I am conducting a war on Entropy. Entropy is winning - either they have recruited terrorists to conduct assymmetric warfare. or the gremlins are letting of stuff bombs when I leave the house.
Perhaps I need a new battle plan - a new plan of attack, or reinforcements. Perhaps I will conduct a seige and deprive them of supplies.
Maybe I should just surrender... You just can't beat thermodynamics
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Optimism
op·ti·mism
/ˈɒptəˌmɪzəm/ Show Spelled[op-tuh-miz-uhm]
–noun
1. a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.
2. the belief that good ultimately predominates over evil in the world.
3. the belief that goodness pervades reality.
4. the doctrine that the existing world is the best of all possible worlds.
Origin: 1730–40;
an·ti·op·ti·mism, noun
o·ver·op·ti·mism, noun
—Synonyms 1. confidence, hopefulness, cheerfulness.
—Antonyms 1, 2. pessimism, cynicism.
Case in point: Hanging out the washing when the forcast is "cold, windy, showers. Maximum 10oC"
/ˈɒptəˌmɪzəm/ Show Spelled[op-tuh-miz-uhm]
–noun
1. a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.
2. the belief that good ultimately predominates over evil in the world.
3. the belief that goodness pervades reality.
4. the doctrine that the existing world is the best of all possible worlds.
Origin: 1730–40;
an·ti·op·ti·mism, noun
o·ver·op·ti·mism, noun
—Synonyms 1. confidence, hopefulness, cheerfulness.
—Antonyms 1, 2. pessimism, cynicism.
Case in point: Hanging out the washing when the forcast is "cold, windy, showers. Maximum 10oC"
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Catch Up
Went away to Farm. Visited friends on way. Got sick. Came home 4 days later. Washed. Cleaned. Worked. Packed. Went away to Sydney. Shopped. Caught a cold. Visited Friends. Went to 90th Birthday Party. Came home; still sick. Worked. Clean house. Cooked. Worked. Washed mountain of clothes. Still sick. Packed (again). Went to Mum and Dad't for Mother's Day. Got sicker. Toddler now sick and grumpy. Came home. sick. Worked. Cleaned. Washed. Gost hair cut. Locked self and child out of house. Worked. Cleaned. Cooked. Went to charity dinner. Slept in. Toddler learnt how to climb out of cot. Worked. Cleaned. Worked. Spent afternoon "sleep time" putting jack-in-the-box toddler back to bed.
Whew.
That has been our May so far. (I think I just wrote about 4 blog posts worth of stuff). It has been so frenetic that I haven't really had time to think because we have been so busy doing. (That's not quite true - I have thought quite hard at work but not on matters of my choosing). This is the first week where we haven't been away for the previous weekend - and for the first time this month I am not behind in the housework.
The rest of May is looking better - we have three (that's right three) weekends where we are home (not free but home) before we possibly go away again. This cold/sore throat should go. Maybe then I will be able to post some photos of what we have been doing ;-)
Hope to catch up with you more often!
Whew.
That has been our May so far. (I think I just wrote about 4 blog posts worth of stuff). It has been so frenetic that I haven't really had time to think because we have been so busy doing. (That's not quite true - I have thought quite hard at work but not on matters of my choosing). This is the first week where we haven't been away for the previous weekend - and for the first time this month I am not behind in the housework.
The rest of May is looking better - we have three (that's right three) weekends where we are home (not free but home) before we possibly go away again. This cold/sore throat should go. Maybe then I will be able to post some photos of what we have been doing ;-)
Hope to catch up with you more often!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Organisation Fever
I have recently been hit by a recurring bout of organisation fever. This reoccurs several times a year - perhaps triggered by searching vainly for a document for 3 hours, or being unable to close a cupboard door, or external factors like tenancy inspections.
This particular bout was triggered by the combination and the New Year and my return to work for an extra day a week. The symptoms included
a) cleaning out the pantry and typing up an inventory and map for the door
b) tidying Alex's cupboard and inventoring his books and toys.
c) putting together a household folder
Here is Alex's cupboard after being cleaned
Here is most of the teddy bear collection. [As a side note, how can one child, who has had 1 birthday and 2 Christmas's - where on all occasions his parents purchased nothing - have so much stuff?)
Now it may seem like a good thing to be organised - and there are definite advantages - but personally I have found there is a limit where one can be too organised (and this is a heavy admission for someone who is strongly J on the Myer-Briggs scale).
1. It can cause conflicts - my husband is more "lets take if flexibly" regarding routines, and being hyper-organised tends to annoy him, while I have a tendency to get irritated if my carefully constructed plans are thrown into disarray.
2. Getting and staying organised takes effort and, once the organisation fever subsides, I cannot continue the effort to maintain the high level of organisation that this fever brings on. (and I present exhibit A: >10 unfinished projects in the last seven years). Maintaining the effort of staying organised means that I don't spend time doing more important things - like playing with Alex!
3. It makes you think that you can control everything around you. This is particularly insidious, as most of our lives are beyond the scope of our control.
Unfortunately the only cure for Organisation fever that I have discovered is getting organised, so I shall go off and benignly organise something else (arrange my wardrobe by colour, or alphabetise the music collection)
This particular bout was triggered by the combination and the New Year and my return to work for an extra day a week. The symptoms included
a) cleaning out the pantry and typing up an inventory and map for the door
b) tidying Alex's cupboard and inventoring his books and toys.
c) putting together a household folder
Here is Alex's cupboard after being cleaned
Here is most of the teddy bear collection. [As a side note, how can one child, who has had 1 birthday and 2 Christmas's - where on all occasions his parents purchased nothing - have so much stuff?)
Now it may seem like a good thing to be organised - and there are definite advantages - but personally I have found there is a limit where one can be too organised (and this is a heavy admission for someone who is strongly J on the Myer-Briggs scale).
1. It can cause conflicts - my husband is more "lets take if flexibly" regarding routines, and being hyper-organised tends to annoy him, while I have a tendency to get irritated if my carefully constructed plans are thrown into disarray.
2. Getting and staying organised takes effort and, once the organisation fever subsides, I cannot continue the effort to maintain the high level of organisation that this fever brings on. (and I present exhibit A: >10 unfinished projects in the last seven years). Maintaining the effort of staying organised means that I don't spend time doing more important things - like playing with Alex!
3. It makes you think that you can control everything around you. This is particularly insidious, as most of our lives are beyond the scope of our control.
Unfortunately the only cure for Organisation fever that I have discovered is getting organised, so I shall go off and benignly organise something else (arrange my wardrobe by colour, or alphabetise the music collection)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Spring Cleaning
Last week we had a tenancy inspection from our real estate agent. This has been looming over our heads for over a month, as for various reasons it had been postponed twice. This meant that we had to have the house clean three times in the last two weeks.
And when I say clean I do mean clean. One of the differences between Sydney and Canberra is that here they do rental inspections six-monthly rather than yearly and there seems to be a higher turnover of property managers here (we have now had six property managers in less than three years). This means that the new property manager has no idea of the condition of the house was before you moved in, and we have no idea of the standards of the manager in question. Some managers walk in the door, check that there is nothing requiring maintenance and that you aren't punching holes in the wall; others check every nook and cranny for spiders webs, only just stopping short of running a white glove along the edge of the skirting board to check for dust! So we had a clean house just in case.
The only good thing about this inspection is that it did coincide with the need for spring cleaning and after three clean-ups it is actually finished. Alex is very interested in the vacuum cleaner (it has an 'on switch', it makes noise, there is a fabulous cord and there are parts to put together so I don't blame him.) and he was attempting to "help". I am tempted to train him to use the machine properly only his father says that he doesn't want his son to be a janitor!
And when I say clean I do mean clean. One of the differences between Sydney and Canberra is that here they do rental inspections six-monthly rather than yearly and there seems to be a higher turnover of property managers here (we have now had six property managers in less than three years). This means that the new property manager has no idea of the condition of the house was before you moved in, and we have no idea of the standards of the manager in question. Some managers walk in the door, check that there is nothing requiring maintenance and that you aren't punching holes in the wall; others check every nook and cranny for spiders webs, only just stopping short of running a white glove along the edge of the skirting board to check for dust! So we had a clean house just in case.
The only good thing about this inspection is that it did coincide with the need for spring cleaning and after three clean-ups it is actually finished. Alex is very interested in the vacuum cleaner (it has an 'on switch', it makes noise, there is a fabulous cord and there are parts to put together so I don't blame him.) and he was attempting to "help". I am tempted to train him to use the machine properly only his father says that he doesn't want his son to be a janitor!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Entropy
For those few (!) out there that didn't study third-year thermodynamics, and have no idea what entropy is, it is basically the disorder in a system. The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of how entropy works - that unless there is an input of energy (from some external source), entropy (disorder) will increase until it reaches maximum disarray!
This is a Law of science (not a theory) and you can't work against it. The cells in our bodies replicate millions of time in our lifetime but each time it does there is some disorder added, until eventually there not enough order left for the cell to do it's job properly; once salt has been dissolved the only way to get it back is to add a lot of heat and evaporate all the water; two objects of different temperature put together will come to some temperature between the first two (i.e. heat/energy will not flow from the cold object to the warm object); left to it's own devices a house will get messy and dusty, stockings will run etc etc etc. The only thing that you can do is work out how much energy you need to add to counterbalance the rate that disorder increases.
Until Alex was born, we had worked out how much energy we needed to counter the "entropy" that was in our house. Once he was born that energy needed to go up but it was still manageable. Since he has been mobile however the effort involved to combat the disorder in our house has magnified. In fact, I suspect that Alex is not actually on our side in our battle against entropy, but is instead involved in what one friend and I call asymmetric warfare against us.
Just this afternoon and evening he has managed to land a trail of destruction through every room of the house - I accidentally left the doors open to two rooms that he is not allowed into. He must have seen the slight gap when I had my back turned and he seized the moment. He managed to empty three drawers from the bathroom, one from the study (the floor is covered with pencils and envelopes) and get into the cupboard in the en suite. The encore this evening of breaking two plates (melamine at that) by throwing them on the floor with dinner on them! I suspect, whoever decides the medals for entropy will be giving him a meritorious award for his efforts tonight!
This is a Law of science (not a theory) and you can't work against it. The cells in our bodies replicate millions of time in our lifetime but each time it does there is some disorder added, until eventually there not enough order left for the cell to do it's job properly; once salt has been dissolved the only way to get it back is to add a lot of heat and evaporate all the water; two objects of different temperature put together will come to some temperature between the first two (i.e. heat/energy will not flow from the cold object to the warm object); left to it's own devices a house will get messy and dusty, stockings will run etc etc etc. The only thing that you can do is work out how much energy you need to add to counterbalance the rate that disorder increases.
Until Alex was born, we had worked out how much energy we needed to counter the "entropy" that was in our house. Once he was born that energy needed to go up but it was still manageable. Since he has been mobile however the effort involved to combat the disorder in our house has magnified. In fact, I suspect that Alex is not actually on our side in our battle against entropy, but is instead involved in what one friend and I call asymmetric warfare against us.
Just this afternoon and evening he has managed to land a trail of destruction through every room of the house - I accidentally left the doors open to two rooms that he is not allowed into. He must have seen the slight gap when I had my back turned and he seized the moment. He managed to empty three drawers from the bathroom, one from the study (the floor is covered with pencils and envelopes) and get into the cupboard in the en suite. The encore this evening of breaking two plates (melamine at that) by throwing them on the floor with dinner on them! I suspect, whoever decides the medals for entropy will be giving him a meritorious award for his efforts tonight!
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