One Year

This past weekend it was one year since I signed up for Fly Lady. I'd come off a few months of kitchen renovating (still incomplete), my mother's stroke, and a vacation and realized--with shock--one day that my house was a disaster from one end to the other.

I spent the Canada Day long weekend (which Jim had to work) mucking out the house and ended up Monday evening loading recycling and garbage and thrift store drop-offs into the truck, and washing the porch floor as I backed out of a sparkly clean (ish) house. And wondering why I couldn't keep it that way.

Fly Lady has been a big help but of course I've picked and chosen what of the system to do and what to ignore. Mostly I ignore all calls to clean/ sort/ declutter the front entry and porch. Mine just scares me. It always has and I think it will until the day we renovate that part of the house (up soon after the never-ending kitchen). I've done the daily missions on a hit-or-miss system for most of the year.

I've had a couple epiphanies that really ought to have been more basic to me. Fly Lady talks about Blessing My House once a week--basically a quick cleaning blitz that leaves the surface company-ready. Coupled with the daily missions, it pretty much keeps things running smoothly. Only it takes me much more than the hour Fly Lady allots to it. Finally had a DUH moment. She isn't using that hour to TIDY the house and then clean it. She's assuming that I've been actually DOING the dailies and keeping the hot spots picked up. Well. What a concept. She's likely right--the actual cleaning can be done in an hour!

I also learned that I'd done a decent job on the surface and even a bit below on the rooms that are on the Fly Lady rotation (if we pretend the front entry doesn't exist--and I'm good at pretending that.) What I wasn't dealing with were the two *spare bedrooms*. One of which hubby has taken over as his home office, and the other was mine. Except that I moved the computer desk downstairs several years ago (then booted it out entirely when we went to two laptops.) Boxes from the (unfinished) kitchen renovation lived in there, plus a couple boxes from cleaning out my mom's apartment last spring. And some craft projects I'm apparently never going to finish. And...yep, clutter.

When Hanna and Craig moved home at the beginning of May I was forced to actually LOOK at this room and it was embarrassing. Pretty much everything had to come out so they had room to set up their office in it (they're sleeping in the folks' motorhome, and the upstairs room is their living room). We allowed me to keep the closet (small), my Rubbermaid rolling drawers, and one narrow chest of drawers (that replaces the desk drawers from the desk that is no more). There was a LOT of junk that needed to go. Once again with the trash, recycling, and thrift store. The treadmill that I never use went out to the guest cabin (that still has a lot of cabinets in it!)--we can't get rid of that because it belongs to the folks, who don't use it but can't get rid of it. The uncomfortable futon got turfed.

A bunch of stuff from in there landed in Jim's little office, and after a few weeks he said--um---I need to be able to get in the door. So one rainy weekend I completely emptied the hall closet (big mess, wow) and really worked through what NEEDS to live in there to make room for the stuff that had wound up in Jim's room. Why did I have so many random sheets when there's no way we have room for that much company? Some got trashed, some thrift stored. Things are somewhat sorted out up there. For now. Once the kids leave at the end of August, I need to be careful not to spread back out and be lazy.

Altogether, though, the house is a huge improvement. The biggest thing has been the daily routines, though, especially the evening routine. I used to be bad for leaving dirty dishes out, but that's rarely an issue now. The coffee pot gets set in the evening, and lunches made. Supper decided upon, usually. I'm not up to full bore menu planning yet, but I rarely stop at the grocery store at 5 pm to decide what's for dinner anymore. And when the home and people go to bed actually prepared for morning, the getting-ready-for-work runs more smoothly. So those routines are absolute winners.

Right now I'm trying to deal with the garden. Easy to say that fifteen minutes a day would keep the yard work under control. I haven't quite worked it into my routines, I guess. But it's too hot, or too rainy, or too buggy...or something. We did a blitz weed in the garden this morning for a couple hours and now the potatoes and corn can see air again. All good.

The upshot is that while Fly Lady has not made my life perfect, I'm so grateful for how much improvement I've seen and that it really doesn't take that much effort. Maybe I'm ready for the next step. Unless the next step is my front entry. Then I'm not ready at all.