[title subtitle=”story Marla Cantrell”][/title]
Just after Thanksgiving, 2012, Annie, my miniature schnauzer, feisty critter, and longtime companion, began to fail. By the middle of December we had to make the decision to let her go. And so my husband and I did, on a day that seemed unremarkable in every other way. We came home from the vet shattered. We buried her just outside the fencerow, in a spot she often ran to when she found a way out of the yard. It was a dark, dark time.
What it has to do with housekeeping is this: I gave up in those weeks that followed Annie. When company came calling I was embarrassed. Vacuum in the middle of the living room, books everywhere, dishes on the counter. And then my stepdaughter came to visit. She told me about a book, Sink Reflections, by Marla Cilley, a.k.a. The FlyLady (she is also a fly fisher), who gently eased people like me back to the throngs of the neat and tidy. A few weeks later I bought the book, read the first chapter, and thought, You’ve got to be kidding.
All the FlyLady wanted me to do in the beginning was shine my kitchen sink. Seriously, that was it. What the heck, I thought, looking around my forlorn house, and so I picked up a sponge and had at it. In her book there are twelve steps to cleaning a sink. I didn’t follow them. I just cleaned it, shined the faucets, and put out a clean dishtowel next to it. The next morning, the sink was still pristine, and I liked the way it looked, so I picked up the book and read some more.
Sink Reflections is filled with acronyms: CHAOS – Can’t Have Anybody Over Syndrome. FLY – Finally Loving Yourself. BO – the Born Organized, (which you probably aren’t if you need the book) and DH, DD, DS – for Dear Husband, Dear Daughter and Dear Son. Even tears get their own name. They’re called Purple Puddles, because the FlyLady loves purple.
It was all so cutsie it made me doubt the system. Until I read the FlyLady’s story. Now happily married, she was once in a troubled marriage and had recently lost a family member. She was exceedingly depressed, and living in a cluttered house. Her situation was so dire she ended up in the hospital, where some of the other patients, further along in their treatment for depression, helped her get dressed, put on makeup, fix her hair, and put on shoes with laces.
Not too long after, she divorced, and in the years that followed she developed her plan to keep her house (and her mind) in order. When you read the book with this knowledge, it all starts to make perfect sense. A messy house is an outward sign of trouble inside. Standing amidst a pile of laundry, alongside floors that need to be cleaned, you wonder how your house got so dirty. It creates anxiety, lowers self esteem, and keeps you isolated. You really can’t have anybody over.
And so I jumped in, signing up for her daily emails – be warned, there are a lot of emails, many of which are testimonials from other “FlyBabies” who are sharing their successes. Every day you’ll get your assignment for the following day, all small steps that keep you from having to do bouts of marathon cleaning. Better still, she encourages you to take care of yourself, do something just for you every day, carve out a little time to meditate, exercise, spend some time in a bubble bath.
The program is broken down like this: Each night you’ll set aside everything you need for the next day – clothes, lunch ready in the fridge, keys in the same place, and decide what you’ll be having for dinner the following evening. And every morning you’ll get ready, make your bed, quickly clean your bathroom counters and toilet, empty the dishwasher, and throw in a load of laundry.
Now, here’s the part I love the most. While you’re in the shower, you turn off the water for a few minutes, scrub the shower walls and doors, and then rinse the whole thing off. Don’t have cleanser in there with you? No worries. Use your washcloth. Use the shower gel you got for Christmas but don’t love. Use a dollop of shampoo. The FlyLady says soap is soap. And you know, she’s right. I started doing this right after the clean sink exercise, and now I NEVER have to spend part of my weekend scrubbing a dirty shower.
The magic of this system is that it’s broken down into doable parts that will keep your house clean ALL THE TIME. You’ll spend fifteen minutes at a time clearing off “hot spots,” places like the table where your mail collects for weeks on end. And each week you’ll work in one of your “zones” – there are five in all – doing things like washing all your kitchen counters, scrubbing your trashcan, dusting the crown molding in one room, cleaning off picture frames. Each day has a single task. If you do it, your weekends are freed up. And she’ll also lead you through getting rid of the extra clothing, dishes, and knick knacks that have taken over your home. She even offers emails for kids, who are given challenges that lead them on the path to an organized life.
All that’s left if you follow this system is what the FlyLady calls the “Weekly Home Blessing.” It should take about an hour and includes things like mopping and changing sheets. The FlyLady is big on words like “blessing”. She attributes her success to God, Who helped her through her most trying time, and allows her to help so many others. Right now there are 750,000 members in her email group, on Facebook, and Twitter.
All her support is offered without cost. She pays for her staff by offering cleaning tools she sells through her website. I ordered a few of them. She sells a cleaning cloth, purple of course, that seems superior to anything else I’ve tried. It cleans well, rinses easily so that dirt does not cling, and when used dry, shines just about anything. The only problem I had with it was that it took several washings to get rid of the excess purple dye. You don’t want to leave one of these cloths on, say, a stone countertop, or fiberglass shower, if the dye is seeping out. I also bought the feather duster, and a few of the scrubbing tools. I even bought her water bottle – she’s really big on getting enough water. It’s fantastic, never sweats, and keeps water cold all day long, even in the height of August.
Since I picked up the FlyLady’s book in January of 2013, I’ve sold or given away more than 300 books. Yeah, I have a little book problem. For a while, my car looked as if I lived in it because it was filled with clothes and books I was taking somewhere to donate. Every night I set out what I need for the next day. Every morning I wash and dry a load of clothes before I leave for work. Sometimes I fail at the weekly zone mission, but the FlyLady’s right there, telling me it’s okay, letting me know that I can jump in tomorrow. It’s her encouragement that drives what she does, as much as her foolproof exercises. She really is a remarkable woman. I imagine her in her North Carolina home, reading the emails that come her way, hearing how getting a house in order changed another life. She reads the message, the Purple Puddles fall, and she thanks the Good Lord that her life turned out the way it did.
[separator type=”thin”]
You can follow the FlyLady at flylady.net
You Might Need the FlyLady If:
- You’re constantly losing things like your keys or your purse or wallet.
- You’ve always struggled with a system to keep your house clean.
- You clean obsessively and your house becomes cluttered within a few days.
- You jump from one cleaning project to another.
- You don’t do any cleaning project because you’re afraid it won’t be good enough.
