The One Thing

Happy Monday!  And welcome to 'The One Thing,' a blog series about keeping life manageable by taking on just one non-essential thing a day.  To keep myself accountable to my One Thing resolution, I report back here on Mondays with my little accomplishments from the previous week... and invite you to join me.

Inspired by Mark Twain, the One Thing series is all about making life manageable by taking on one thing a day, one project or task or errand outside of the daily essentials that adds beauty or order to life.  This is my way of avoiding my usual pitfalls of making extensive to-do lists, starting lots of projects, getting overwhelmed, and not finishing anything.

Are you inspired by Mark Twain and The One Thing?  Write your own posts, link back here, and use the link-up feature at the bottom of this post!

{Don't forget to link to specific posts, not just your home page.}

I'm going to be honest: last week was not a great week for me.  There was a day or two where I wasn't feeling well, but even aside from that, my general emotional state was one of "I'm not staying on top of everything, I'm not being a good mother, and I'm not handling life well!"

There was actually a day where my "One Thing" ended up being wiping clean the lid of the kitchen trash.  I kid you not, that was the only extra thing I was able to accomplish on Saturday aside from my teaching violin lessons, changing diapers, nursing my baby, etc.

But wiping the kitchen trash lid counts, and I am persevering in my commitment to The One Thing plan.  So, last week, by following my One Thing a Day plan, here are a few of the things I accomplished:

For Nathan's birthday, I selected some favorite pictures of the two of us and had them printed.  He had been commenting that we really ought to get some art or photos up on our walls since we've been living in this house for a year now, and he was right!  I put the printed photos into an empty frame we had lying around, one of those to-do-list items that had been waiting for a couple of years, ahem.  I gave it to him on his birthday, and the next day I hung it on the wall.  And voila!  Our once-almost-empty walls in the living room now have not one but two things on them.  You gotta start somewhere.

Assembling and hanging that frame (two things, my friends, two things!) were really the only things I did all week that added long-term beauty or order to our home.

But on Sunday I made stuffed shells for a friend with a new baby boy:

And while that sort of "One Thing" may not last very long or be very noticeable, I consider food for a new mama to be a thing of great importance, don't you?

Anyway, I had the cutest of kitchen helpers, who nowadays thinks a kitchen spoon makes a great toy.