Have You Met FlyLady?

By Bonnie Owens on July 17th, 2009

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Who is FlyLady? Well, she is your new best friend if you have a hard time keeping your house clean. FlyLady is a homemaker who learned how to de-clutter and clean her home with advice from the Slob Sisters. She now runs a very successful website, where she teaches others her cleaning routine. It wasn’t long after I became a stay-at-home-mom that I started hearing about www.Flylady.org. Everyone raved about it as the best cleaning method out there. I have to admit at first I sort of rolled my eyes. I thought cleaning is cleaning. You know you load the dishwasher, do the laundry and scrub the bathrooms. It’s not anything to get excited about. But these were bright, well-educated ladies talking about this website like it was the new facebook. Finally curiosity got the best of me and I decided to check it out. At first I wasn’t that impressed, but as I started to delved deeper, I began to see the appeal.

FlyLady starts to bring out the inner Martha Stewart in all of us. And she gives you the tools and the organization to bring that lofty dream of a pristine home to fruition(without becoming a slave to cleaning). If you have small children at home, how many times have you gotten the house completely clean only to have dirty little footprints leaving a trail of destruction right behind you? And if your children are at school now, chances are you are working or running errands all day. By the time you get home it is time to start dinner and the last thing you want to think about is cleaning the house. FlyLady gives you a highly organized plan to fit cleaning into your schedule through creative tips and ideas.

After only a couple of weeks of following her advice, I found my house was cleaner with less effort. I won’t go as far as to say it is now enjoyable, but it is definitely more rewarding. It is like the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” And that is really what FlyLady does. She gives you a plan to follow so that you are not randomly running from one chore to the next without making any tangible progress. The FlyLady has thousands of fans who credit her methods with helping them overcome their own messiness. To get the most out of the FlyLady method in you life, here are a few tips to follow on her website:

Read “Sink Reflections” by FlyLady to get some inspiration and an overview of the FlyLady Baby Steps cleaning routine.
Subscribe to the FlyLady email list to get daily–almost hourly–reminders about what you should be doing during your day.
Create a FlyLady cleaning journal (your “control journal”) to plan your routines. You will have a basic morning routine, nightly routine and weekly plan. Putting it all down on paper helps you stay focused.
De-clutter for 15 minutes a day. When you first begin the flylady plan, you home may be very cluttered. Spend 15 minutes each day tossing unused items and organizing your home.
Clean in the Zone of the week. Your house is divided into zones(or rooms) under the FlyLady’s plan. Each week you focus on a different zone.
Read the FlyLady’s encouraging emails and online support to encourage your progress and learn more.