I agonise, procrastinate, feel guilty etc for some time before I get around to doing something like this, but today I saw it was full and just emptied it while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.

The fifth difference: I decided that while I was up and doing things, I may as well put on a load of laundry.

Wow. As I write this now - feeling alert, not too tired, and with a cup of green tea next to me - I feel really quite good about the first hour of my evening. I think I can chill for the rest of the day. So much progress, but I really find that if something allows me to get started, it's much more straightforward to just keep on going. Just having space in my wardrobe started a chain of events that has made my evening both productive and relaxing.