grabbing 10

Yesterday was busy. After getting my oldest off to school, my youngest and I ran some errands. I also had a dentist appointment around noon which lasted 3 hours! (okay, it was closer to 1.5 hours, but it felt like 3). I taught piano lessons in the afternoon and after a quick dinner, got my already-exhausted oldest child ready for her Open House and music program at school (which was so delightful, by the way).

So amidst the busy-ness of my Tuesday, I still manages to get a small variety of chores done around the house using a technique that I call "Grabbing 10". I'm pretty sure that I read about this concept on a blog somewhere once upon a time, but I've tweaked it to make it mine.

Today's gift of survival: The day is full of bits of time that you can make work for you. If I've got a spare 10 minutes before my dentist appointment, I'm going to do something with it. Yesterday I grabbed those minutes throughout the day and accomplished the following (each is about 5-15 minutes, so I average it out to 10):
-Swept and mopped the entryway
-Put away clean dishes from the dishwasher and drying rack
-Straightened up the playroom
-Straightened up the pantry
-Scaled down on my daughter's kept schoolwork (I keep it all when it comes home from school and then go through it regularly to keep just a few precious and memorable items in her "keep" box)
-Did a quick vacuum of the downstairs
-Ran through of downstairs picking up odds and ends and deposited them in appropriate rooms
-Raked the leaves that had been bugging me out of one of our planters

So I only got a picture of one of the accomplished chores. I was busy doing all the others!

And when we got home from the program that evening and my children instantly fell asleep, I felt like I could actually sit and relax in the quietness. But I didn't. I stressed out about the fact that my face was still numb! (I was fine by morning. Phew!)

The most important 10 that I grabbed yesterday was the time I spent in devotions. (I'm using "10" figuratively here. The amount of devotional time varies for each person and varies for me each morning!) It doesn't matter what else I get done in the day, if I don't grab my time with God, I feel like I'm doing everything by myself. (Not that He won't hang out with me if I don't do devotions, it's just that I feel like something's missing). So even if it is just 10 minutes that I can grab over a cup of coffee and toast, I take it, because it's the most important time in my day.

What can you accomplish in 10 minutes?