Fly lady for beginners.

[canadian gardener]

Call it deconstructing flylady if you like, I thought it might be helpful to kind of explain her very fine approach and deal with some common misperceptions about her method.

I got the idea for this when I was talking on a thread about flylady and someone mentioned that what she got out of it, was to clean the house, top to bottom every Monday.

WHOA!!!!!! that shocked me. THAT IS NOT AT ALL What flylady teaches, .....

But I know how many times I see that kind of comment about her system. I know that is NOT what she actually asks and that would scare anyone out of trying her very streamlined system.

So here it is.

Monday, the major house blessing. Lasts an hour. Here is the EXACT stuff in her reminder that I got on Sunday night:

"MY TIMER IS MY BEST FRIEND

Date: Sunday, August 29, 2004
Time: 8:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

Tomorrow morning I will use my timer to help me bless my home. I
set it for 10 minutes and bless my home doing 7 blessings.

1. Sweep or Vacuum just the middles. Do not obsess.
2. Feather Dust
3. Mop the kitchen and bath
4. Clean the doors and mirrors
5. Empty the trash
6. Purge old magazines
7. Change the sheets

This takes me about an hour and I have blessed my home. "

In her book and on the site she mentions that things like sheets take a little more, and she is done stuff like the dusting and the other stuff in less, but WHEN THE TIMER DINGS she goes onto the next task, or uses part of that next 10 minutes to finish the beds.

WHY ON EARTH WILL THIS WORK???

1---Because the TIMER not the job tells you when it's time to quit and that is VERY VERY VERY important. More on that later.

2---Because she only sweeps or vacuums the middles of the room! She does the traffic patterns where the most dirt lies.

3---Because she also keeps up during the week on things like emptying the trash, purging stuff and deep cleaning a lot of things in the ZONE week.

ENTER THE ZONE IF YOU DARE!!!!!

ZONES are her way of doing a deeper more thorough cleaning ONCE A MONTH.

THAT is when the living room gets vacuumed up to the baseboards, and the window gets spritzed.

She divides her house into zones:
There are 5 zones.
here is what her site says about September:

Zone 1: The Entrance, Front Porch and Dining Room (September 1-3)

Zone 2: The Kitchen (September 6-10)

Zone 3: The Bathroom and One Extra Room (September 13-17)

Zone 4: The Master Bedroom (September 20-24)

Zone 5: The Living Room (September 27-30)

Do you notice how zone 1 and zone 5 are partial weeks?

That way the entry and dining area and living room aren't done all week long, but they actually get hit twice a month most months. Those are the public areas and need a hit more often.

the middle 3 zones each get a whole week to themselves for deeper cleaning.

It happens, it gets clean but here are the advantages:

Losing the it's got to be perfect, or it's not done attitude!!!! That alone will put years on your life.

Using a timer to tell you when to quit keeps that job doable and happening every week when you know the pain is limited!!!! Talk about habit forming!!!!

Doing some things ONCE a month instead of all in one horrible blast on a Saturday or a Monday.

Breaking the deeper cleaning down into mini bites all week long in the zone of the week.

Spring and Fall type cleaning are automatically taken care of, actual weekly housecleaning is reduced to monthly work, and she gets people to build in little daily habits to help maintain the space.

HTH

[canadian gardener]

Now onto the daily reminder list.

If you sign up you DO have an option to go for the digests.

I can't remember if she has a flybaby or beginner list but either of those will reduce the daily flood to a trickle.

A manageable trickle.

I like the daily flood. I like deleting them later, having got to most of them, or else choosing in my executive priviledge style, that NOPE that aint' gonna happen today in THIS household thankyou very much.

Delete them. Read the subject line and delete.

Do or don't do, but delete.

Gradually the reminders will build good habits into you and you always have the option not to do them.

IN FACT FLYLADY PREFERS YOU DON'T DO ALL OF THEM especially

NOT IN THE BEGINNING>

She has a mini routine for the flybabies as she calls beginners.

shine your sink
comb your hair
put on shoes.

That is the morning one
the evening routine is

brush your teeth
look at your calendar
pick out your clothes for tomorrow.

Her point and it's a good one is that change happens best when it's little changes, slowly. Not a lot all at once.

She preaches regularly to beginners not to crash and burn, but it's amazing the number of testimonials (they come too on the daily flylady email express) that mention how they crash and burn several times before getting the idea of the timer telling them to quit or starting slow and small.

So use the timer

Don't do it all at once.

Start small, and let your first habits become routine, before adding new ones in.

[canadian gardener]

Do I do that houseblessing exactly this way?

Lets look closer:
approximately 10 minutes each doing 7 blessings but squeeze it all into an hour.

1. Sweep or Vacuum just the middles. Do not obsess. (it does take me a little longer, or put it this way I choose to take a little longer but I do stick to the middles-- this is the kind of vacuuming that you do if a friend is coming over in 20 minutes, a quick pass to pick up the big stuff!!!)

2. Feather Dust (I do this in 5 minutes or less)

3. Mop the kitchen and bath --yup but I use that little swiffer thingy with the wet facecloth attached to it.

4. Clean the doors and mirrors (gets done in zone work, I do the bathroom mirror when I'm in there showering anyway so I ignore this)

5. Empty the trash (I do a daily kitchen trash bag tour on my way to the garbage cans in the garage and I empty the trashcans in the house into it on the way, so I ignore this)

6. Purge old magazines (on my trash runs)

7. Change the sheets (yup, I do this)

So I adapt flylady to suit me. And that is something she encourages people to do.

I pull the sheets and start the laundry, dust, then vacuum, then do the kitchen, bath and entry floors. Dh helps me make the bed later that day with the washed and dried sheets.

[forestdale]

Fabulous thread, Margery. It makes me want to get out the vacuum cleaner! I'm thinking of trying this in my modified form.

[canadian gardener]

Modified, the only way to fly!

Keeping it simple. A few years ago, not long after flylady started her email reminder list I looked at it, and her site, but at the time she was doing things a bit more disorganized and scattered.

Time went on, she kept refining it, and it got closer and closer to my system, and I rejoined the list because even though I do it my way, her reminders are a handy way to stay on track and give me a real boost.

I enjoy reading the testimonials, I've found more than one useful little wrinkle in them.

And I really like the reminder of exactly how much I DID get done in a day.

[canadian gardener]

here is a little bit more.

to recap the houseblessing:
it lasts ONE HOUR ONLY and what doesnt' get done, just doesn't get done.
to quote flylady:
MY TIMER IS MY BEST FRIEND

Date: Sunday, August 29, 2004
Time: 8:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

Tomorrow morning I will use my timer to help me bless my home. I
set it for 10 minutes and bless my home doing 7 blessings.

1. Sweep or Vacuum just the middles. Do not obsess.
2. Feather Dust
3. Mop the kitchen and bath
4. Clean the doors and mirrors
5. Empty the trash
6. Purge old magazines
7. Change the sheets

This takes me about an hour and I have blessed my home."

to repeat ---about that vacuuming ---stick to the middles-- this is the kind of vacuuming that you do if a friend is coming over in 20 minutes, a quick pass to pick up the big stuff!!!

That is a high spots only flyby, and i'ts only on MONDAY. Well if you want it to be. If you are a working mother and prefer to break it up, one or two tasks a day, that is very efficient too. Just keep at it.

She does a zone thing, so you can concentrate on the zone of the week (there are 5 corresponding to the 2 partial weeks, and 3 full weeks in most calendars). See my first post for further info on zones.

THAT is when you detail any room and vacuum the corners etc. AND it's only 15 minutes in your zone per day, ON THE TIMER. When it dings, so do you! Stop and quit for the day.


Before beginning detail cleaning in the zone, you spend that 15 minutes a day M-F decluttering instead of detailing. NOT BOTH. dejunking comes first so to make the detail cleaning quick and easy.

Sooner or later it all gets done. And details get done once a month, not once a week or worse, every day. this cuts the workload dramatically and because of the next little habits, it gets maintained pretty well in between detailing it.

HERE COME THE NEXT BITS:

The 27 Fling BOOGIE
the other key is a 5 minute or less flyby doing 2 types of toss outs BOTH called the 27 fling boogie and it happens on MWF:

FIRST Type 1: garbage run thru the house and toss into a gbg bag WHATEVER you can throw out. NEXT DON"T STOP YET:

Type 2: when the gbg run is finished, grab the giveaway box and run thru the house tossing whatever you can NOW YOU ARE DONE!

A full boogie includes trashbags and a giveaway box.

try to hit 27 things for a FULL BOOGIE in each. (like a hole in one in golf or so)

That keeps the amount of stuff that you have to churn thru getting smaller and smaller as the days go by.

Of course I don't have 27 things every MWF, I've been a long time dejunker but I just love the mental discipline this brings to actively looking for stuff that has outworn it's welcome.

NEXT IS THE HOT SPOT DRILL:
And then there is the hot spot drill, which means that 3 times a day you clear the particular "hot spot" (horizontal surface aka clutter magnet) and keep it down to the naked surface.

This is more a mental thing, because it reteaches a habit of keeping that surface clean, then as everyone gets used to losing their stuff when they put it down, it gets easier and easier to keep clean, everyone gets trained. When you have your worst under control then start with another. NEVER MORE THAN ONE HOTSPOT TO CONCENTRATE ON AT A TIME.

HTH

[graci42]

I've been a Flyer for 3 1/2 yrs and though I've fallen off the wagon, I know that I can jump back on in the time it takes to do a fling!

Even when the clutter bug tries to take over, I know that I can handle it. I won't allow it to overwhelm me or take over my life as it once did!

Thank you for reminding me that Flying doesn't mean being perfect!

[canadian gardener]

I love that about flylady, the message that YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO IT PERFECTLY, just take a wild crack at it, and do your best.

or as she often says

Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family.

whatever I don't finish today, I still have a chance to finish tomorrow.

She puts into routines and words what I learnt the hard way thru the years and especially when I was sick and couldn't do anything more than 5 mintues at a time.

[canadian gardener]

OK that was the 27 fling boogie and the hot spot drills demystified. And I think hot spot drills happen twice, not three times a day. My mistake.

I do them on auto pilot, it bugs me to see junk on my horizontal spaces. My hot spots are the phone desk in the living room and the bedroom dresser. Both rooms look so much better when they are clear. We have a small house and when those are clear it looks clean and tidy.

NEXT lets take a quick look at THE 5 MINUTE ROOM RESCUE which is another flylady invention bless her heart!

Set the timer for 5 minutes, go to your WORST room that is bugging the life out of you and HIT IT for 5 minutes THEN QUIT.

Do it again tomorrow, and the next day. After a few weeks it's DONE! And you didn't die under the load.

That "rescue" comes in a daily reminder if you are subscribed to flylady (which I highly recommend). You can ignore it or do it till that room sparkles. Once it's done, move onto another patch of chaos.

It's only 5 minutes and you MUST QUIT.

This keeps it doable for another day, because you know it's only a short period of pain. You can stand it for 5 minutes. And when you see progress (and you will even once!) you will feel good.

Just don't over do and go beyond the 5 minutes.

WHY?

Because if you do, you and your body will remember that pain when you went in for 5 and came out 5 hours later, and you won't want to do this again. Keeping it small means that mentally you view it as "not that big", doable, not a huge chunk of time, and you don't feel guilty for quitting on time.

It really DOESN'T take too many repititions and that room will be reborn. Meanwhile you aren't getting exhausted doing it, nor are you slipping elsewhere.

[santoria]

I have recently fallen off the wagon. But am ready to get back on.

I do find myself setting my timer to get the living room and kitchen ship shape though. Works well when I know dh is going to be home from work. I start a couple hours ahead and do 15 minutes at a time.

I also have managed to stick to some of my routines. Friday is sheets and towels day. First thing I strip the beds and bathrooms. Load that into the washer. Make the beds and re towel the baths.

I make my bed every morning and since my oldest is now in a twin bed with real sheets I am teaching her to make hers in the morning too.

I think I might have to start flying again. things are getting icky and dh is complaining.

[canadian gardener]

Flying thru my monday this morning, wanting to update this thread for any recent flybabies.

Zone work as I said in a recent other thread, cuts my work by 3/4. Just by doing stuff once a month not once a week.

Once a week cleaning as flylady says, is a quick vacuum and dust down the middles. Detail work, vacuuming more than just the cowtrails, is for the monthly zone.

[DaisyLady]

I just joined Flylady today. I am an official Flybaby

[forestdale]

Me too, Chriss. I joined a couple of days ago. But yikes! this morning I had 22 eamilas from flylady.

Apart from that, I've been really impressed with her system, which, of course, I'll modify to suit me.

THANKS FOR PUTTING ME ONTO FLYLADY, MARGERY!

[canadian gardener]

Dont' do the whole shmole all at once, go slow and steady with a couple of things to start and delete ALL emails as they arrive if you aren't doing that as part of your routine, it's how it's done. Later as you add in one or another thing, it gets easy. Most of the time you just scan the subject line.

I still don't do every single thing every single day. It's there tomorrow.

[homesteadmamma]

I joined as well. I'm a flybaby as well.

Bethany I didn't get that many e-mails. Thats okay though, I don't want to spend all my time deleting e-mails.