By Vicki Hughes Posted March 13, 2013

People sometimes wonder how I get it all done. I work a full time job, I cook (mostly) healthy dinners, I make sea glass jewelry, I adjust my undies, I walk by the bay and snap pictures, I administer several Facebook pages, and as you may have noticed, I blog.

The key to getting it all done is ignoring things. Some people might call it lazy, I call it priorities! Here are a few of the most obvious things I must ignore in order to get some stuff done.

Baseboards: That’s right. I can’t get bogged down dusting them or wiping them with a fuzzy yellow cloth.They got nailed to the wall in order to create a framework for my collection of dust bunnies and floating islands of doghair.The baseboards are on their own.

Keeping My E-mail In-Box Clear: Seriously? I have no idea who has time like this to spare. I’ve apparently done entirely too much online shopping, because I get a bazillion e-mails from places I can’t even remember shopping with. I see them in my In-box so much, they feel like long term relationships. Please don’t suggest that I unsubscribe. I HAVE! They just keep ‘em coming. If you want me to actually read an important email, your subject line better have FREE MARTINIS in it.

Washing My Car: We don’t have a garage, but what we do have, is a very busy oak tree over the driveway. I also work about two minutes from the house, and there are no car-washes in between. I can go a week on twenty dollars in gas! To say I don’t give my car a lot of my attention would be a fair statement. I should get a golf cart.

Putting Things Away: Attending to this activity would deprive me of much needed time to do all the many things I am accomplishing. I let things form into little piles that become communities of crap and then, when I get caught up (generally once per fiscal quarter,) I spend an afternoon rummaging through them, feeling nostalgic, “There you are! I’ve missed you!”

Cleaning The Refrigerator: In my case, this is a huge time saver. This is not even an issue anymore because my Momma has it covered since she moved in. She keeps the fridge totally organized and finds a way to keep all the very important things close at hand so I don’t cry: martini olives, canned whipped cream, string cheese. Before she moved in, our fridge was a Twilight Zone episode.

When Chelsey was fifteen, I was cooking mac and cheese from scratch. As teenagers do, she went to the fridge to scope out a snack. I heard her suck in her breath through her teeth. She was hunched over, peering into the deepest recesses of the bottom shelf. “Is that the cookie dough from sixth grade?” she asked, nostrils flared. I wasn’t sure if she was deeply disturbed or about to get a spoon.

I glanced over my shoulder at her and said, “Maybe……”

Priorities, people! Do you want me to excavate the fridge or make you some Garlic Aioli bread?! I’m not a machine! I need to sleep sometime!

Getting all the laundry done: I know many of you dabble in this time saving practice. I am a complete seat-of-my-pants laundry person. I have no set day, and I can’t even fathom having underwear with the days of the week on them. If my underwear had captions stitched on them, they would say:

• Too small
• Elastic shot
• Why did I buy these??
• Oh, hell no!
• Let’s hope I don’t have an accident
• Scratchy
• Sends the wrong message, I’m tired

Much like my earlier tip on ignoring fridge cleaning, the ignoring of laundry can yield some great historical artifacts.

When we moved to a new house in 1999, I found one of Chelsey’s baby socks at the bottom of my hamper. She was ten years old, and had size-eight Nike’s, crusted with mud, sitting on our front porch. Her baby sock days were behind us. I sat in my bedroom and got a little teary-eyed over that mildewed sock, a smelly little time capsule to remind me of her babyhood.

There! My secret is out. Now you have six, practical ways to carve out more time each week! If you really want to be productive…learn what to ignore. Who knows what you will get accomplished!

© Vicki Hughes 2013