Pretty/Smart

I thought I’d write a series of posts about why Flylady works and the process by which I became a relatively clean and tidy person.

A lot of people live in big messes. A small number of them are physically incapable of cleaning up the mess or do not have the time to clean it up. This is only true of a very small number of people, however. Most people’s problem is that they have the wrong attitude about the mess. With the right attitude, even most people with serious physical limitations or time constraints can clean up their mess. Even people with serious physical limitations AND time constraints can do so.

You winced at that attitude stuff, didn’t you? Or you got angry? You felt bad. You felt shame, or maybe irritation, or maybe anger, or maybe all three.

One of the new things I do post-Flylady, that I didn’t used to do, is what she calls “taking a lick at a snake -” taking the opportunity to do whatever small cleaning or organizational task prevents itself at any given moment. If there is a giant pile of laundry to put away, put away one pair of socks as you walk past it. If you see a bit of black guck behind the bathroom sink faucet while you’re brushing your teeth, grab a piece of toilet paper and rub it off. If there is a giant unsorted pile of papers on the kitchen counter, and you recognize one as trash, chuck it in the trash can.

Maybe you don’t have the time to attack the whole monster, or maybe you just don’t have the desire. But you can put away one thing, clean one part, throw away one piece of junk.

Why does this work? Well, if you try it and observe your feelings, you may have the common experience of being overwhelmed with feelings of self-loathing upon confronting the hugeness of the task. I used to be like that. It hardly happens at all any more. I don’t know if the practice of putting one small item away really makes a difference in the mess – if a fairy followed behind me and put all my one-at-a-times back, would it really change how fast things got cleaned up? Does the real cleaning happen when it’s big cleaning? I don’t know. But no one wants to do big cleaning when they have that nasty voice in their head.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.