Baby steps

[serene]

Sometimes, when the housework gets to be too much for me, I turn to the sappy, uberChristian, cloying FlyLady to get me back on track. She irritates me sometimes, but her methods seem to work for me, so she's my go-to resource.

Anyway, I'm going to do her 31days of baby steps, starting today, and I'm going to try to post about it once a day, with before-and-after pics for my own motivation. (That is, I plan to update each day's post, rather than posting about it several times a day.) Join me if you feel like it!

[Note: Thanks to apis_mellifera for the pointer to Unfuck Your Habitat, which may address some of the things I dislike about the FlyLady. I'll check it out.]

Day One: Shine Your Sink (and do 15 minutes of decluttering)



You can see all my before pics on Flickr, and then the after pics of my shined sink. Later, I will add decluttering before/after pics to the lot. I'm gong to choose to declutter the box of stuff at my feet because it's the most immediately annoying.

Later...

So, 15 minutes is a long time.



I decluttered the box for about five minutes, including putting everything where it was supposed to be. In the remaining ten minutes, I picked up the floor around the box, putting things away as I went, emptied all the wastebaskets, went around picking up trash, and took the trash out to the big bin outside. And now I'm gonna stop, even though I feel like keeping it up, because burnout is a real hazard for me, and I don't want to burn out. Besides, I do have other things to do, like beginning to lay out the magazine. If you have stuff to share for the magazine, please do!

Comments

[apis_mellifera]

Have you seen Unfuck Your Habitat? I think a lot of the principles are the same but without any Jesus and more swearing.

[serene]

No! I used to do batlady on LJ, but I hadn't heard of this. I'll check it out; thanks!

[apis_mellifera]

There are sparkle GIFs!

[serene]

Well, how can you not like THAT? :-)

[apis_mellifera]

EXACTLY.

I find the pictures of other people's mess to be oddly reassuring when I'm dealing with my mess. For me, it helps to know that I'm not the only one who struggles.

[serene]

Me, too, plus, and this isn't noble of me, I'm often able to pick something I'm doing right that they're doing wrong.

[apis_mellifera]

I totally get that. I sometimes do that, too.

[emceeaich]

I was thinking, "there's gotta be a market for a non-twee, non-Godbothering version of that."

[serene]

Yeah.

[apis_mellifera]

Yeah, I could never get into Flylady because of all the stuff around what is pretty sound advice. Swearing and sparkle GIFs are much more my speed.

[serene]

I need a t-shirt of that last sentence. ;-)

[kake]

I like Unfuck Your Habitat mainly because "make your bed every day" makes so much more sense to me than "shine your sink every day". The bed stays made when I use it to e.g. fold laundry on, whereas the sink gets unshiny as soon as I use it.

Also! Wearing lace-up shoes all day is good for neither my feet nor my productivity.

[ailbhe]

I look forward to the pics. I'm struggling to get on top of my own house at the moment; seems like we just get afloat and along comes a crisis and we sink again.

[serene]

Yep, don't I know it. *sigh* *hug*

[ljgeoff]

My sink is white, so it will not shine. It's not enamel, but some kind of plastic that reminds me of thick PVC. It also has stains that I can't get out. Well, I've tried Comet, and they won't get out. Maybe there's something else I could use? I dunno; to tell you the truth, I don't care all that much if my sink has stains.

Dog hair. Dog hair is something that I care about. And grungy bathrooms. And smelly cat litter boxes. Huh- I better stop now.

[serene]

It's important (to me) not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough. "Shine" means get really really clean. Just get it really really clean. The stains don't matter, I'm thinking. Everything else can be done in short bursts.

[ljgeoff]

Good point!