Do you Know FlyLady?

Jack has been on a real Chore Wars binge lately.

We've been adding more and more and more chores as he begs for more things to do -- and he does them eagerly and asks for more! At this point we're beginning to add Quests -- one time, major things that we've been meaning to get to for some time. At about the same time, I have been decluttering by getting off lists I don't have time for any more. One of those was the Fly Lady coaching list. And all of this -- the struggle to find more chores and the decluttering of my e-mail -- had me thinking about a day, not so long ago, when finding chores wasn't a problem, but finding a usable surface was.

I think TJ and Corey would be utterly astonished to see how Chez Smiffy looks on an average day. It's far from sparkling, but we can usually be ready for company in an hour or so, and cleaning up is never a two-day enterprise anymore. I didn't know how to accomplish that level of organization when they were living at home. Chores were a constant struggle and the chaos won a lot more often than we did. Once TJ and Corey had moved out on their own and I was living alone, I did find it somewhat easier to keep my apartment clean. Nonetheless, even when it was just me, if life got busy, my apartment started to show the lack of attention.

Then someone mentioned Fly Lady. Now, my place was pretty clean because with just me around the amount of energy I was used to spending on housework had my place so polished that some of my friends were teasing me and calling me "Martha". Still, I was curious to learn more about how to keep it tidy when life got more 'exciting'. When I knew that Rod would be moving in -- and that tidiness was no more in his nature than it had ever been in mine -- I knew I had to get a handle on this homemaking thing. I had become rather fond of living in a tidy home and being able to start a project at a moment's notice with no need to clear a space first.

So, I read the Fly Lady web site and subscribed to the coaching list. For several months I implemented her suggestions faithfully until I felt i had internalized the sense behind the system. Then I went "no mail" on the coaching list and went on with doing it my way. Once Jack was born, everything fell apart and I turned the list back on once we got our feet under us again so that we could catch up and then went no mail again until I needed another booster.

One of the most important things I learned from Marla and her Fly Lady methods is that clutter can't be organized. Up to a point, stuff makes out lives easier -- and after that out stuff starts to own us. If we own more stuff than we need, we end up spending much of our time moving it around, cleaning it, trying to find space for it, or just stepping over it. I know that viscerally and once Marla put it into words for me, I began a campaign to simplify my world. Our place is much easier to maintain these days because I have spent the last 8 years jettisoning anything we don't have an immediate need for.

Some day I will teach Jack the Fly Lady system...but meanwhile Chore Wars is going a long way to making him enthusiastic about keeping the house tidy. What a different world my baby boy is growing up in!