The power of 15 minutes

Well, I must say, after the first full day of cleaning under the Flylady method, that I am truly amazed by the power of FLYlady’s fifteen minute segments. From my previous post, you can see that I have about 3 hours of time scheduled. Of course, it took me much longer to get all of that done. Interruptions from littles, fixing lunch, quiet time during nap time, etc, all took away from that schedule. Of course, starting earlier would have alleviated a lot of that. Having Larry home would also have alleviated a lot of that, as he would have helped in whatever capacity I asked him to, whether it was taking a fifteen minute segment or helping with the littles. It’s a special blessing having a husband who is generally as eager to help me as I am to help him. It makes it a joy that he realizes the hard work involved in keeping a home, and that he makes an effort to help with it. Not that I expect him to. And not that he does as much when he’s working, but he still helps as he’s able.

I’m digressing again. I know you’re shocked.

Anyway, this week’s zone was the living room. I actually ran out of things to do in there. Not that it’s perfectly clean, but that the remaining tasks that are more than just routine maintenance need to have time where the littles are outside or otherwise distracted. Maybe save those for evenings after bedtime. Well, checking on flylady.net I see that I got my zones messed up, but that’s OK. I can live with that. I have a shiny living room!

Next week will be the kitchen, which I am really looking forward to. I have been working on decluttering a lot in there lately, and on organizing, with using my shopping money better, I need to utilize my space better. So hopefully, with this week’s zone work, I will be able to finish that up.

I actually took several grocery bags of donations and clothes sharing stuff out to the van, instead of letting it sit, waiting to go in the van. We DO have some stuff sitting, but only because we needed space in the van.

Now, I did NOT get everything done. But it was the first day. I did get about 75% of the day’s goal done. It will take practice, and better use of my time and resources. But that’s OK. FLYlady is, after all, about Finally Loving Yourself. Not about loving yourself above all, but about loving yourself enough to say “It’s OK that my home isn’t perfect, because it’s better than it was. I got something done!” And I actually got a LOT of somethings done!