Seven

I have a modest wish and that is to keep house unexpected company drop in clean. My house used to be kept in this fashion when I was a newlywed and when the girls were small. Then driving them to and from school and after school activities, plus driving my elderly parents around, seems things got tossed onto the dining room table before I was running out again. I'd end up doing a cleaning frenzy when company was coming, but that left me worn out and junk piled in my bedroom. That was part of the frenzy. Toss stuff in my bedroom and just shut the door. Seemed I couldn't get out of my own way. There was lots of stuff to be done, but it was overwhelming.

Then my friend, D, happened to join a FlyLady group on Facebook. You know, Facebook, enabling the nosy? So I went to check it out. And then bombarded D who has been flying for awhile with a million questions. FlyLady is a small step at time approach to decluttering your home and getting into a routine. FlyLady calls it flying, and I've been fluttering along for a month. Seven things I like about FlyLady

1. You can start slow and take baby step to get yourself out of clutter. I've sent several bags and boxes off to The Big Brother/Big Sister organization (they send a truck around town every month). Getting rid of stuff I haven't been using and don't want feels good.

2. FlyLady's philosophy is set a timer and do a job for 15 min. It's amazing how much you can get done in a small chunk of time.

3. FlyLady has you put things into a notebook so you can easily refer to it to see what's next on the to do list. I use Microsoft OneNote for my notebook on the laptop. No papers, no clutter.

4. FlyLady divides the house into zones. Once a week, each month, cleaning is focused in the zone. Each day, a small chore (15 min) is to be done.

5. I like the schedule of it. I like the fact I'm given an assignment to do each day.

6. I can vary the schedule to suit me. For example, this week the zone was the living room. One of the tasks was to dust the tops of the window and door jambs. I thought as long as I was dusting the tops of the windows, it seemed like a good time to take the curtains down and give them a wash, and to wash the windows since my windows tilt in to clean.

7. I'm finding as I flutter along I have time to not only keep up with the daily grind of things, but I have more time to devote to things I want to do like blogging or getting a new website up and running.

If you're a person who likes schedules, this system will work for you. One of the downsides of the group is several emails a day that have more to do with FlyLady products (which you don't need to buy) or members giving testimonials to the system. It's easy enough to delete the stuff you're not interested in. Check out FlyLady. The group is free to join. Do you fly?