February 9 Update on FLYing

My Shining Sink

February 9: FLYlady in Sickness and in Health

I have been working on the babysteps portion of FLYlady, which is not really the all out program. It has made a drastic difference already, and I cant wait until I have my "control journal" finished so that I can start experimenting with routines more. But, today I found another indicator of out how much the system has been helping me. Yesterday I was feeling really horrible, and the house got a bit out of hand. This morning it was looking a little cluttered again (though the sink was still shining!)

I went about my day today, and just tried to get back into the swing of things. By the end of the day, the house was clean again with hardly any effort, and I had gotten some things on my longer term to-do list finished. I also decluttered my bedroom, which I had been putting off. It ended up taking about twenty minutes! I followed the FLYlady directions about taking a throw away, put away, and give away bad into the room. Well, I went around the room putting things into those bags and I was truly shocked at how quickly the floor became clean and the furniture uncluttered.

So, even with a sick day of being out of my routines, everything came right back together without a problem. I am loving this!


FLYLADY UPDATE:

I have been doing flylady now for about a week and I am a convert. Now I am getting as excited about FLY routines as all people in the crazy "testimonial" emails I keep receiving. It really is remarkable. The house is so clean and decluttered already that it is a little spooky. And I havnt really even put much time into it. How does it happen?

One of the purposes of Flylady is to declutter your whole house. I kept waiting to get to the part where she is going to show me how to do that, and then I realized these little fifteen minute "27 fling boogies" and five minute "room rescues"... thats it. A few minutes a day and a few routines and thats all there is.

Did you know Flylady got her name because she teaches fly fishing? How cool is that?


STARTING FLYLADY
I found a system of life organization/housecleaning online called "flylady." FLY stands for finally loving yourself, which I like. You sign up for an email group and get a daily "baby step" to follow every day of the first month, plus encouraging testemonials, etc. I have been deleating my testemonials because I am also trying to clean out my inbox... I just got below 3,800. I think if I clean out a page every time I check my email, I may get the box cleaned out in a few years or so.

The first thing you do is shine your sink. It is supposed to be a sort of touchstone bringing clarity into your life. Thus my shiny sink pictured above. Brandon is still skeptical about not piling dishes in the sink and doing a big wash at the end of the day, but we are giving it a shot for a week. It is fun to see it gleaming all the time, and if you just give your dishes a quick rinse and stick them in the washer every time you use them, it is not a bad system. And it motivates you to empty to washer right away.

I will keep you posted on how the Flylady system works for us.