Kanban in Real Life (By Samantha)

Life, like Kanban, is full of continuous iterations, and one of the age old examples of this is maintaining a home. Since there was much success in using the Agile methodology to clean my daughter’s bedroom, I thought that I would try and find a way to use it to be mindful and to keep up on things that need to be routinely done through the house. So let’s introduce our friend Kanban to my household Agile party!

I decided to do a Kanban board for things that need to be done around the house that don’t really have a required timeframe unless I am entertaining. I also color-coded these tasks by whichever size I awarded them. My thought process while gauging the sizes according to our lovely Fibonacci sequence was that a 5 point project (my highest), is usually something that will take up the majority of the time I spend on upkeep for a day, so everything else was gauged relative to that example. I have ranked the tasks that I could think of needing to be done on a regular basis as follows:

1. Dusting: 3-Dusting in my home takes awhile; all pictures, shelves, and figures in every room need to be wiped down and the tables underneath them all need to be dusted.

2. Giving Pancakes a Bath: 1-I have a 12 year old Beagle, she gets pretty stinky because of her beguiling Beagle nature but luckily, she’s great about baths so it shouldn’t take me long.

3. Washing and Replacing all bedlinen: 5-This takes awhile; there are nine (yes 9!) bedrooms in this home, and 5 of them have complete bedding. This takes up a good part of my day to wash and remake them all.

4. Clean out and Wash my Car: 3-When I clean out and take my car to be washed, I usually do all of the vacuuming, remove the mats, wipe down the dash, doors, seats and inside of the doors, take glass cleaner to the windows and then have the car taken through.

5. Clean Louisa’s Cage: 1-Unlike the late Marshmallow, my daughter’s former hamster who used to clean its cage out by throwing its refuse out of its cage on its own, Louisa’s cage needs a good cleaning every once in awhile. Luckily, this doesn’t take long at all.

6. Deep clean the kitchen: 5-The lovely dishes of Haleem, Brown Sugar Soy Pepper chicken with Zucchini and Summer Squash, Grilled Steak, Fried Chicken, and other scrumptious things cooked up are great, but they still leave some remnants that build up over time that need a good cleaning. Scrubbing the oven, cast iron skillets, stove grates, the stove, and the refrigerator all tend to take quite a bit of my day up.

7. Do the laundry: 5-This seems pretty self-explanatory. Unless you want to spend a stint at the local laundromat with multiple washers and dryers, I don’t care what kind of miracle of a washer is out there, it’s going to take awhile.

8. Clean all bathrooms: 5-There are 4 bathrooms in this home, and all have either a bath or a shower, this task is also going to take quite a bit of time to tackle.

9. Sweep downstairs: 3-The downstairs of my home is equipped with two bathrooms, four bedrooms, a front room, a tv room, a kitchen and a dining room. All of these need a good sweeping and it takes a moderate amount of time to do it correctly.

My Kanban board may look a little optimistic starting out, as I have already cleaned the bathrooms and swept the downstairs. I also have laundry in progress for the day. This is simply because I will be going on a trip on Saturday for a week and I don’t like to come home to a large list of things that need to be tackled right away. On a usual day I would usually tackle a 5 alone, or maybe two 3’s or a combination of 3’s and 1’s.

I feel that this will be successful in keeping up with tasks to do around the home because I can pick up the items on the board as I go. Once I am done with one, I will move it over to “To Do” on a lower priority than the others, since with children and animals, the work never stops! Also, in the same situation, I never know which impediments I will come across (other messes, other things taking up my time, RELAXATION AND VACATION!).

Wish me luck as I try and remain Agile everyday!