clean my room for 15 minutes a day for 10 days

Doing very delimited tasks, like washing the dishes or carrying out the garbage or doing the laundry, is fairly easy. Something like “clean the room” is more of a stumper. I move around erratically in a “booming, buzzing confusion.” I’m trying to establish “5 minute targets”: setting up small targets that I can turn into a game enlists the flip side of A.D.D., the power of hyperfocus, in my favor.

I haven’t been keeping up with this goal of “Clean my room 15 minutes a day for ten days”—more like, “I cleaned my room for 15 minutes total over the last ten days.”

In the meantime, Wes got incapacitated.

Friday afternoon his scooter ran afoul of some storm debris on the sidewalk, and he took a spill. He hates the emergency room so much that he was going to wait until Tuesday, when he already had a doctor’s appointment scheduled, to get himself checked out for serious damage. Sunday afternoon, however, his left arm hurt so much he gave in and went to the emergency room. After what he claims was “20 x-rays” they told him he had no broken bones, just “bruises, contusions, and lacerations” that only time would heal. Mostly, the doctor was just tickled pink that, at 57, Wes was getting so much exercise.

Right after he left, however, they found something they’d missed; a hairline fracture on a bone in his right arm. He had to go back the next day for a “splint”—which looks like a lightweight cast, covering his entire forearm between his elbow and the base of his fingers.

So, with one arm in a cast and the other twanging painfully every time he moves it, Wes is delegating washing dishes, and a lot of other housework, to me for at least ten days.

Maybe that will be long enough for me to get into the habit. :)

Cleaning the room is always a stumper—it’s just one blooming, buzzing confusion! My husband does most of the housework, and I clean my own area once month with him present on the other side of the room to keep me focused. With this kind of limits, however (15 minutes a day) I might be able to manage doing something, and it might cheer Wes just to see me try!