"I Didn't Raise You To Be Lazy!"

...thanks, Dad.

My Dad's birthday was last week, and in our conversation, this came up. He said it was something he was told a lot when he was my age that always irked him - the "I didn't raise you to ____". He said for him it was things like "be a slob" or "be lazy", and he decided that I needed the sentiment as well.

Of course, I responded with "ya, but how many times did you have to tell me to clean my room growing up?" To which the answer is "incessantly".

I don't think of myself as lazy, I think of myself as a fantastic procrastinator.

I have tons of things I want to be doing. I just don't want to do them right now.
Sure, I would love to have a clean carpet, I just don't want get out the carpet cleaner and fill it up and have to go over every inch of carpet at least five times. Not right now.
I would be happy if the table that has all the fish and random stuff on it were clear, but it's not really that important, so I'll do it later sometime.
I wish my fridge was clean again, but I would have to take everything out to do that, and I just got more groceries! I guess I will have to wait for that as well.

See how easy it was to put stuff off?!

I used to do that for everything.
Didn't matter what the task related to, but there was always something more important before hand. Which, of course, led to not much getting done!

There is progress being made, though, I promise!
And I have proof!

On Pinterest, I keep seeing dressers turned into entertainment centers, or linen storage, or the-table-that-sits-behind-the-couch (I can never remember the name of that table).
Well, I have an old dresser (and I mean old, I've had it almost all my life) and it hasn't been useful to me as it has been hanging out here:

Of course, please excuse the mess - our closet is mainly for my clothes, fish tanks, and the husband's storage.
But it was sideways and all I could really use of it was the top drawer and the actual top. I've been wanting to do something with it, be it take all the drawers out, or paint it, or add fabric to it, or just actually use it for clothes, or who knows what - I had yet to make up my mind on the subject, I just knew I needed to do something with it.

Last Wednesday, I made a short list of Pinterest projects I actually wanted to try. Of course, "do something with the dresser" was on the list.
Last Thursday, I put on my daily to-do list that I needed to clear the dresser out.
And of course, on Thursday, I told myself that I needed to have a plan of what I wanted to do with it before I actually started getting it ready.

Yesterday was the magic day, as I realized that dresser would be perfect for scrapbook storage. So, out of the closet it came, and in all of less than ten minutes, it was here and filled up:

All of my scrapbook supplies are hidden in there and ready to go.

Done and done.
It wasn't even on my to-do list for yesterday, I just figured NOW would be the perfect time.

That's all it is - realizing NOW is the perfect time.Sure, you can wait for some magic circumstance to make something worth doing, and that's always easy to do. But that doesn't actually help you get things done!

So, Dad, you're right - you didn't raise me to be lazy.
It's just taken me a long time to figure that out.

~Havok

P.S. What's your best "I'll do it later" excuse?