I was a fly girl yesterday! Does anyone remember that one? I think I need to download it.
Anyway, back to flying. I have actually been thinking about the disorganization and clutter in my life for quite a while. Then Laurie recently posted about her clutter…which reminded me about something I had read a while back: FlyLady. At first I just chalked it up to a silly idea. I mean really, clean my sink and my life will be better? Put on some shoes and I’ll get more done? Just not going to happen. Plus lists and stuff…that is way too “anal” for me. Plus, I tend to be a little OCDish anyway (another way I am like Laurie…I swear we were seperated at birth!), so there could be a negative aspect to this if I really got into it. However, when I read Laurie’s post and she mentioned an organization book it reminded me of FlyLady; I revisited the whole idea. The genius is in it’s simplicity. I really should’ve known it would work…I’m practically a psychologist ya know! (Shut up! So what I dropped out of grad school before I was finished…I still learned stuff!)

I still haven’t really read it all and gotten into the whole program, but I’ve boiled it down to the “gist” and it seems to be working for me and I have to admit, having a sparkling clean sink (not just regular clean and empty) really does make me happy (isn’t that strange???). So, the gist is…take 15 minutes and tackle one project, maybe one of your “hot spots” (eg…the table you throw the mail on when you come in, the “junk drawer” etc…any place that tends to get “out of control”). That’s it. Psychologically, it is so easy to look at one’s house and cringe at the idea of cleaning it all at once. As a result, maybe nothing gets done at all. Maybe you think the right day will come when you’ll have plenty of time and actually do it. Maybe so…I’ve done that lots of times…usually 2-3 days before I’m having company…very stressful. On the other hand just telling oneself “ok self, I’m going to take 15 (or even only 10, or hell I can stop whenever I want! No one is holding a gun to my head!) minutes here and start cleaning up this area and after that I’m done!” This kind of thinking makes it a LOT easier to get SOMETHING done rather than nothing. You’d be amazed at how much small things help the overall appearance of your living space. Then if you happen to get in the mood and keep cleaning, well then, so much the better. You’ve used psychological trickery to get started on this daunting task of cleaning up and organizing your life.

Another aspect of the system that is very helpful is the email reminders. You can sign up at the Yahoo FlyLady Group to get email each day. It is a lot of email, so you might want a separate email address for it or filter it into a folder. An example of how the email has already helped: Yesterday morning I started the washer and then proceeded on my merry way to Target and Home Depot to get toilet fixin’ supplies (I could detour here and tell you about the toilet fiasco bit I won’t. In a nutshell, I’ve done the repair successfully twice before…but yesterday…UGH…could not get it to seal no matter what I did. The plumber is coming tomorrow and yes, I know you’re not supposed to leave the house with the water running but I like to live dangerously). Of course, once I had left the house the laundry was totally out of my mind. I wish I could say this was unusual, but it’s not. I can’t tell you how many loads of laundry I’ve had to rewash because it sat overnight in the washer. Yuck. So here is where belonging to the email group is helpful…one of the little reminders they sent yesterday is “where is your laundry?” Thanks to that reminder my laundry ended up blissfully clean, fresh and in it’s proper place. Give it a try…I’d love to hear about it if you do.