Candy Crush Anyone?

It's time for me to get serious about having a clean house...We had a sweet gas fireplace insert put in this last week and I HATE it when I'm embarrassed by the state of affairs around here.  I mean it's picked up generally speaking but then the guys wanted to use the garage.  The GARAGE people!!!  That's not fair.  And to get to the garage guess what they have to go through?  THE LAUNDRY ROOM!  So not fair!

 I am seriously wondering how people keep their houses all nice and straight.  Clearly they don't play Candy Crush...

I've narrowed down my problem before here on the blog--I'm easily distracted.  (Candy Crush anyone?)  But it's also a little more than that I think.  I always have like 7 different things going at once.  For instance, here are my current "little" projects:

1.  Completing on-line training for my job.  I like my job but that took about 2 hours this morning of me sitting in front of the computer and having to click "next slide" every 15 seconds.
2.  Revamping the children's rooms for the Festival of the Nativities--which is really great and I'm happy to do it but this involves me scouring Craig's List for things like burlap sacks (totally scored those last week!) and cool Tiki Huts (scored that too!)
3.  Hunting down auction items for the upcoming dance auction. (Hey--anyone want to donate something for that?  That's called multi-tasking...)
4.  Developing strategies for keeping one of my children organized when it comes to schoolwork (there's a whole other post...)
5.  Organizing the garage better--see previous comment about the fireplace guys.  So embarrassing...
6.  Planning my lesson for my young women on Sunday--ironically we will be discussing the value of hard work and being self reliant...
7.  Trying to get our pond taken out so we can replace it with a patio.  (Right now I just look at it every time I leave the house and think "stinkin' pond...")

But the thing is, other people have all of these things going on and still manage to be able to let people in the house without crossing their fingers that they won't have to actually use the bathroom while they are there.  Or worse, check the electrical box in the garage...

So what's the answer people?  How am I going to figure this out?  I've been thinking about this for a while now--ok more like about 45 minutes but for me that's a while--and I think I've got to do a couple of things:

1.  Acknowledge that while my house is not as clean as I like it, it's still a long way from being featured on "Extreme Hoarders," so there's that I guess.

2.  Set aside time each morning and evening for general pick up.  I really think that the general clutter could be taken care of in 10-15 minutes each morning and evening IF I actually did that every day.

3.  I'm going to revisit the "Fly Lady" website.  I used to really take advantage of that tool but like Dave says, "I think we drop kicked Fly Lady to the curb."  http://flylady.net

Wish me luck--it's pretty clear I'm going to need it.

PS:  By the way--check out my link here on the blog to "Everyday Mormon Women".  Recently I was asked to write a post for this great site and while it's a little more serious--it comes from my heart.  I was featured on Saturday of last week.  (Oh wait--there's item #8 on my project list!)
http://www.everydaymormonwomen.com/2013/11/bearing-burdens-with-christ.html