FLYing

Well I started doing flylady this week.

I had heard about flylady a long time ago, and tried it, but didn't "get" it. First of all, I don't think I ever found the babysteps last time. So I'm jumping right in with the emails. Maybe I found her on yahoo instead of through the site, I don't know. But it didn't work.

So I'm doing the baby steps. I'm on day three. Last night didn't go so well, no shiny sink. But, one of the things that FLYlady teaches is to get rid of your guilt over having a messy house. So I didn't feel guilty that I didn't have a shiny sink last night. Tonight, my sink, it could be shinier, but it's empty and decently clean and some dishes are in the washer as I type.

I also can't do the "get dressed to lace up shoes" thing before I start my routine in the mornings. For one, I wear big fat clunky boots for work. Baby toes and big fat clunky boots don't work. For two, I only own the one pair of aforementioned big fat clunky boots, unless they are dress shoes. And I'm not swishing and swiping in suede heels. Well, fake suede, but still. For three, almost all of my work jeans are too big. I have lost weight since I started working (yeah walking to work!) and haven't had the opportunity to buy more jeans. I will wear them to work where I'm sitting a lot, and alone most of the time, so if they slip down and show my not so delicate undies, well, there's no one there to see it. But I'm not going to do the morning get the kids ready for school, throw a load of laundry in to wash, get some dishes in to soak, battle the littles and answer two work phone calls before I walk out the door routine in jeans I have to pull up every two minutes. So, I'm in sweats or leggins that I slept in, barefooted. I'm also not getting dressed twice, so, there ya go.

So my concession to that, is to get up and take a shower, and then do my hair. Even that is a change, because often Aria wakes up to my alarm, even though she's behind a closed door and shouldn't be able to hear it. Often I can just leave her and she'll go back to sleep, but occasionally she's up for good. So I had been taking showers after Larry got back from taking the middles to school. So I told Larry that he needs to get up with her if I'm in the shower. Normally he sleeps until 6:30. I get up at 5. If I'm not taking a shower for whatever reason, I do get up and brush my hair. Brushing my hair was normally one of the last things I did before walking out the door.

So you may be reading this and wondering what in the world I'm talking about. Flylady? Babysteps? Swishing and Swiping? OK, let me explain. Flylady is all about you-the busy, sometimes overwhelmed, chronically tired, not having enough hours in the day between littles and middles and bigs and school and activities and God and husband and dinner and lunch and breakfast and laundry, ohhhhhhhh the laundry! Now, you may be reading this and thinking "all about me? Oh, no, things aren't all about me, I have a servant attitude." And you're right. Most things that are "all about me" run completely counter to the servant attitude that traditional wives strive (struggle?) to maintain. But, and I want you to think about this. God never intended you to servant yourselves into the grave because you neglected your own basic needs-your health, your sanity, your emotional well being. And that, dear sisters, is what flylady is about. It's about letting go of the need for perfectionism. Bottom line, baseline issue. Almost every woman in the world has struggled with this issue, in some aspect of their lives. Refer back to my "You'll never be a perfect Mother" post for some examples. I'm also not advocating the "I deserve it" attitude, as in "I deserve a night out away from my children because I (insert whatever excuse)", and neither is flylady. It's not that type of "all about me" thing. It's the realization, which comes quicker to some people than others, that "good enough is OK." Because it is. Because perfection only came in one form, right? Only Christ was perfect. And no matter how well we emulate Him, we will only ever be "good enough." We will slip and we may fall, and even occasionally waver, and, in God's eyes, that is "good enough". In our walk to imitate Christ, we are always trying for perfection and falling short. You can accept that in your walk because the bible tells us we can't be perfect. You must continue to try, and move forward in your faith and relationships, but another part of our relationship with God is forgiving ourselves and letting go of guilt, because we should HAVE NO GUILT ONCE WE'VE ASKED FORGIVENESS FOR FALLING SHORT. Now, I'm not going to say that's always how it works, because, let me tell you, I can't count the times I've had to ask forgiveness for guilt. A key part of faith is letting go of that guilt that we screwed up, whether intentionally or not, because if God can forgive us (and forgiveness is there for the asking), then why on earth can we not forgive ourselves?

Flylady is all about letting go of guilt. I mean, let's look at the facts here. You have children. You have neither a maid nor a nanny, though you may have a great day care lady. If you work, you're gone for part of the time (although, to be fair, so, usually, are the mess makers), and if you're home, you're finding yourself doing a juggling act and coming pretty close to failing. If you're not the type of woman who struggles to balance everything in your life, well, you're probably not reading this blog. And you should write a book. Anyway, I digress (no, me???). The house gets messy because you're sick and couldn't clean, or the baby is teething, or you have morning sickness so bad you didn't see the outside of the bathroom for 13 weeks, or you had a busy week with lots of stuff going on, or for whatever reason. When you finally try to get back on track, you don't even know where to start. And while you're trying to fix it you're trying to keep the kids from climbing the bookcase, or you're using blanket training and not worrying about the kids (we never could manage that) and the phone rings, or the dryer decides to stop working, or whatever. And it doesn't get fixed. And then it's time to fix lunch. And then you get the kids down for naps and start again and someone won't take a nap or has a bad dream or the dryer repairman shows up with the wrong part. And it doesn't get fixed. And then it's time for dinner and that's a whole other set of issues-bath times and home work and bed times and books to read to sleepy littles and babies that need to cuddle and middles that need to cuddle and bigs that need to talk about their day and... And it doesn't get fixed.

And then you feel guilty.

And you wake up in the morning and the kitchen is a disaster and that starts the entire thing over again.

And then you feel guilty.

Flylady teaches us to let go of our guilt and learn a new attitude about cleaning. That every little thing you do, blesses your family.

Let me type that again.

Every little thing you do, blesses your family.

Why?

Because a lot of little things add up to a big thing. A cleaner house, and less chaos.

So, when you start doing flylady, you are a flybaby. You start with the baby steps. Day one is this simple: Go shine your sink.

That's it. Go shine your sink. Don't do all the dishes first, if you're just too darn tired to tackle that. Just shine your sink. Then, when you wake up in the morning, you'll see that shiny sink, which flylady says is like a great big hug for yourself. And it will be that much easier to put the dishes you didn't get done in to soak. Because you have one clean place to start.

Now, on the first few days, you will probably get a few other things done. Shining the sink does, indeed, lead to doing the dishes. Yay, more clean, less chaos! Tiny little baby steps. Day two, you shine your sink AND get dressed.

So, you didn't get any laundry done? So what? If no one is naked, it's not a crisis. If there is imminent danger of someone being naked, you may need to add a load or two in. Then you have a shiny sink, clean dishes, and clean clothes. Yay you! Don't feel guilty because dinner was spaghetti again or that you didn't get the soccer uniforms washed-they're just going to get sweaty again so let them wear them in dirty this one time. No one will be scarred for life.

You should join the mailing list (FLYing lessons on the site), but don't DO them yet. This is just to get used to the flow of things. As the babysteps progress, you will add more things in. The urge is to jump in and do it all, but that's what continues that cycle of being overwhelmed and then feeling guilty. And you will, indeed, feel like it's going slow. And I'm not telling you to ONLY shine your sink. Because, let's face it, you can't, in the long run, ignore dishes and laundry. But chances are you were doing the basics for a long time and letting the other cleaning go, right? So do the basics and ADD in shining your sink. As you progress with flylady, you will see benefits.

The largest is decluttering. February's habit is to declutter 15 minutes a day. Think you don't have clutter? Go look on your nightstand. Look at the table next to your favorite chair. Look on the top of the refrigerator. Look next to the front and back doors. Look in your junk drawers. Really, do you need all that stuff in those places? If you need it, is that it's permanent home? A lamp, book, a few pictures on your nightstand? All good. Three used tissues, a stack of books you've already read, two half full glasses of water and the eyeglasses you haven't worn for two years because you got a new prescription, on the nightstand? All clutter. Now, next month's habit will be different, but all of flylady's lessons work on decluttering. We all have clutter. In addition to regular decluttering sessions, flylady has what she calls "27 fling boogie" where you get rid of 27 things in a particular area of your home. These aren't necessarily thrown away, but could be donated or given away, but they are definitely moved out of your home. Looking on the table next to my chair, I can see 27 things right there that I could just throw away, not to mention stuff that could benefit from a general decluttering. We collect stuff, it's just human nature. But we don't need everything we have.

She also heavily advocates the use of a timer, which I love. If you've been plugging away in the kitchen for an hour, you're exhausted by the time you come out of there-and if you come out to find that the crayons you used to occupy the kidlets were used on the tile floor instead of the coloring book, well that just ruins your entire day. Most flylady tasks are built around 15 minute time lengths-either doing something for 15 minutes, or breaking larger tasks into 15 minute intervals. The kids probably won't get bored in 15 minutes, but you can get a lot done in just 15 minutes. And at the end of that 15 minutes, you can sit down and play with the kids. 15 minutes later occupy them with something else, and do another block of 15 minutes. If you structure your day that way, you're still being productive, yet you're not robbing your kidlets of precious mom time-or you of precious kid cuddle/play/read time.

She also divides the home into zones. The first time I did flylady the zones really threw me off. But somewhere along the way that first time, I missed an important beginning to zone cleaning: decluttering. Flylady says not to do the cleaning in the zone areas until you've completely decluttered it. Because you can't clean around stuff you don't need, can't use, or need to put in it's home. She even goes further, saying that if your home is cluttered enough, this process can take a few months-because you're only concentrating on one zone per week. But then once you finish decluttering, you move on to the deeper cleaning. Again, this will take awhile in the beginning, but once you get established it will get better. In other words, the first time you, for example, clean off that nightstand, it will take awhile to get it done, because you haven't cleaned it off in how long? But the next time you do it, it will only have been done a few weeks ago, so it won't take so long. So even when you start the deeper cleaning assignments (called "missions"), you may not even get all of those done, but that's OK-because what you did get done was better than what you were getting done before!

So, I'm off to bed, with my sort of shiny sink, knowing that even though I worked a loooooooooooooong day today, I got more done in my house than last time I pulled this kind of schedule. Yay me. And because the house is just that tiny amount cleaner, I have blessed my home, my family, my husband, myself, and God. Because I'm taking better care of my home, better care of my family, better care of my husband, better care of myself, and better care of my relationship with God, because I was able to do more to follow through on my desired servant attitude.

So, take a chance and do some flying! Link in the title of the blog!