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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!