I was watching that show on TLC about hoarders and one of the psychiatrists said that most people have areas of their house that are blind spots for them. They are messy areas but we just ignore them. We can practically walk by them without even noticing the mess it is. I have a few areas like this in my house. Areas that drive me nuts, but I ignore them because I don't want to spend the time needed to get it cleaned up. My house is messy and I don't like it, but it gets messy so quickly that I get overwhelmed and stop trying. That is until someone comes over and I have to spend a whole day getting it ready. Piles gets moved from the kitchen and living room to our bedroom and now the bedroom is full of junk and some important stuff, but it is hard to know the difference. It doesn't help that I have a hard time throwing stuff away, just in case we may need it some day and I come from a family of pack-rats. Like I said, it drives me nuts and I say one day I'm going to go through it, but everything else seems way more important.
Recently I read my sisters blog about cleaning and it inspired me to get my house in order as well. So I checked out the fly lady website to see how to do this. There is a lot of info on this page and I didn't want to spend my whole day reading about it, I wanted to start doing it so I got my version of the jest of it and started at it.
What I have applied to my life is having morning and evening chores that happen daily, other chores that need to get done during the week but not daily, and the 15 minute de-clutter. My goal is to have my house ready for company to drop by and not be embarrassed by what they will find. I have been at it for about a week now and I am happy to say that my house looks pretty good.
One of my morning jobs is to empty the dishwasher, one of my least favorite jobs. I don't mind filling it but for some reason it is hard to empty. So the dishes pile up until I have to empty it and then I reload it and it starts all over again. Now, with the dishwasher emptied, I put the dishes right in the dishwasher instead of the counter. Who knew that taking 5 extra minutes to do this would be so easy. In the evening, I make sure all the dishes are in there and turn it on if it is full and wipe the counters down. A clean start for the morning. I also make sure all the clothes are put away, rather than just throwing them on the ground, before we go to sleep. The other jobs get divided between the week or are as needed. I don't even feel like I am doing chores any more. It is just part of the routine and doesn't take much effort.
I have been spending at least 15 minutes de-cluttering our bedroom and I'm almost done. A project I thought would take a month is almost done in a week. Next is the kitchen and then I have to get deeper and go through the closets and basement. Still lots to do, but it doesn't seem overwhelming when I only spend 15 minutes on it. If I can keep it up as I go, it hopefully won't get as bad as it was. I feel so much better.
To top it all off, Kellin had some youth over last thursday and I all I had to do to get ready for them to come was clean the bathroom and entrance, rather than spending all day cleaning. What a great feeling.
Thank Pam too :) She introduced me to Fly Lady.
ReplyDeleteI have the same issue with hating emptying the dishwasher, lol. I think I may have to add that one to my morning routine too.
And yeah, applying the Fly Lady tactics to suit your own needs is much better than just following everything they do, that was the key to my success, so congrats on finding your own success!! You're right, it doesn't feel like chores anymore, and it feels so good to have a mostly clean house!
And I've started applying the 'just spend 5, 10, 15 minutes' tactic on other things, like my scrapbooking, or the other zillion projects I want to finish, and I'm slowly seeing those projects getting done and it feels great! I feel like I'm getting SO much accomplished yet not stressed and busy at all. What a magnificent concept!