Lies Flylady Told Me

Don't get me wrong. I love FlyLady. I've been "flywashed" for more than six years. I rely on her. I don't read the emails or follow along on the zones so much anymore. But I do maintain a morning and evening routine, and I've mastered the home blessing so I can clean my house top to bottom in about an hour. When I look at a huge mess in my house, I try find 15 minutes to start attacking it, rather than scheduling an appointment with a divorce lawyer.

Keeping the house clean used to create serious resentment in me toward Brian, and while it's not all gone, it's much better than it used to be. I've become more zen about the dirty clothes on the floor:

Me: ... like that pile of clothes that's on the floor by your side of the bed every day of my life ...

Him: I don't leave clothes on the floor.

Me: I'm sorry, you what?

Him: I don't leave clothes on the floor. I pick them up every day.

Me: Oh, are we in Bri-Land again?

Hmm... that doesn't sound very zen. In the past, though, this conversation might have devolved into me shouting "You've never loved me!" and stomping off. Instead, we decided to move the hamper within shooting distance of Brian's side of the bed. I doubt it will matter, but frankly, I don't even care.

What I do care about are the two concepts I clung to most dearly when I started out with FlyLady that have turned out to be false:

1. You can maintain your home in 15 minutes a day.

Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe she meant "You can make a small dent toward decluttering your home in 15 minutes a day." I have tried to tackle problem areas by spending 15 minutes per day and it's like treading water. I spent the entire month of November on my basement storage room, for example, and you can still barely walk across the floor. I've spent all of January on our office and I'm still too embarrassed to leave the door open when we have company. I think sometimes you need to spend 15 hours a week on a cluttered area, not 15 minutes a day.

And let's be honest. When you look at FlyLady's emails she's instructing us to do far more than 15 minutes a day. Every day there's the 27 fling boogie, the five-minute hotspots, the five-minute room rescue, and the routines which inevitably for us moms include laundry, meal prep and clean-up, and picking up 3,532 toys. These items take way more than 15 minutes and they do not even include the decluttering. Even to scratch the surface, the idea of keeping house in 15 minutes a day is a Big Lie.

2. When you keep a clean, decluttered home, with a smile on your face, your family will follow suite without you having to nag.

Brian simply has a different concept of clean and decluttered than I do. Clutter doesn't bother him. Dust and dirt do not bother him. When I ask him to please, please spend five minutes a day decluttering the desk in the office, he claims that he already does. But he's referring to opening mail. Opening mail is not decluttering.

I know that I'm responsible for teaching my kids how to pick up after themselves and keep their rooms clean. However, no magical shift has happened in Brian after 6 years of me following FlyLady and generally maintaining the home without bitching about it. Well, without bitching about it as much as I used to. Brian's still the absent-minded clutter-blind lug I married 14 years ago. And I'm fine with that. But man does FlyLady annoy me by fluffing off women who live with clutter-bugs or who, if they want to see their house decluttered, will have to declutter for others for the rest of their lives. It's hard! It doesn't just magically happen! And sometimes, you have to nag. I'm sorry, but nagging can be very effective. Especially if you smile while doing it, which is really hard to do, I admit.

Despite these complaints, like I said, I still follow FlyLady, using my routines and my timer to get through the household chores. How about you? Do you use any particular system for keeping up with your house? Does it work for you? Inquiring minds want to know...

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