To borrow a phrase from Aidan, “THAT’s it!” (It’s very important that there be much emphasis on the word “that’s” if you want to get the full effect.) There are parts of my house that are scary-messy. Not just messy. Scary-messy. So I’m getting back on the Flylady bandwagon. Well, not completely. I may just ride sidecar. Here’s what I’m thinking:
I already am doing some of her morning routine stuff, in particular starting a load of laundry every day. What I want to add is a couple of 15-minute cleanups and some zone work. I should have no problem fitting that into my schedule, I just have to do it.
I thought it might help me to photograph the process. Goodness knows I’ve become a flickr junkie, so if I tie this cleanup process into that, maybe I can have a better chance at success, right? Maybe. My plan is to do a 15-minute cleanup in the current zone every day as well as the daily missions. And then, assuming I am still all gung-ho about this, I’d like to do another 15 minutes in whatever area of the house is screaming for it at the time. I’ll take before and after pictures in each zone and for each mission and post them in my newly-created Flylady set.
This week is Zone #3 – The Main Bathroom and One Other Room. The “other room” they suggest you work on this time around is a kid’s bedroom, so I’m going to take that suggestion. The boys are living in a little pig sty all their own amid the larger disaster area that is our home and it would be nice to tackle that. So, I’ve taken my “before” pictures, which you can see above, and I’ve done my 15 minutes in each room (already, quite a difference, but you can’t see any pictures until the end of the week 
) and done my mission in each room. If you’re dying to see how well I cleaned the base of my toilet, you can go to flickr for that. I don’t want to sully the pristine pages of this blog with an image so heinous as that of my hairy toilet before I took a bottle of Windex to it…
If any of you here are recognizing some of your own slob-like tendencies in me, consider this your invitation to join me. I’ve created a flickr group for this purpose. Nothing is a better motivator to clean than the embarrassment of letting people see what a mess you live in. Think about the mad dash you make around the house, shoving things in closets, when you hear that your mother-in-law is on her way over. Yeah, you know you do that 
Snapping a few shots of your crumb-laden carpet and posting it all over flickr is the same kind of motivator. You want nothing more than to vacuum that sucker and post an “after” shot that says “see? I took care of it – all better now!” At least, I am counting on it working that way. Heh. If it doesn’t, I’m doomed to walk in crumbs for the rest of my days.
Ah, your house looks great compared to mine. Then again, mine is still recovering from three rooms getting painted and two rooms getting new floors. Bleh.
I have this dream that today I’m going to clean the bathrooms and the kitchen. Truth is, I’d rather just get in the car and drive away somewhere. Maybe find some rugs that match the new wall colors. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the old ones. *sigh*
As for the hairy bathroom – the vacuum cleaner is your friend. Get as much stuff up while it’s dry as you can, and the liquid cleaners will work a lot better. Try to hang things up so the floor is clear, but use hooks or removable shelves because then you can take them down and clean both them and the walls more easily. If you have tub toys in a net bag or a small basket, for instance, you can toss everything into the dishwasher or washing machine (for soft things) and there’s no scrubbing at all. Another thing in the bathroom is to keep a roll of paper towels. Use them to dry your hands, and then swipe the sink and other surfaces with the damp towel before tossing it. It takes only seconds and gives you a nicer looking bathroom between cleanings.
Ah, you’re only looking at limited views of two rooms. I should take you on a video tour. Then we could have a whose house is a bigger disaster contest 😉
I already do a lot of what you suggest (or, I did back when I was organized – a period of about 6 months early in 2006, LOL!) When I thought of putting a role of paper towels and a bottle of windex under every sink in the house, I wondered why it took me so long to think of it!
What a wonderful way to get yourself going in cleaning and organizing. The Flylady does indeed have great ideas on doing what we need to do in as efficient a manner as possible.
So far so good – as long as I continue to get excited about taking before/after pictures, I can see this working for me…
I think the taking pictures is a fabulous idea! That way you can do the whole “before and after” and see how far you’ve come! Excellent! 🙂
Exactly! I love seeing dramatic results. I can’t wait until Friday when I can take after pictures of the entire room (as opposed to the small “missions” that I have been doing each day).
All joking aside, I just keep a small basket of cleaning supplies hidden in each room. If I’m on the cordless phone, I can quickly pick a room, give a quick tidy up while I’m talking. If I sit down to watch something on TV, I make sure to have laundry to fold, and then I run to put it away on commercials. It sounds stupid, but it is amazing what you can do in just a few minutes. I work. I don’t have a lot of time, so I try to make the most of it. Mostly, what I would like to say though, is enjoy your kidlets. They grow up quickly. 4 of mine have flown the coop. The last one at home is a senior in high school. The laundry gets less and less. Less and less is required to keep the house presentable. And you know what? I would not mind all 5 back at home, the chaos, the clutter, the never ending laundry…
Yeah, I’ve heard that about kids – they’re adults before you know it. My oldest is 7, but I could swear it was just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital for the first time. I don’t want to be unrealistic about our house – I expect it to look lived in, and not like the pages of a magazine – but right now it’s got “tornado” written all over it 😉 I’m very encouraged by my progress this week, and the fact that it hasn’t taken too much time out of my day to improve things. Multitasking is a beautiful thing!
Goodness! My fingers must have started out on the wrong keys when I typed my e-mail address last time. Sorry. I have an awful head cold. Having trouble thinking…but still miss the kidlets. Imagine!
[…] it wouldn’t hurt to jump on that bandwagon. Now, if you recall, less than two weeks ago, I grabbed the tailpipe of the Flylady bandwagon, and I’m still hanging on. I’m not really sure I can stand on […]