Saturday, September 6, 2008

FlyLadying - Week 1 September

When properly utlizing my systems, I have every day broken down into things that need to get done. Helps my stress levels and it's amazing what you can get done in 15 minutes or less!

Home Blessing:
FlyLady has what she calls a Home-Blessing day where she spends one hour getting her whole house in general cleanliness. Not deep-cleaning just a general dust, vacuum, changing sheets, sweeping, etc. Each item takes 10 minutes (no more than) and the idea is that with one hour of work the house should be guest ready. Ready to be checked with a white glove? No. But presentable.

Now, I've found that doing one hour on one day just wasn't working for me; inevitably the day I picked to do my Home Blessing I would be tired, extra busy, whatever. So, I've broken my Blessing down to a daily thing. One job takes me 10 minutes (max), and it's done for the week.

Success this week - well, considering we got back on Tuesday and had left the house clean, I didn't do a whole lot. I hit a few areas that needed it, and otherwise didn't do a whole lot of Blessing this week. Next week Monday will be when I try to start getting into my regular daily Blessing. So more on that later!

Zones
The Zoning idea is one of the more brilliant ideas of FlyLady (so I felt). Basically, each week focuses on a different "zone" of the house. This is a time to declutter, deep clean, and generally really focus on that area of the house. Now, her zones didn't match my house very well, so if any of you readers happen to be a FlyBaby, I'm not going to be in the same Zone as her at any time. Just an FYI!

Basically what I do with a Zone is spend 15 minutes (no more than unless I'm really feeling inspired) decluttering (for those unfamiliar with this term - getting rid of extra things that you really don't need in your house) and deep cleaning.

This week's Zone was my hallways, the porches, and the guest bathroom.

The porches, sadly, didn't get touched. They need it, but I didn't have time. And while the perfectionistic side of me sometimes goes a little crazy wanting to clean EVERYTHING, RIGHT NOW, I've come to realize that it's not that helpful and if anything ends up stressing me out. So, having accepted the fact that I just wasn't going to get to them this week, I focused on what I could do.

The hallways got decluttered (not deep cleaned though), especially our back hallway as it tends to wind up with random things on the coat rack hanging on our wall. I think the next few months might find me doing a lot of rearranging as I have some ideas for utlizing our space better and making it feel less strangulated. I do have a pile of things sitting in the hallway right now that need to be put into the garage. That'll happen tomorrow (I think!).

And the guest bathroom got cleaned. Not as thoroughly as I would have liked but enough so that I don't feel embarassed with anyone using it! I tend to be pretty strict on that 15 minute rule with myself.

On top of my regular stuff, I did a quick tidy of the whole house this afternoon. We just had randomness piled up in weird places. It's amazing how much cleaner a house feels with just the stuff being put away. Is it necessarily actually, cleaner? No. But it looks it!

So, September, week 1, I'll give myself an A-! (Yes, yes, go ahead and laugh at me. Get it out of your system. It's allowed. I laugh at myself!)

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