2005-08-24 - 7:28 a.m.
An Ode to Flylady
Have you ever tried flylady?
A lot of her ideas have helped me a lot.
Coming from a compulsive hoarding family, I needed a lot of help at first. She taught me the difference between useful items and clutter, and the way to get rid of things without feeling guilty, and the way to feel good about living in a small space. Immensely important, those things.
I think, though, that after trying and failing to become a follower several times, I would rather do things my own way more of the time.
I think she's too much of a control freak. She not only tells you everything you need to do, she tells you what order to do things in, and that would screw with me if I let it. It makes a whole lot more sense to me to spend a few extra minutes cuddling with my husband in bed, THEN make breakfast, THEN get dressed after he leaves for work, then it would to get up earlier just so I could get dressed before making breakfast. Believe it or not, eggs cook just as well when I'm in my nightgown as otherwise, and the snuggle time is just as important to us as the Friday night date night is to the Flylady and her husband (or "sweet darling" as she likes to call him *choke*).
Her advice to wash the dishes every night before bed, no matter what, is excellent, and I try always to follow it. However, the rest of her kitchen advice seems predicated on the assumption that you have a dishwasher, which you don't, and that you can get by with never leaving a dirty dish in the sink. She says something about putting dishes in a dishpan under the sink if you don't have a dishwasher, but I'm sorry, that's disgusting. It's just an invitation to mold, bugs, and germs. A kitchen sink IS an appropriate place to put dirty dishes and as long as I wash them before going to work and before going to bed, the task stays manageable.
Plus, a lot of her advice doesn't make sense for a small household. I'm sure things will change after the baby comes, but for now, with two people, it simply isn't necessary to do a load of laundry every day, to take out the trash every day, to change the sheets every week. It's a waste of money and energy to do those things more often than needed. So, I don't.
She'll tell you you can't be on her program unless you follow it to the letter, but I think it's possible to pick and choose what you like and live your own life beyond that.
