Time Wasters

When you read an article or book about time management, one of the top suggestions is often to eliminate your time wasters.  Ya know, like checking your email every five minutes, watching tv, lack of organization, taking the long way instead of the short cut, etc.

I've thought this through, and I'd like to share the top ten things that I'd like to eliminate from my life so that I have more time for the things that matter.

Alright, here we go...

1) Cleaning the house.
Oh my goodness I'd have a lot more time if I never cleaned the house.  I think I spend half of my waking hours at home cleaning the house.  So house cleaning, you've got to go.

2)  Laundry.
I spend the other half of my waking hours at home doing this.  If I don't, my upstairs fills with clothes to the point where you can't see the floor.  Or the bed.  Or the dressers.  And then the next thing I know I can't find any clean pants and Krew is wearing a bright red shirt with fluorescent green shorts and blue socks, not because my husband doesn't know how to dress him but because that's all he's got left.

3) Showering.
I could save twenty minutes per day if I didn't shower.  Yes I take twenty minute showers, and I'm not just standing there under the water.  I've got important things to do in there.  Like shampoo, condition, body wash, shave, scrub back, wash face, etc.  Don't judge.

4)  Putting on makeup.
I get so so so so so tired of putting on makeup every day.  It takes everything in me not to release a giant exasperated sigh every morning when I go to pull open the drawer housing my makeup containers.  Alas, God has blessed me with dark undereye circles, so makeup it must be.

5)  Driving to work.
I drive around 25 minutes to and home from work.  Add in walking to and from the car, and that's almost an hour a day.  Goodness gracious.

6) Now that I think about it, I think WORK is a huge time waster.  Holy cow I'd have a lot more time if I didn't have to work.  I might have landed on something here.

7)  Feeding Krew.
Every time I turn around the kid needs to eat again.  So I put him in the high chair, get the tray, pick out the food, feed him the food, fight with him over the food, clean his hands, fight with him over cleaning his hands, clean his face, fight with him over cleaning his face, take the tray to the sink, wash the tray in the sink, and set the tray out to dry so it's ready for a couple hours later when we get to do it all over again.

8)  Filling in my work timesheet.
This is the bane of my existence.  I absolutely hate doing it.  It usually only takes about 15 minutes, but if I could pay a monthly amount to never do it again, I totally would.  (As long as that monthly amount is less than my monthly salary, of course.)

9)  Talking on the phone.
I really really really don't like talking on the phone.  I don't have a good explanation as to why, but I tend to feel like I'm wasting precious minutes of my life when I'm on the phone.  There are, of course, exceptions, but in general I wouldn't mind eliminating this from my life.  Texting - awesome.  Face to face - awesome.  Email - awesome.  On the phone - ugh.

10)  Filling up on gas.
I dislike this one so much that I tend to drive my car till it's running on fumes.  I usually accidentally (yet conveniently) time it so that I'm low on gas when Dave is in the car with me.  That way he has to get out and pump the gas since, ya know, he's the man of the family and everything.  Then I can sit in the car and play on my iPhone.  (Which is not a time waster by my definition, by the way.)

So if I could just eliminate these things from my life, can you imagine all the extra time I'd have??? Then I could spend time doing the really important things in life. Like blogging and reading other blogs.  Just kidding.  I mean, I would probably do those things more often, but they aren't the important items.  The important things would be spending quality time with my husband and son, reading my Bible, Bible studies, praying, witnessing to others, serving the less fortunate, teaching Krew about Christ, working out, taking hot baths...

...okay, and blogging.

What about you?  What are your biggest time wasters?