My FlyLady Testimonial

I finally had that "major shining moment" to inspire a testimonial. It was the "unexpected guest visit that goes well." So here's what I sent in:

6 Years Ago: I married my wonderful husband, who isn't any more organized than I am. We moved in together, opened our wedding presents, and we've been living in CHAOS ever since. Our excuses included, 1) we both work full time, so neither of us have time to clean, 2) our place is too small for the amount of stuff we have, and 3) why should I do anything if he/she isn't doing anything? Real stinkin' thinkin'.

1 Year Ago: We moved into our first "real house" which has more than enough room for everything we own, as well as having room for guests to come, be entertained, be fed, even stay the night. But it wasn't long after the boxes were unpacked that the CHAOS came back.

1 Month Ago: I found FlyLady. It didn't take much looking around on the site before I realized that this was going to be a good system for me. I was actually looking for info on Pam and Peggy's card system that I had seen my mom use for a while over a decade ago. (I'm a second-generation SHE.) The babysteps were what appealed to me most. It was like giving me permission to ignore scrubbing the kitchen floor when I really needed to find it first. I decided I was only going to focus on 1) Simple routines, 2) Dishes, 3) Laundry, 4) Taking care of whatever bothers ME the most about the zone we're in, 15 minutes per day. I didn't think 15 minutes was long enough to get much done, but I figured that once I added up 15 minutes across several days, I should at least make a visible dent.

It turns out that 15 minutes a day was enough to get each zone basically presentable by the end of my first month flying! In some zones, I spent 15 minutes one day, then skipped a day or two because I had made such a big difference that I had to step back and look for something else that needed to be done. It was so much better "for me" that I had to readjust my thinking to see what "normal" (read: born organized) people would still see as messy. My husband noticed and appreciated my work along the way, too. His comments included, "You're doing a great job," "This room looks great," and "I like coming in to a clean room. It's like coming home." My response to the last one was, "Thanks, that's the whole point of what I'm doing!"

In the middle of this first month, I did have company. My younger sister came and stayed for a week and a half. Normally, I wouldn't do any special cleaning for her visit because she knows how I am, especially since she lived with us for a while not that long ago. But right away she could tell the difference in the zones I'd already been through, and by the end of her visit, my house was actually cleaner than when she arrived! While she was here, I was able to leave my bedroom door open, which I hadn't done for 6 years!

2 Days Ago: This past Saturday, I had a real first. A friend of my husband's stopped by out of the blue. We hadn't seen him since we moved, so after standing around talking cars outside for a while, my husband invited him in to see the new place. And it was ready! He got the grand tour, without the embarassed "ignore the mess" comments in every room. There are a couple of rooms that are still dumping grounds for items that don't have a home yet, but none of the main areas of the house needed any excuses. I was so proud of myself!

So, I still have a few areas that need a lot of work (the rooms that don't fit neatly into the zones, mostly), and every room has out-of-sight clutter of some kind, but I am so happy with the progress I've made, that I'm actually looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish in my next 15 minutes.

Sandwiches ahoy!

After all the hub-bub, I'm making sandwiches for my own husband now. He works construction (plumbing) and for the past year or so he's always had a microwave on the job site, so he'd take frozen dinners or leftovers. Before that I made sandwiches for his lunch. Now he's on a new job site without a microwave, so I'm making sandwiches again. And I'm looking forward to it.

I must admit that when I first started making DH's sandwiches a couple of years ago, I had a similar attitude to the lady who first brought up the subject. But my husband's argument at the time was that if I didn't make his sandwiches, he'd buy his lunch every day rather than take the time to make his own sandwiches. Our budget induced me to give in.

After a while though, I realized that he really did think the sandwiches I made him tasted better than any he could make. (He said it was because I added the secret ingredient... love!) Some of the other guys he worked with were jealous of the sandwiches he pulled out at lunchtime. Plus, it made him think fondly of me in the middle of his day. He used to say that he looked forward to my sandwiches all morning. So I'm looking forward to all that again. It's hard to add the "love" to a frozen dinner.

Even before FlyLady, I had a morning routine. I wake my husband up in the morning, then head to the kitchen and have his sandwiches made and in his lunchbox by the time he gets dressed and brushes his teeth.

Yahoo! Groups : Post Message

I posted this update to my chatty FlyLady yahoo group.

This week marks my first month flying. When I started last month, the zone was the kitchen, so now that we're back in the kitchen, I've been through every zone once. My only focus has been getting some routines going and decluttering the current zone. The results so far? Fantastic!

Zone 2: The Kitchen
My kitchen sink is shiny! My kitchen counter is clear. My dishes get done regularly. My kitchen table is clear. Add these 4 items up, and that means I have room to prepare and cook meals, the dishes I need for cooking and eating are clean, and the table can even be used to eat the meals at. Yummy! There are also no more miscellaneous items in the corners of the room that have been dumped off here.

Zone 3: The Bathroom and One Extra Room
My bathroom counter is clear of everything except toothbrushes. My laundry is getting done regularly, so it isn't found on the floor in here. I still haven't gotten into the "swish and swipe" habit, but the toilet bowl has been swished at all, so that's a start. ;) My office room has had ALL of the visible paper clutter removed. I had 2 full paper grocery bags plus the entire floor of the room to go through! 98% of it was burned, and the other 2% is collected together and I'm getting it into my filing cabinet 15 minutes at time every now and then. I still have plenty of other clutter in this room, since the door always stays closed, which makes it a very tempting dumping ground (out of sight, out of mind). But now I can see the stuff under the papers. :) And now that I have a very good idea of which papers I've decided are important to keep and which aren't, there's a lot less mail that even makes it into this room to begin with.

Zone 4: The Master Bedroom
The floor of my bedroom is clear. The laundry is not all over the floor. Suitcases from our last vacation are put away. My dresser only has alarm clocks, two jewelry boxes and a teddy bear, instead of junk, garbage, and piles of clothes. My drawers are full of clean clothes that I actually wear, and the drawers shut! I took before and after pictures of this project because I knew it would show drastic improvement. My husband's dresser still needs this done, but I need his cooperation to tell me what clothes he no longer needs/fits into/loves. I think I mentioned before that I had company arriving during Zone 4 week (my younger brother and sister), so I took a day away from the master bedroom to pick up the guest bedroom, but it took less than 15 minutes to get that picked up. And with the guest bedroom down the hall from the master bedroom, I was happy to be able to leave our bedroom door open without guilt or embarassment for the mess.

Zone 5: The Living Room
This zone got picked up a bit at a time in the previous weeks just from my husband and I picking up after ourselves (plus one 5-minute room rescue before company arrived). So by the time I got to it, I cleared the coffee table and alphabatized the DVD's and called it good.

Zone 1: The Entrance, Front Porch and Dining Room
We enter through the back door, so I skipped the front porch this time around. The dining room table is ready to entertain guests any time now. It took 15 minutes for me to clear it off, after nagging my husband to do it for 3 weeks. (It was a lot of his stuff, with a bit of mine.) I forgot to take before and after pictures here. That would have been cool, because it looks so much better now than it did before. Our entrance area just inside the back door has a really old garden sink that was a horrible hot spot until it got to the point that we couldn't put any more stuff on it. In 15 minutes I was ready to shine that sink, too. When my husband saw the cleaned white porcelain, he got some metal polish and shined up the brass drain. For its age (~100 years old) the sink doesn't look half bad. I still have to pick up the area under the sink where shoes, coats, tools from outdoor projects, etc. all get dumped. I did remember to take before and after pictures of the sink, but I'll take one more after the stuff under the sink is gone, too. :edit: Included

This week our guests are leaving, and I'm happy to say that my house actually looks better now than it did when they arrived! That never happens!! My husband has complimented me several times throughout the month. He told me just yesterday how much he appreciates that I'm keeping the house looking so nice. We both work 8 hours/day outside the home, but he has a physical job (plumbing) where I have a desk job (web programming), he has a 2 hour commute where I have a 15 minute one, and he has some bad days at work, where I actually love my job. So he has even less interest in cleaning the house when he gets home than I do, but I think that makes him appreciate the clean house even more than I do. It's so much nicer to just do it than to make excuses about why I shouldn't have to do it, and then both of us feel rotten that nothing gets done.

I've introduced my mom to FlyLady, too. She lives in SC (practically neighbors with FlyLady!), so we haven't been able to see each others' progress, but when I've told her how I'm doing, she says it inspires her. That's really cool. Once I get my before-and-after pictures posted to this group, I'll send her copies, too. That should be inspirational, indeed!

They're all the same.

So in reading comments and questions from other women on HeyTom.net, I've discovered that there is nothing unique about my situation. There are other women who work as many hours outside the house as their husbands. There are other women who pack their husband's lunch in the morning. There are other women who have to wake their grumpy-in-the-morning husbands up every day. But it sounds like they whine about it a little more than me. I know I've felt the same way at some point (or still do on some days) but when I hear it coming from someone else it sounds so ridiculous. That makes me step back and look at myself. If I can come up with the obvious answer for them, why can't I see it for myself?

From September 2: "My Dh and I both work full time. ... I take to heart the condition of our home, and work quite hard at keeping it clean, cooking home meals, getting the schedules made each week to accomade every one. In essence, another full time job. Why is it so hard for men to be appreciative? There are days when I feel I should walk him to everything I have done and say "TA DAH!" Do you think that would help?" I do believe that both of us working full time jobs outside the house means that neither one of us should have to carry the full responsiblity of the housework. At various times over the years I've tried to come up with the equation that would specify how much each person should do. Sometimes I've factored in his earning more money than me, having a long commute, keeping up the cars, etc. and sometimes not. It's always been trying to justify my doing less housework or his doing more housework, but they'd end up proving that I needed to do more work. *See bottom of this post for the mathematics. But apparently, I am perfectly capable of handling it all by myself. And (thanks to FlyLady) rather than not doing anything because "he's not doing anything," letting the house go to heck and feeling bad about it, I'm just doing it all, feeling good about the house, feeling good about myself, and leaving the martyr attitude behind. I would like to get him to do something (anything) in the way of housework, but if he can't be talked into it nicely, and nagging, guilting, or bribing him into it is going to cause marital strife, I'd rather do it all myself, let him sit around and relax, and have a peaceful house for both of us. If he doesn't always say that he appreciates what I do (although he is saying it now), then I'll take his improved attitude as a direct compliment. Tom and company may call him a clod for not helping, but some battles are just not worth fighting.

From August 29: "I do not understand Why he doesn't seem capable of making his own lunch. ... having to take time out to make him sandwhiches throws me off my own schedual ... We don't have any children living here but even a 10 year old can make a sandwhich." I had this attitude at first, but I've been packing my husband's lunch for years now without it. Yes, making a sandwich is easy. He could do it very easily. Therefore, you can do it very easily. And you can put it into your schedule. Then it wouldn't throw you off. Or you could find a time earlier in your day when it fits into your routine better, make the sandwiches, and put them in the fridge until he's ready to go. And like Tom said, "They just don't taste as good as one lovingly made by his wife." When I make my husband's lunch, I add the secret ingredient... love. When you drop the martyr attitude, you realize that it's a small favor that you can do for the man you love, instead of a burden.

From August 31: "I wake my DH every morning, sometimes having to go in 2-3 times. ... It seems that when he comes into the kitchen to get his lunch and coffee (which I make each day) he seems in a hurry (I do understand that) and he seems like he's mad at me. ... I'm one who cries at the drop of a dime. This starts my day off poorly." Yup. I know that one. Boy, do I know that one. I've learned that my husband is a different person when he first wakes up than he is the rest of the day. Actually, he's a person I don't particularly care for, and one who usually isn't too keen on me. We're neither one of us morning people nor early risers other than by necessity. So I try my best not to take anything he says or does personally, do whatever is in my power to make his morning run as smoothly as possible, and get him out the door and on his way to work as fast as I can. Sometimes it goes ok and sometimes it doesn't. On real bad days we both end up yelling, calling each other names, and saying things we don't mean. On good days, we may say almost nothing to each other. But either way, I try to make sure I give him a kiss and tell him I love him as he leaves. I know that my real husband will come home at the end of the day, if he doesn't call me first, and that if my real husband even remembers what that other guy did or said that morning, he will feel bad and apologize. And when I've been just as awful right back to him, I'll apologize, too. It still isn't fun, but as I can't change him, I've learned to live with it. (Unless someone else has suggestions!)

So yeah, maybe nobody else has my exact situation, but other people have each of the factors that make it up.

*Housework equations I've tried:
Jh = Hours on the job for husband
Jw = Hours on the job for wife
Hh = Hours of housework for husband
Hw = Hours of housework for wife
$h = Husband's hourly wage
$w = Wife's hourly wage
$m = Hired maid's hourly wage (hypothetically)
Ch = Hours of husband's commute
Cw = Hours of wife's commute

Jh + Hh = Jw + Hw -- (This one balances out, until I add in car and lawn maintenance. Then I'd need to do 1 hour of housework/day to balance this.)
Jh * $h = (Jw * $w) + (Hw * $m) -- (I'd need to do 6 hours of housework/day to balance this)
Jh + Ch = Jw + Cw + Hw -- (I'd need to do 3 hours of housework/day to balance this)