FlyLady

Yesterday I finally gave in to my mom's urgings and looked at FlyLady.net. It's a website to help disorganized, messy people keep their houses clean. There are so many of these, but FlyLady is amazing. I was reading some of the stuff she has, and it's spectacular. So, with FlyLady, I am going to attempt to clean up and keep clean my room. The rest of the house I can contribute to keeping clean as well, but mostly my room.

FlyLady is about little steps, and making progress, and forming habits. There's the 15 minute whirlwind clean where you just pick up and put away everything you can as fast as you can for 15 minutes. You can do 10, 20, 30, whatever, but 15 is the recommended dosage, at least for beginners. Then there is the amazing, revolutionary first step: polish your kitchen sink. Uh-huh. Because you can ACTUALLY CLEAN something, even if it is the thing that doesn't matter. Also, for me it is a way to be perfectionist without facing an entire room and eventually giving up. My mother seems to have taken her counter from this concept. That's the counter that you can't put anything down on even for a couple seconds. Well, a couple seconds is allowed if you're watching it, but not if you're putting it down and leaving the room to get something, or putting it down and doing something in another part of the kitchen. Crazy as it is, it works. The counter is the one clean surface in the house. So, last night I polished the sink. Now here we get to the habit part. Polishing the sink takes a minute. FlyLady wants you to polish your sink every night as her first step (or maybe this is the second. the first step being actually doing it the first time).

So, in my room, I have decided that "Shine the kitchen sink" = Make your bed. I have never made my bed in my life before. I have never seen the point. In 14 to 16 hours I'll be sleeping in it again anyway. But, it is something encouraging to clean. And it will keep me from piling stuff all over it. Before I make my bed the first time, I have a good half hour's work to make it at all possible. Oh boy.

But FlyLady's methods are inspiring me to far more than just keeping my room clean. I have compiled a morning routine and an evening routine, something she recommended. I wrote them out and have them next to each other on my bulliten board. With matching cute little silver pushpins in the shape of shoes. The things that I feel the need to point out.
My morning and evening routine include a lot more than the room/house cleaning stuff though. Last night I remembered to pray five Psalms because they were on my list. This was something I didn't do the night before, or the night before that, and it was that night that I POSTED about it. Magic. It must be magic. I also include prayer on my morning list, after five minutes of doing my vocal exercises. And of course, the bedroom sink - making my bed. Do you know, I think I'm going to have to vaccum my bed before I make it? So much crud on the sheets. I'll wash the sheets too, because I can take a hint, but you know, it really hasn't been that long since they've been changed. Mom is right. I definitely cannot eat in my room. I think some of the crud is crumbs. What if we get roaches? They are impossible to get rid of. Although, I haven't really heard of anyone around here who's gotten them. But we'd get ants anyway, and they are bad too. I didn't eat in my room much until my computer came in here a little while ago. Will have to fix this.

This post is getting very very long. But I still have more to say. I shall say it in another post. Solutions!