Yeah, that's exactly what it's good for, sj, if you can ignore or put up with the cheeriness. You just do the 15 minutes. And you say to yourself, 15 minutes is ridiculous! I'll never get the house clean at this rate. But it's better and better all the time.

Of course, right now the kitchen is a wreck because I cooked before classes and ran off to teach. And the I still need to bring the laundry in because I rebooted it and then forgot I'd done so. And the office is piled with stuff that I pulled off the dining room table hotspot.

So. Not perfect. Just better.

eta love for soggy Deena. We are glad to have you back, but understand when it's too much.

We thought we were being all stealthy because you weren't around. Deena, I owe you more than I could ever possibly repay you for, and you know that is true. We're happy to do it. So, save the soggy until we actually do something.

It is so wonderful to see your posts, Deena! And also what Liese said re: understanding when it's too much.

The basics were - she had a work from home job where she had to get fully dressed, evidently people you talk to on the phone can hear if you are "profesional" and fully dressed vs just in your pjs.

Bah. I've called into meetings wearing only a sheet and whichever cat was flopped on me. But then, I wear PJ bottoms to work.

Fly Lady brings out the defiant authority hater in me.

Yeah, you'll get shoes on me when inside hell freezes over. I end up in loungey clothes much of the time and I don't wear shoes inside.

But it's nice to have my sink clean in the morning and coffee ready to be brewed when I wake up.

Anything related to housework brings out the defiant authority hater in me.

Growing up, I did pieces of housework, but I was never responsible for it, except for a couple of years when my mother was sick. I had chores like dusting, but I never really got the hang of an organized system for keeping everything clean. My mom was very efficient. I missed that gene.

Part of the reason I loathe doing housework and avoid it for far too long is because I was the one who did most of it growing up. Every day I had a chores list with stuff like dishes, dusting, vacuuming.

I...think I'm Plei and Cass. Why aren't I prettier?

Loving soggy Deena. Loving posting Deena, when you can.

I'm a big proponent of the little bits of cleaning wherever you are. I always use the dishcloth, the high chair, and the wall illustration. If I have the dishcloth in my hand, wiping down the table after lunch, and I rinse it out and wipe down the high chair (take off the tray and get the underside, because you do not want to put your hand on dried unidentified yetz later on), and the seat, back, and footrest. Then by damn, wash down the wall behind the highchair with the cloth you have in your hand. Because if you wait for an occasion to get the sponge, the bucket, the special-wall-cleaning-formula cleaner, the right temperature water, etc., etc., frelling etc., you know darn well it's never going to get done.

It may not be perfect, but it's better than not done at all.

I did dishes every day, and a lot of dusting and vacuuming, plus those years I was trying to keep everything together. I don't know why I loathe vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen counter as much as I do.

decluttering

This is our big challenge. Because a lot of the clutter is Not Mine, and so I can't just attack it and throw it out or even create an organizational system for it. But that means getting Tim to sit down and help, and he's willing, but just getting him to figure out where to put the stuff that gets decluttered...well, *that* alone takes more than the 15 allotted decluttering minutes. So...it's disheartening. But we'll get there. It's really nice to wake up to a clean kitchen sink, and see a clean(ish) bathroom whenever I go in there, and come home to a made bed. Hopefully that will motivate me to do more. And it *is* surprising how little time it really takes to do some of that stuff. It's a comparatively large ROI in terms of time expended vs. satisfaction.

And I'm not ruling Tim out on the decluttering, because the man got rid of the damn drill press. If that isn't decluttering at its finest, I don't know what is.

(Also, I really don't care about getting dressed to shoes and will happily wear pjs all day until I have to go outside. That doesn't impede my ability to clean/work/do stuff. But, again, I find it easy to roll my eyes at the FlyLady stuff I don't need and move on to the stuff that helps me.)