Baby steps, day five

[serene]

Hope these posts aren't too annoying. Hope keeping them to one a day is helping keep them from being too much. They're helping me, anyway.



(The baby steps are at this FlyLady link.) I'm adding "(and do 15 minutes of decluttering)" to every day's tasks, because until I get rid of the clutter, I'll never get on top of the cleaning.

Day One: Shine the sink
Day Two: Get dressed to lace-up shoes
Day Three: Added reading the FlyLady BigTent emails
Day Four: Write these things down on a sticky note and post them on your bathroom mirror and above your kitchen sink


Day Five: Are you hearing any nagging, negative voices in your head? Things like you’ll never be able to do this or that you don’t deserve a clean, happy, inviting home. Take a piece of paper and write down what you hear. Then, turn those ugly words around and say something nice to yourself to negate the ugly words that they said. You deserve happiness!

I'm actually not having that problem today. Just feeling like relaxing, and like relaxing means I'm lazy, but I know better than that. Anyway, I'm dressed. It was nice to wake up to a clean sink, but I'm hoping (I know, I hope this every day) I can get the kitchen ALL THE WAY clean by the end of the day. We got close yesterday. It's getting easier every day.

Decluttering will just be the next bookcase in the row. This one's a little more challenging, but I can do it. Before pic in a few minutes.





You can't tell because it's hidden by the curtain, but some of ailbhe's art is on this bookcase, and part of decluttering it was to hang up the art. Here's the tree. I also hung the house, but forgot to photograph it. I'll do it later. Don't trust my bad photography; the tree looks great (and straight!) on my wall.



Here's the house one. Again, don't blame Ailbhe for the bad photography:



And here's the after shot of the bookcase. This one took a long time. I have been clearing the floor in front of each bookcase as I go, as well, and that part of the room is starting to look so much better. The next case is scary, but I have confidence I can do it tomorrow.

Comments

[nitoda]

I'm following these posts with interest. Housekeeping is a constant battle. I do find it annoying that there is a assumption that if you shine your sink before you go to bed it will still be shiny in the morning. Does this fly lady live on her own? One of my biggest problems is choosing a time to do stuff when a) nobody is going to be in the way or inconvenienced by me doing the work and b) nobody will undo the work as soon as it is done! It's not like, even if I chose to go to bed last and get up first that would be sustainable in our house where there are people who are often up during the night when I need to sleep. But I am interested to see where all this goes. One thing I do manage to do (sink related) is to rinse my dishcloth and soak it in a mild bleach solution in my small side sink overnight. Most nights, anyway. I also got myself a floor cleaning system going for my hard floors and if I keep up the daily sweeping/dusting it really doesn't take too long. It gets out of hand otherwise though and then I need to make more effort to get back to a clean base. I have found it hard coming back from my holiday and especially as the house is still upside down from decorating. But I will get there. And so will you! Keep up the good work. :-)

[serene]

Thank you!

Marla (the FlyLady) lives with a neat freak. I live with a fellow slob, but I do find that as I get neater around the house, so does he, gradually. And I never never never yell at him for messing up, because being happy in my home, which I am, is WAY more important to me than having it neat, and he really does do at least his share of household stuff, just not always the stuff I want done at any particular time.

[zdashamber]

I like these posts, and they might explain why I did some dishes yesterday that had been waiting for weeks/months. Are you happy about sink shining? I don't know if I'm misunderstanding, but while everything else you're doing sounds and looks great, I don't know what sink shining is and why is has position #1... Making sure the sink is empty of stuff, sure, but...?

[serene]

The first day, you clean it to a gleam, getting it spotless and even breaking out the toothbrush and stuff to get in any tight spots, etc. The rest of the time, you just make sure it's empty and clean before you go to bed. It's easy, and I like waking up to an empty, clean sink, especially since I only have one sink so I can't have both a sink full of dishes and a usable sink.

[zdashamber]

Oh, ok, that totally makes sense. The sink is the center of cleaning. And you might as well toothbrush it once in awhile. :)

[serene]

Right, and the flylady is right in saying that if you do the maintenance every day, you will never really have to do a deep scrubbing again, because there'll never be weeks of grime to deal with.

[ailbhe]

No, I hadn't, but I have now! Yay!

[serene]

:-)!

[ljgeoff]

Hmm. More missing books. Are you giving them away? Storing them somewhere else?