Fuck you, FlyLady!

The BBQ Pit
1

And fuck me for needing you!

So, I’m a filthy person. I’m one of those people who can every so often mount a cleaning campaign, but who is incapable of cultivating clean habits and ends up right back at the start before you can blink. The awful thing is, I’m a good cook. I like to cook. So that means I have to balance a cutting board on the sink divider and leave all my groceries on the floor because the countertop is full of… suspect things. We play a lot of games of “What’s that smell?” in my kitchen. And it doesn’t help that my boyfriend isn’t a clean person either.

Things are gross at my house. I can’t ever have people over without a week’s notice, and even then I don’t get done what I should. I’m just lazy, and I’ve got better things to do. But I know if I could just stay clean it would cost a fraction of the effort, and if I could get into the habit it wouldn’t even be an issue!

So, I misguidedly signed up for the FlyLady e-mails before, so it’s not like I didn’t know how irritating she is. But this is the first time I’ve said, yes, FlyLady, I commit to you. Oh my god I can’t stand you you fucking cunt!

So tonight I’m supposed to shine my sink, which will get me in touch with the me I’ve neglected all this time. And when I look at it, that’s the FlyLady hugging me. I can’t possibly describe to you how amazingly pissed off I am by that one, single sentence. Not to mention the assumption that I’ll be so satisfied and happy by looking at that clean sink!

Which leads us to tomorrow, where my job is to put my shoes on! (And keep an eye on that sink, you never know when it might get a water spot on it!)

Yeah, because all women, particularly women with messy homes, are stay at home mothers who wear their pajamas all day. Thanks. Nothing against stay at home moms, and I know it’s gotta be hard to keep the place up when you’ve got kids, and I’m sure it could help you get on track to take a shower and put your shoes on every day, but excuse me? That’s my goal for the second day? Lady, I work. I don’t have kids. I pay a mortgage by my very own self, and I don’t need you to tell me how to feel about myself, I need you to tell me to pick up around the damned place!

Oh, and don’t forget the sink! God knows, the sink is the cornerstone of my existence.

That whole “You’re a slob because you don’t take care of yourself because you don’t think you’re worth it!” shit is really what makes me so furious. She sells pens that say “I’m proud of you!”, with the comment that for some of you, this may be the first time anybody’s ever said that to you. If this is true, you do not need the FlyLady, you need therapy and some better relationships. The nerve of the woman!

Which leads us to “Body Clutter”, which is what she’s calling my fucking fat rolls. Because of course I got them the same way I got my shithole of a house, which is not loving myself. Honey, loving myself is what got me here - I like to eat, and I don’t like to exercise, and I like to do things that are more fun than cleaning my house. That’s the point, I’ve been “taking time for me” all over the fucking place and now I need to “take time for the fucking sink”, okay? So let’s talk about my actual clutter!

Which we don’t get to until DAY FUCKING SIX of our Beginner Babysteps! I am not here to Finally Loving Yourself, I am here to CLEAN MY HOUSE. I do not need a Control Journal where I exorcise my negative thoughts about myself. My negative thoughts about myself are mostly limited to “God, this place is a shithole. I wonder what that smell is?”

Oh, and don’t be forgetting that sink. It’s an island in a mountain of shit, but don’t forget to keep it shining!

I mean, baby steps are one thing. Obviously I need baby steps, because taking one giant step a month has led me to this passage. (I took a giant step today, actually, cleaned the whole kitchen and mopped the damned floor so I can go in there barefoot again. You do not want to know what that smell was, I promise. You might think you do, but you don’t.) But don’t tell me not to skip any, and then make most of them shit I don’t need, shit I don’t want, or shit that makes me want to punch you in the face right through the computer screen!

I have never in my life been so anxious about the sink. Am I allowed to keep scrubbies and stuff on that top part? Or will that dim the glory of my fucking sink? Which I am supposed to clean with DENTAL FLOSS?

So I’m going home after work and shining my sink for the first time in my evidently miserable and worthless life. And then I’m going to spit in it. And then I’m going to take a picture and make it my desktop, and write “I’m proud of you!” on it.

2

That was so funny! I’m much the same when it comes to housecleaning, but now I have a new boyfriend, so I’ve been forced by sheer pride to clean regularly. And it does make my mood better to be in a clean, non-cluttered environment, so I’m going to try to keep it up. But it’s sooo boring, when there are so many fun things to do in the world. Sigh.
I came across the Flylady a few years ago, but never signed up for emails or anything. Lately I was wondering how to go about finding that sink-cleaning thing and doing it, so thanks for saving me the research! I’ll be sure not to sign up for the bullshit that goes along with it.

3

You know it’s a voluntary program, right?

4

Uh, yeah, thanks, I didn’t see any FlyLady commandos waiting for me with the orange jumpsuit and sink toothbrush. I just want the useful reminders and nagging without being told the sink ought to be the highlight of my poor, unloved life. I have no desire to turn the feminist clock back a hundred years, but I do want something to help me get it clean and keep it that way.

5

In fact, I think maybe I’ll learn to be a cleaner person by hating the FlyLady. Every piece of crap I put away instead of throwing on a table or the floor, I’ll think, “Suck that, FlyLady.” When I put the dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink, I’ll imagine I’m beating the FlyLady about the head and neck with them. When I’m throwing moldy things out of the fridge, I’ll picture myself shoving them up the FlyLady’s fat ass.

6

The bitch pissed me off, too, which is why I never even got to the point of signing up. Shining my sink I didn’t have a problem with–wearing shoes indoors I did.

7

That’s the spirit! Give 'er hell! thumbs up :wink:

8

Oh, gawd, that woman is obnoxious. I was on her emails for a while, but she’s just such a sanctimonious twat that I cancelled them. Well, actually, I called her on some of her self-important preening bullshit, and she canceled me. There was a lot of self-important preening bullshit, but I think what I finally wrote her about was the iron-clad guarantee that if your attitude toward being the household drudge was sufficiently loving and you took enough joy in the servitude of your family, they’d get off their dead asses and help you out some. It may be true for her husband, but I’ve never seen any family where it happened like that. What probably got me the boot was that I pointed out that email would never get sent on to list, just the ones that rhapsodized about how amazingly right she is about every single thing under the sun.

Oh, but Alice, if you don’t sign up for the emails, you won’t get any of her God Breezes, where she pontificates about everything from how laziness causes thyroid malfunction to how people who are clinically depressed need to stop whining and get off their frannies and take a baby step.

The sad thing is that the actual system is pretty good. Doing a little bit here and a little bit there really does make the big clean up go a whale of a lot faster and easier. Plus, since it’s never really that bad, it’s easier to motivate yourself to do a big cleanup.

Flylady is really nothing but an adaptation of an older system called Sidetracked Home Executive. I’ve not read that book, but I fully intend to in the next few weeks. Near as I can tell, the big difference in the systems is how you track what you’ve done and what you need to do. It seems like maybe the women who wrote that book also have a website–maybe they’re not such twerps?

9

A friend told me about Flylady, and I checked out the website, but I was turned off by the sexism of the whole thing: assuming that everyone who has a problem with clutter and cleaning is a woman, and that guys never need help in keeping tidy as well.

10

I’d just like to point out that the subject heading for that Sidetracked Home Executives book is “Housewives - Time management”. Fuck you, Library of Congress. Fuck you long and fuck you hard.

11

So start a new group email just listing a useful task every day without the empowerment hugs and snuggles crap. Hell, I’d sign up. It’s not that I don’t know what needs to be done, it’s that I can’t figure out where the hell to start.

I got good at this for a bit and now I’m buried again. And I have in-laws coming over this weekend. Could you start this advice email like today, please? :smiley: Or maybe a thread in MPSIMS? We could take turns offering tasks for the day or something.
(I’m trying to figure out how dental floss might be employed in the cleaning of a sink. Me, I sprinkle a bunch of stainless steel polish powder, sponge and rinse. What depths of filth am I leaving untouched with this method?)

12

No dental floss? Oh, my laws! Don’t you know you’re supposed to ream out the crud that gets up against the metal rim of the sink? And what about the bases of your faucet and handles?

::faints from the horror::

13

I think it would be so helpful if someone would design home cleaning tracking software. You put in things like how clean you want your house (from “not too gross” to “I can eat off the toilet”) and how many rooms (how many bedrooms, how many living rooms - even how many refrigerators you have to clean (hey, some people have an extra in the garage or basement.) You put in when you have time to clean (not Thursday nights or anytime during the day cause I work, but I’ll do it Saturdays and Wednesday nights), it comes up with a gap analysis (honey, you can’t have toilets you can eat off of if you have seven of them and only spend every other Saturday morning cleaning), comes up with a cleaning schedule, sends you reminders, and keeps a log (didn’t get the fridge cleaned this Saturday, move it to next. Move it three times, make it a priority task.

FlyLady does have a problem in that she is perfect for a certain type of person - someone who is home during the day and is avoiding life by sitting in front of the PC who has self esteem issues and doesn’t mind wearing shoes (that tie) inside the house (I don’t know if I own shoes that tie). She starts falling short with pretty much everyone else and has to be adapted.

14

Shit. This actually is exactly me.

sigh I’ve never even heard of this lady! Why is her target audience (me) unaware when all y’all know about her?

And yes, I just signed up for her email. Off to scrub my sink.

Y’know, that’s a huge part of my problem. I just don’t SEE dirt or clutter until it’s a hazard. I just looked, and yup, there’s sort of a brown gunky buildup at the bottom of my faucet fixture. Huh. Whoda thunk it? My husband is in awe of my ability to walk without looking through a room full of books, old takeaway containers, junk mail and toys without stepping on a thing and then honestly going “what clutter?”

15

That’s the thing - her actual stuff about actual stuff in your house is really useful. (Take five minutes tonight and hit one of those “hot spots” that you always dump crap on. Do it with a timer. See, this is useful. Now go shine your damned sink!)

Hell, for free I’ll call you once a day and screech “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SINK IS?” into your ear. In fact, I’ll pay you to let me do that. I think my life would be so much better and calmer!

In other words, I’m sure that if you signed up for FlyLady e-mails and got very rigorous about your e-mail filters you’d have a very good reminder system. That’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Although that “god breeze” shit really does help me build a good stock of FlyLady hatin’ fire!

16

I think I figured out why she suggests wearing shoes today.

17

No, all I’m supposed to do today is shine the sink. Tomorrow I wear shoes. Lace up shoes. Slip ons rot your soul and also they aren’t proud of you.

18

A Pit inspired MPSIMS PIT of myself that I almost put here but I think it would be too hijacky can be found here.

19

My mother used a method that I swear the Sidetracked Home Executive ladies stole - lol There’s also a similar method described briefly in “The Womens Room” by Marilyn French (which may not be a glowing recommendation - heh) Anyway, it involves index cards for big jobs (like washing woodwork, china, drapes - stuff like that) to help you get to everything. I use a modified version myself - it does help.

VCNJ~

20

They are WORSE. I read their original book, and dear Og. Dear Og. I know why the sisters never had time to clean their houses…they sat around and wrote poetry all day. Bad poetry, the kind that would be rejected by sixth grade girls as too soppy. What’s more, they put a great deal of this poetry in their book.

The systems are actually pretty good, but they are tailored for one type of woman (and not tailored for men at all), the woman who is religious and feels a deep need to ENJOY doing her housework. I do housework because I enjoy the results, not because I enjoy the process. I am completely uninterested in blessing my house, smiling while I’m scrubbing, and all the other bullshit that FlyLady and the Slob Sisters urge me to do. I’m also completely uninterested in buying FlyLady merchandise.