UNC Healthy Heels

The point of writing in a journal is to get your thoughts out on paper instead of keeping them in your head.  Sometimes, it helps you to make sense of them.  Sometimes, it just frees up space for other thoughts.  I’ve noticed that blogging does the same thing for me.  Through the few blogs I have written this year, I have started to notice some patterns about myself and my priorities.  If you read my blog about Food & Finances, you already know that being lazy has been costing me.  In addition to calories and cash, I fear that I am also paying for my laziness with my health and sanity.

Every time I go to the dentist, I have to admit that I do not floss my teeth the one thousand times a week or whatever they recommend (ok, so the real recommendation is ONCE a day…)  Last year, my gums were bleeding by the time I left the office, so I thought maybe it was time to take them seriously.  But it takes so long to floss!  By the time I’m done brushing my teeth at night, I just want to go to bed!  So, just for fun, I timed myself flossing my teeth so I could have some solid evidence as to how much time I was saving by putting my teeth in jeopardy and skipping the floss.

58 seconds.

Not even a whole minute.  Once I decided that 58 seconds of tooth flossing was going to benefit my health more than 58 seconds of sleep, I became a 5-a-week-er.

I have decided to put this practice of timing unpleasant things into other parts of my life.  Sometimes, when I get home from work or class or whatever I’ve been up to during the day, I do not want to do another single thing.  I stomp around like a child because I don’t want to unload the dishwasher or fold my laundry.  Although these activities take way longer than flossing my teeth, they still only range between 3 ½ to 6 minutes.  And you know what happens if I don’t unload the dishwasher right away?  I have to spend the same 3 ½ minutes at a later time to unload it and then take on at least 15 extra minutes to scrape dishes and wipe countertops that have resulted from having a dishwasher full of clean dishes for two days.

Now that I’ve divulged all of my secrets, tell us a chore you hate to do and how you deal?