Saturday, October 23, 2010

Getting Organized

Everybody seems to have a different opinion on how clean is "clean." Personally, I find this intriguing. We all spend way too much time worrying about whether our house will live up to other peoples' standards, in my opinion. If it makes you happy, be confident. If it doesn't, find a way to fix it. (Or wait until your children grow up a bit, that may be necessary as well?)

Anyway, any time I find my house out of control, and feel there is no way to keep up, I always default to using Flylady. I love that her stuff is free (unless you want to buy her cleaning stuff that she recommends, which is definitely tempting), I love that she's positive and encouraging, I love that she gives a step-by-step process by which you can get your mess under control. I do NOT love how many emails she sends so I generally do not subscribe to her yahoo list, and I also refuse to wear shoes in my house all day. But her principles of housekeeping can't be beat.

I tend to do her plan in spurts, mainly because I'm not a perfectionist by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't like to spend my entire life keeping my house spotless...but with her plan, I actually probably could. I generally use it to get things manageable, and then I'm able to maintain a level of cleanliness that I'm happy with, without doing exactly what she says.

I also found this iPhone app that really helps me keep track of what I'm supposed to be doing. It follows her "zones" and allows you to set up your own morning and evening routines. It even has a 15 minute timer built into it, and when time's up it plays this epic music, designed to help you feel like you accomplished something. :)

We're working on writing out morning and evening routines for each member of the family (well, Tess might get out of this), along with another 15-20 minutes of chores for each day. If all four of us work on the house, we'll get things fixed up in no time!

Do you use any particular method for keeping the house clean? Do your kids do chores? What household chores is each person responsible for? Do you hire a housekeeper? (Lucky! ~read that like Napoleon Dynamite) Do you WISH you had a method for keeping your house clean?

1 comment:

  1. I in desperate need a schedule, but can't seem to find the right one. I've been to Flylady and I like what she has to say well... maybe I should take a second look.

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