A little more about Flylady

First of all, if you love a clean house, if you've always been good at keeping down the clutter, and dusting and sweeping and mopping, you do not need Flylady.  Look at your ceiling fans:  If they don't have dust-balls hanging from the edges, you likely don't need Flylady.  You probably dust them at least a couple of times a month, right?  
Flylady is for dysfunctional housewives (and husbands and singles) who were born without the "clean gene".  These are not necessarily lazy people.  Many of them hold down a job, or garden and can the produce, and/or enjoy regularly cooking meals.  But you'll notice dust on the furniture; the refrigerator always needs some attention; there will be a couple of dirty dishes in the sink and clean dishes stacked in the drainer, and the trash cans are constantly full.    
I just described my normal self.  
There are certain precepts that are inherent in the Flylady doctrine.  For instance, you never have to do any kind of housework for over fifteen minutes at a time.  Flylady's website has a timer you can buy.  
WARNING!  Anything Flylady sells on her site can be purchased much more cheaply elsewhere (perhaps not in purple, and perhaps not with cute little sayings... but still), so save your money and search the Internet for similar products to hers.
Flylady divides your house into zones, and has you concentrating on that zone for a given amount of time so that after a month, your whole house has been cleaned thoroughly.  Don't worry, there's a whole-house cleaning once a week, too, called "house-blessing".   
If your house is in bad shape, you aren't supposed to do the zone work until you get a few other things down pat.  
You begin by shining your sink.  In my case, this step begins with putting away the clean dishes.  
Next day you start putting on your shoes.  
There are all sorts of decluttering opportunities along the way.    
If Flylady still sounds like something you could use, go ahead and try her.  It certainly can't hurt.  I'm going to think about it while I clean out my refrigerator. 

Flylady

In case you live under a rock or haven't been reading my blog for years, I'm going to bring up Flylady.net again.  
I'm still ignoring her.  
I hear that little angel on my shoulder saying, "Go on back to Flylady; you know you need it."  
I brush the little angel off, put her out of my mind, and head out to pull weeds in the garden.  
My chief problem with Flylady is the shoes.  The minute I'm out of bed, she insists I wear shoes.  Not house shoes or flip-flops, but real, tie-up shoes.  This is the second thing she wants you to do when you join forces with her.  The first is to shine your sink, which is actually a joyous thing.  But the shoes?  Not so much, not for me.  
Unless I have to leave home for some reason, I go all day without shoes.  I take my walk in the pasture barefoot, for heaven's sake, unless the temperatures are approaching freezing.  Still, I have tried the shoes-first-thing-in-the-morning routine.  Over at the other house, it actually seemed to work.  
Out here at the trailer house, not so much, because with all this privacy, I like to go outside in my nightgown as soon as the sun is up to look at the growing things in the garden, feed my calf, hear the birds sing, and watch the sun rise.  There's almost always a heavy dew here that isn't gone until around noon.  
If I wear my tied-up sneakers out in the dew, I'll have wet feet the rest of the day.   
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  
Yesterday I mopped and vacuumed up the dog hair, even at the edges and corners of the rooms.  If you have a hair-shedding pet in the house, you know that's where most of the hair ends up.  I hadn't done edges and corners for a long time, and I said to myself, "Back when I was flying with Flylady, my floors looked this good most of the time.  
Then I remembered the part about the shoes.  
I could do my outside-in-the-morning thing first and then come in and put on my shoes, pretending I just got out of bed, but it really doesn't work as well as getting that first jump on housecleaning where you put on your shoes, go brush your teeth, and immediately wipe down the sink and stool.  The shoes do make a difference to a slob like me who loves to go barefoot.   
I wonder if Flylady could just kidnap me and force me to do it for a few weeks until I get in the swing of things?  
Or I could take the easy way out and go on being a slob.  That's been my usual course.    

Well, here's one for the books

We're anticipating my son's annual visit, which is coming up in less than two weeks.  We like to select one day during his visit when we invite Cliff's brothers, nephews, and others who might want to see Jim and his family while they're here.  
Cliff's brother, Don, was asking which day that would be; he'd like to plan on being here.  So I looked at the calendar and then sent my son a message on Facebook:  "Let me know if this is right: you will be traveling here on Saturday, the sixth. So you should arrive here Saturday night. I'm trying to figure out the best time to get all the family together (Don and his kids, etc.). Best I can figure, it would be Sunday the 7th. Or else Saturday the 12th. What do you think?"  
This morning my son had answered me like this:  "By my calender the 6th is Sunday, and that's when we are heading up there. We both work on Saturday.  The following Saturday is probably best."  
I went to the kitchen to look at my big Flylady calendar.  I fell off the Flylady bandwagon long ago, but I do like her overpriced calendars; you can see the numbers clear across the room, and the older I get, the more I appreciate that.  
How could it be?  My calendar had that Saturday as the 6th.  I rubbed my eyes, checked the month and year, and decided my son was crazy.  I checked the calendar on my Mac, and lo and behold, the sixth was Sunday.  Now who's crazy?  
I finally figured out the problem.
  

Look at the date of Saturday, then look at Sunday.  There are two 6ths there.  No wonder I stopped following Flylady:  She can't be trusted!