Heh. I tried Flylady when we had just moved, but I really couldn’t get motivated to unpack and actually set up the house. (It was a forced move, not a move by choice, and it depressed me.) I was working part-time, so I thought I’d try it since I’d be home (and surfing, er, writing, at the computer) to recieve the emails.
First of all, “Flylady” just made me think of a bloated, blackened, maggot-blown corpse, and second… Well, everything in the OP.
I don’t really care for wearing shoes in the house, so I even got some five dollar canvas sneakers that lace.
And I tried the “do the unpleasant thing for 15 minutes” and see how far you can get! And the tour around the house throwing things out thing.
But Flylady is NOT for me.
I love a clean, pleasant, well-ordered house as much as the next person, but the grating Christianity, perky, cheery tone of it was like being hectored by someone who has an entirely different life than me. Wait. It is being hectored by someone with an entirely different life than me.
House is a mess now because I’m still sick. But when I’m feeling better, I’ll go back to my own method for dealing with housekeeping:
A place for everything, and everything in its place
Clean as you go
It’s easier to put out small fires than big ones
Clutter encourages clutter
15 minutes can make a big dent in cleaning/tidying/chores
Put 25 objects away and you’ll see a difference. (I actually trot around, counting, as I tidy. After 25, it’s back to the book/computer/TV/project.)
An mp3 player and headphones make a huge difference for me. I’ll actually hang around in the kitchen, doing more cleaning, just to keep listening to the tunes.
Right, but my point is, if she’s making you these exceedingly angry, her reminders aren’t going to do anything but piss you off.
I signed up for FlyLady once, got to about half way through the second day and thought, ‘this is idiotic, my house is a mess, not my psyche’ and unsubscribed from the list. I don’t disagree with you that her approach is bizarre and lame in many ways, I just don’t see why you don’t just unsub and move on with your life.
Not getting all the fury. You don’t want to shine your sink, don’t. You don’t want to check your hot spot, don’t. But on the days when time flies by and your eyeballs glaze over there’s an email reminding you to do what slipped your mind.
Or you can use it to help build your own system on.
BTW the Control Journal isn’t where you vent. It’s your set of checklists to get yourself through regular cleanups. You could make yourself a Control Journal and never revert to the website. You can change the terminology.
It’s not the shiny sink that’s the point, it’s creating one oasis of cleanliness that inspires you to want more. For me, it’s having stove and counters clear so I have room to cook so this means the dishes need to be done - hence ‘shiny sink’. It’s the touch-point for a routine but I read some testimonials where people chose a clean bathroom or a clean bedroom to be their touch-points.
I’d suggest rather than tossing all of Flylady in the trash, you poke around and see what might be useful to you and incorporate it. I’m never going to wear shoes in my house but I’m still getting better about tidying. Gradually.
Yeah, I’m gonna take what I can from it. I know it does really work for a lot of people, and something in my life has just got to give. I mean, I hate my house the way it is. It just drives me nuts. And I have got to have somebody to tell me what to do, so I actually do it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t resent the living hell out of it.
Because you’re going to stay in your pajamas with your three hundred babies in diapers otherwise, and you won’t “do your face” or “fix your hair”. And you’ll never catch a man that way.
Honestly, it’s good advice for stay at home moms sometimes to get dressed every single day. But, you know, most of us aren’t stay at home moms. People with messy houses might even be men!
Possibility 3
I’m sure there are more to Google up (I used ‘clean + organize + home + subscribe’ – although there’s probably better ways to go about it) that might serve your needs better. Hope this may help some, so us Dopers don’t have to read about a Flylady lynch mob in the papers. Preventative maintenance people! And this has so intrigued me ('cause I’d never heard of this before), that although I already clean this way, a daily reminder wouldn’t hurt and could touch on things I hadn’t dreamed of. Shiny sink my ass.
If anyone does give any of these a try, lemme know how they work for ya. It’d be nice to compare notes (and SINKS) and all.
A lot of these programs (cleaning, organizing, weight loss) seem to be aimed at people who really do need that message. That and the “take time for yourself” “feel ok to spend money on yourself.”
I’m incredibly single. I have no kids. My parents are still young enough to take care of themselves. Taking time for myself is not a problem - all my time is for myself. I also spend money on myself all the time. Taking care of myself is not an issue - and taking even more care of myself is not going to make me thin or give me a clean apartment. (Why someone would think so shows a strange inability to understand cause and effect)
The most ridiculous one I saw was that if I really liked myself, I’d feel free to spend money to treat myself to a new vacuum cleaner.
My self doesn’t want a vaccum cleaner. It wants a weekend at the beach. Guess which is more likely to happen? And it isn’t going to make my apartment nicer.
The fly lady is evil though. Purely evil. Get out while you can and away from her cult of flies. I bought the notecards for the sidetracked home executive. I never actually opened the box once I finished writing out the chores. Trying to put the list of chores in a database was equally as successful. But they’re far less obnoxious that FL.
I respect myself just fine, and I don’t wear shoes indoors. In the winter I wear slippers, but that’s it. Does FlyLady realize that some people have very sweaty feet, and that wearing shoes all the time (and not letting your feet get fully aired) can lead to fungal infections, or just icky gross skin? My feet get itchy if I wear shoes too much, I find it is more healthful to go barefoot in my home. The floors are clean and maintained. If by chance something should break or there is a hazardous spill, I can throw on some loafers to deal with it.
I think the point is that people who are depressed or have low self-esteem tend to not take care of themselves and part of that is letting their appearance slide. The idea is to get you up and dressed and tidy so that you’ll feel better about yourself.
Again, if you’re not in need of advice that helps you feel less gloomy, skip it. But there are lots and lots of women (the membership’s up to 300,000) who clearly find it very helpful.
Another rationale behind the shoe thing, I gather, is so you’re ready for emergencies like having to drive to school and pick up a sick kid (or walk through the broken glass if you’ve had an earthquake) but I just ignore it. I do, however, have shoes nearby in case The Big One smacks us.
Yes, she’s a little preachy, but if you read her own story, she’s a reformed slob and like all reformed anybodies, she’s a little fervent about the methods that pulled her out of her slump.
Putting clothes on is fine, but shoes in the house? Shoes track things from outdoors, and in general track more dirt than bare feet do IME. (I encourage guests to take their shoes off by the door if they are so inclined, too.) What about washing your feet and applying lotion, then getting dressed? Would that fit the bill? How about having a pair of comfy “house shoes” that aren’t slippers but that you wear only in the house? (If you can stand to wear shoes all the time, that is.) Zsofia, maybe you can ask the FlyLady about this, explaining your aversion for shoes as much as you are comfortable with revealing and asking if instead you could wash and lotion your feet/put on special houseshoes/don clean socks?
I don’t know FlyLady from Adam, but the point about the sink makes some sense to me. A sink, generally, is small and not too filthy. It’s a good place to start. Cleaning it can be done relatively quickly, and then the whole point is keeping it clean. Spending a few seconds every day keeping it clean makes everything much easier. It wouldn’t make sense if she said, “Clean the sink,” and then forgot about that, because sinks are something that are constantly in use, constantly being dirtied.
I wear shoes all the time, so that one doesn’t mean anything to me.
And I’d say that a lot of women do gain weight because they don’t value their own bodies/health as much as they should. And that can be symbolized for some people by never really getting dressed in the morning. One of the first things my husband was told when he was diagnosed with depression was to get up and dressed and shave every morning instead of wearing slippers and a robe all day.
I tried this a few years ago. I emailed her and (very politely) questioned this rule, for various reasons listed by a few people above. She responded back in what I can only describe as a very stern (and bitchy) tone. She was curt and to the point that this rule MUST be followed and to acted like if I felt like disobeying it I was probably not cut out for her group and could unsubscribe.
I used to subscribe to FLYlady, but it was more annoying than anything… especially with the time difference. I’d get an email wishing me “Good morning! Put your shoes on!” as I was about to head to bed, and in the middle of the day she’d be telling me to “Shine your sink and head to bed!”.
FLYlady did inspire me to do some things though (although, sharing the aversion to shoes that others express, I never even attempted to follow that rule). One system that I found worked for me was to use a timer and set myself 15 minute cleaning goals. See, the reason I struggle with housework is because I get bored and tend to wander off without meaning to. I’ll start doing the dishes, and I’ll be daydreaming, and I’ll get onto a train of thought and suddenly I will urgently need to check a fact RIGHT NOW, so I run off “just for a minute” to look it up, and an hour later I’m still on the computer furiously researching something that doesn’t even resemble the original thought that lured me from the dishes in the first place…
So, I set an alarm for 15 minutes and then I throw myself into a chore (say… the dishes). At the end of 15 minutes - even if I haven’t finished - I move onto a second chore (like… sorting laundry) and I do that until the alarm rings again, at which point I move onto a third chore (perhaps… vacuuming). After that third bell rings, I take 15 minutes to sit and do whatever I want - fact checking on the net, sitting on the couch listening to music, have a cup of tea, whatever. When the alarm sounds, I start over again and keep at it until each job is done. By breaking my housecleaning down into 15 minute blocks, I never end up wandering off through boredom, and knowing I’m working against a timer tends to make me work faster to get it done. It’s probably not efficient to have three half-done jobs on the go at once, but it works for me… when I do it.
Living on my own now, I find the house stays pretty clean anyway. Unlike the grand old days of yore, I don’t think I could stretch washing my dishes out to a 15 minute job because there’s hardly anything on the sink. I think I’d have to drop it to ten minute sessions.
I got alot of good ideas from Flylady. It changed the way I manage my house which was a huge help.
I kept the good ideas and dumped the membership after I picked up the new, good habits. I never did the ‘journal’- too much work for me.
(She does tell you to not let her emails clutter up your inbox- delete, delete! Rest assured they will be sent again when and if you are ready for them.)
Preventative maintenance people! 
And this has so intrigued me ('cause I’d never heard of this before), that although I already clean this way, a daily reminder wouldn’t hurt and could touch on things I hadn’t dreamed of. Shiny sink my ass.
How about having a pair of comfy “house shoes” that aren’t slippers but that you wear only in the house? (If you can stand to wear shoes all the time, that is.) Zsofia, maybe you can ask the FlyLady about this, explaining your aversion for shoes as much as you are comfortable with revealing and asking if instead you could wash and lotion your feet/put on special houseshoes/don clean socks?