Fly Lady

I just recently started this new thing. I was telling a friend of mine online (used to go to school with her years ago...Monica) how I was trying to motivate myself to get housework done. See, our dishwasher broke a couple weeks ago and dishes are the thing I hate most!!! So I had a huge pile of them (all rinsed fairly well so they weren't stinky or mouldy or anything...just there and not completely clean) and I couldn't get the motivation to start on them. And that became a snowball effect to the rest of our kitchen and eventually the house. I just lacked motivation. Whenever I would look at it and start cleaning, it just felt like there was too much to do and I'd never get it done and I would end up just putting it off another day.

So Monica told me about http://www.flylady.net which is the philosophy she uses. So I decided to check it out. The first thing they tell you to do is shine your sink. Yea I know. I thought it sounded silly too. But i was reading thru the testimonials (yea...it was one more thing to keep me procrastinating for awhile) and going thru the basics and it kinda made sense to me. One of the big things that Mon had told me was that flylady doesn't believe in cleaning for more tha 15 minutes at a time. !!!!! I liked that idea! So I checked it out, signed up, and cleaned my sink.

This is where I made my mistake in the beginning. I didn't *SHINE* it. You're supposed to clean it thoroughly so it's the one spot that's clean and take pride in it and work from there. I did clean it and dried it out to keep away spots. But i still had a ton of dishes to do. I did a sinkful and cleaned the sink out and left it at that.

So the next day I got the reminders...they say to dress to the shoes cuz having shoes on will motivate you (or something) so I did...and it did!!! I was liking this! I did my morning facial regime and brushed my teeth and did some more dishes and cleaned the sink again (again....not shine...just clean...but it was still more than I had done a couple days before) I even put some makeup on and did my hair...I was feeling good about myself.

Well, I have to confess...the past few days I didn't follow the flylady and I suffered for it. I didn't dress to the shoes which made it easier to lollygag around on the couch and then take a nap in the middle of the day (which I'm sure I didn't need) and when I woke up I still had more dishes to do. I did get the laundry done and put away (which in our house consists of taking it out of the dryer and hanging it up immediately...we don't do drawers around here) It was okay but I wasn't following the 15 minutes rule so things started to get a bit overwhelming again.

I was noticing I wasn't as motivated and I was reverting back to old ways. So today when Kevin and I went out on our usual Monday outing (dining out, running errands, going shopping) I made a point to get some stuff to clean around the house. And I just spent the last couple hours cleaning up parts of the kitchen...15 minutes at a time...I even set the timer on the stove lol...and I feel great about it!!!! I got most of the dishes done (they just keep piling up lol) and tomorrow I'm going to shine my sink and start dressing to the shoes and feeling good about myself again!!! It may take me awhile to get completely in the swing of things....but I have a good feeling about this.

FYI ... the "fly" in flylady is for "Finally Loving Yourself"