Fly Lady

I sat down this morning in my robe while I ate breakfast to read my accumulated e-mail from my yahoo groups. I warmed up some chocolate chip pancakes from the other day for the kids and myself, still better than cold cereal I think.

Someone in the Townsend sock group posted a link to the flylady website.

Have any of you heard of the fly lady before? I love the concept! Love! Love! Love! I must admit that my house is a bit of a pit. There is mountains of laundry to be washed, and another mountain to be folded after it was washed. My sink ALWAYS has dirty dishes in it, many times with bowls and stuff left to "soak" for who knows how long. I haven't dusted probably since I put objects on shelves 2 years, or more ago. The list goes on and on. I find this disgusting, but most times, I lack the motivation, or energy to try to tackle it.

The Fly lady tells me that I can do it in small 15 minute increments, with PLENTY of knitting breaks in between. I like this. This means that my knitting isn't taking away from what I SHOULD be doing. It is a reward for what I have done. She also takes you through baby steps of what you can accomplish 1 habit at a time, until it is all automatic and you are doing it all a little bit every day. Hopefully at that point things don't deteriorate to what my house currently looks like.

I am a newbie, a baby fly. I have a very short list of things that is expected of me from the fly lady on my very first day.
Morning:

1. Make my bed (done)
   
2. Take a shower (done)
3. Get dressed, including shoes, do hair/make up etc (done)
4. Clean and polish my sink (in progress) This sounds really funny, but it is her way of making sure that there is something sparkling and spotless for you to wake up every morning to and smile about. Even if the whole rest of the house is a pit, the sink is clean and sparkling...LOL

Evening:

1. Brush my teeth
2. Pick out, and set out, my clothes for tomorrow
3. Make sure my sink is clean... Again

Already I feel a sense of accomplishment that I am dutifully dressed, instead of sitting in my robe all day, and that I have started to make my all important sink clean. I finished loading the dish washer from last night, and moved all remaining dishes to a large bowl on the side of the sink. The sink is currently soaking for an hour with bleach in it. Fly Lady's personal routine includes many more things than she expects of me on my first day, and I have decided to try to include a few of them in my routine already since I think I'm quite capable. These include:
Morning:

1. Put in 1 load of laundry (done)
   
2. Move it over to the dryer (done)

Evening:

1. Pick up clutter in the living room (Kids will help with this tonight)
2. Load the dishwasher with the dishes from the day (important for keeping that sink clean)

So, so far today, I have rewarded myself with 1 repeat of knitting on my Rogue sleeves, and once the sink is officially clean and the counter tops are clean, I will feel just fine sitting down and knitting all afternoon. Being that in addition to the above mentioned things, I have Fed myself and the kids 2 meals, picked up the dishes from said meals rather than leaving them on the table, and have swept the floor in the kitchen. I'm not entirely sure where in the schedule the fly lady folds her laundry. She doesn't mention this. Does she do this every morning once the one load of laundry is dry? Does she then immediately send it to the appropriate room to be put away? My current laundry system seems to leave clothes perpetually in baskets. I'm not even sure why I have dressers.

On the knitting side of things, after I ripped out the 1 sleeve of Rogue, I spent the day reknitting it. It now has the correct number of stitches, but the tension seems to be a tiny bit looser the second time around and it is slightly longer than the other. I'm hoping that by the time that they are both completed, and with some gentle blocking, that 1/4 inch will go away. Today, aside from my household goals, my goal is to get up to the shoulder shaping. That's another 50 rows.