FLYing

I’m a big fan of the Flylady Web site. The main thing I like about it is the timer. It is MUCH easier to deal with a disastrous mess when you’re working in 15-minute increments, with mandatory breaks in between … and at the moment, for reasons too numerous to go into right now, my house definitely falls into the category of “disastrous mess.”

Flylady advises against trying to clean your whole house in one day, because you are likely to burn out and give up. Her program involves working for 5 to 15 minutes a day in one room of your house until you get it completely decluttered, organized, and cleaned. At the same time, you establish daily habits that keep you from trashing the joint up faster than you can clean it.

It’s a good system, and it works on a lot of levels (I’ll explain the metaphysical angle on it in a future post), but my sanity just isn’t going to withstand several hours in this disaster area. The only reason my house looks like this is that I’m almost never home and awake at the same time. Trust me: I couldn’t stand to live like this if I actually had to think about it … and if I had time to think about it, I’d have time to fix it.

Since I’m stuck looking at this mess today, and I have plenty of free time to do something about it, I’m going to dive in and try to straighten it out in 15-minute increments, with before-and-after pictures to help me see what I’ve accomplished. Stay tuned….

UPDATE 1: This is what 15 minutes looks like:

UPDATE 2: These represent about 30 minutes’ worth of work:

This took most of the evening, but it was totally worth it:

I had to declutter and reorganize my file cabinets and those shelves above the brooder, because most of the stuff on the floor was scattered about for want of a proper storage space. Those shelves had been stressing me out for a long time, so I’m really happy to have them straightened out.

Hope you had a productive Saturday. Mine even included a built-in break when I shut off all the lights (except the one over the brooder, of course) for Earth Hour.

Emily