Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Flylady zones (and spices)

I'm a natural-born slob. I'd rather do anything than housework, and for most of my married life, I've done only what I had to do as far as household cleaning. I've shoved my clutter into one room and closed the door, I've piled magazines and books in a pile beside my chair, only to be moved if I knew somebody was coming to visit.

Then I discovered Flylady, and found out I'm not a slob after all; I'm a S.H.E. (sidetracked home executive). People who are B.O.'s (born organized) cannot help us S.H.E.'s, because their minds don't work like ours; we may as well live on a different planet.

Marla, the Flylady herself, was just as disorganized as I am until she met the original Slob sisters (seen on Oprah and many other daytime T.V. shows) and straighted up her house and her act. Then she started helping the rest of us S.H.E.'s.

Flylady puts different parts of the house into zones, and you work in that zone for one week a month (sometimes just part of a week, if it's an easy zone).

If you do things right, your whole house will be cleaned each month, one zone at a time. I've never done it anywhere near perfectly, but I'm doing enough F.L.Y.'ing (F.L.Y. = finally loving yourself) to make a big difference around here. One of Flylady's favorite little quotes is "progress, not perfection". Another is "Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family." In other words, do something, lest ye do nothing.

Had I done my kitchen zone perfectly last week, every cabinet would be straightened and both windows washed. I washed no windows (it's really cold here) and only got around to half my cabinets. But good grief, what a difference that made!

The cabinets in this old house are not easy to get to, so it's easy to lose things in the back, behind all the cans and bottles. I found two giant, Sam's-Club-size containers of peanut butter and two big jars of dill pickle slices that I didn't even know I had.

I have lots of spices, but there are some I only use perhaps a couple of times a year. Going through all that assortment every time I needed a spice was an exercise in frustration. For some reason, I could never find the thyme, ever, without taking twenty little spice bottles out of the cabinet. And I use thyme in a lot of recipes!

In going through the spices, I found I had doubles, and even triples, of some spices. If they were so old they were in metal cans, I tossed them; spices haven't come in metal cans for years! I threw all my old pickling spices away, because I don't foresee any pickle-making in my future. If I should become industrious some summer and raise lots of cucumbers, I'll buy fresh new spices.

I took the spices I use fairly often and put them in a flat Tupperware container that I never used anyway, so they're all together and I can pull them down and go through them.





The rest, I left on the shelf in a corner.


If you're a B.O., you'll find all this quite silly. If you're a S.H.E. like me, however, you might want to check out Flylady and The Slob Sisters (they'll ask you to name your inner brat... my inner brat is named Erika).

Housework isn't so bad, done fifteen minutes at a time.

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:00 AM

    I really need to check her out. My house is a terrable mess. I'm a s.h.e thats for sure. I can always find lots of things i'd rather due than clean and with young kids and working a full time job who has the time. And on the weekends i want to rest and mess with my horses that i don't get to mess with much during the week. Cleaning is an ugly word.
    I'll definatly check her out soon.
    Take care :-)

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  2. Housework ::shudder:: My take on it is to ignore it until I look around and go, "Ouch, something needs to be done!" Followed by about 2 to 3 hours of intense cleaning LOL! Luckily for me we live in a pretty small trailer, so 2 to 3 hours sees it cleaned from front to back usually.

    When we first moved up here and they showed me where I was going to live I was a little.... taken aback. How was I going to fit all the stuff we had in this small place? But, with the addition of a nice air-conditioned storage unit in town, I have made it work. AND I've found that with the smaller living space came both a blessing and a curse. Blessing: I can clean the whole place spotless in less than 3 hours. Curse: with such a small space it looks messy much quicker. If much is out of place it quickly looks messy.

    Yep, I'm definitely a s.h.e. with a capital S!

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  3. I think I'm a B.O. at heart, but uneducated enough as a home executive that I found Flylady really useful. I've modified her program a lot, but I still use her "weekly blessing".

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  4. I try to do my housework in small pieces rather then to get overwhelmed at trying to do the whole thing at once too. I've never heard of zones but I'll have to check out this Fly Lady. I love a clean house, it makes me feel organized but sometimes I would rather be working out in the barn then in the house.

    Loved your picture of Blue laying in the hay! That's pretty neat, you can eat your bed!

    Your post about being thankful was lovely. We all need to stop and take stock of how much we have to be thankful for don't we?! Too bad we didn't do it more often instead of grumbling and groaning about things. I really enjoyed that post and it made me stop and think! Thanks!!

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  5. I'm a B.O. living with 2 S.H.E.'s! It can get frustrating at times-I read somewhere that it is easier to put on slippers than to carpet the world so I compromise and take a deep breath when it gets to me!

    Glad you are getting a system down and that AOL finally let you log on!

    They are calling for snow and a high of 32 tomorrow-I hope the weather there is better for you :) Jeff

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  6. Fly Lady would fall out of the sky if she saw my cabinets. That's why they have doors, right?
    http://journals.aol.com/fierrorachel/LifeNStuff

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  7. "I could never find the thyme, ever"

    That's my excuse for a messy house.

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  8. some days it's all I can do to keep my house clean...organizing is a whole other ball of yarn. I am not a clutterer so that works to my benefit. my mentality: if it does not have a purpose now or in the near future, I pitch it. hubs and I have had some of our biggest rows over this.

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  9. I am a S.H.E. sometimes Flylady can't even help me. Got to get back to it. I am a born slob also.

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