Sunday, May 6, 2007

the hit and miss list

I find it increasingly hard to fathom the amount of things I need/want/should do on any given day, so I have done what any good woman would do: I have made a list. Lists are fabulous things for any number of reasons. To list a few: they are easy to make, they create the (usually false) impression that you are very organised, and they fill you with an enormous sense of achievement - even if all you have achieved is writing down the insurmountable tasks you face.
My list has 22 items on it, under the heading Things to Do. Some of these are quite urgent, like 'clean bathroom' and 'wash sheets'. And if my list is still floating around a week or so from now, they will reappear on it. Others are semi-urgent, like cooking the pumpkin soup, minestrone, risotto and vegie lasagne I recently found in a Donna Hay magazine and, in a very uncharacteristic rush of blood, went out and bought all the ingredients. Semi-urgent because that was over a week ago and some of the ingredients are looking a bit the worse for wear.
Having looked at my list for some time, I realised there was no chance of me achieving it all in one day. Maybe not even in one week. But I have made a pledge to tick three items off the list at the end of each day, and today I did just that (I cheated a bit by writing 'wash sheets' in after I'd already done it, but sometimes you just need to be creative). I write this with a pot full of minestrone on the stove, clean sheets on the clothes line and a sparkling clean bathroom. Three down, nineteen to go.