Although I’ve always enjoyed thinking of myself as an artsy, creative, free-spirit time full of whim and whimsy, the fact of the matter is I’m a creature of habit. Whether or not it’s, as my friends say, just me being German I don’t know but whatever it is I like the notion of routine. Freedom through structure, all that jazz.
Anyway, while reading (cough) Organize magazine, I come across an article about this woman named the FlyLady. Apparently overwhelmed by this comprehensive index card system for household management (and we’re talking 1800 index cards), she came up with a more simple approach that has garnered quite the following.
Was I particularly swamped with housework? Well, no. But with a work schedule that’s becoming increasingly hectic, a series of (sad though it sounds) social obligations, etc., I figured it was worth a shot.
The premise is easy enough: you do a little bit every morning and every night to keep your house from dissolving into a pig sty. Then, each day of the week you spend a little extra time on a specific set of tasks and then you focus on a particular zone every week. So you have daily chores, weekly chores and then monthly ones.
To wit:
- Every morning I get up, shower, make the bed, eat breakfast, make coffee, feed Truman, blow-dry my hair, wipe down the counters and get dressed (in that order).
- Every night, I eat dinner, load and/or run the dishwasher, clean the counters and sink, put out clothes for the next day, wash my face and read my book before going to sleep.
On a weekly basis:
- Monday is the weekly “house blessing” (their term, not mine), where I run around dusting surfaces, pitching old magazines, cleaning the sliding glass door/mirrors and vacuuming.
- Tuesday is clothes day where I iron stuff and make sure I can find all my shoes.
- Wednesday I clean out the fridge (the first time I did this, I found some Bragg’s purchased in 2005)
- Thursday I hit the grocery store. No more dealing with picked over Lean Cuisines on Sunday!
- Friday I pay bills and write cards.
- Saturday and Sunday I do absolutely nothing but sit on my ass and watch VH1.
Then this week’s challenge for the monthly stuff is the bathroom. Every day you do one thing to make your bathroom less of a sty. Yesterday we washed the shower curtain, today I wiped down the exterior of the john (although! One woman suggested using denture tablets because they do a good job of cleaning porcelain! Who knew!).
And yes, I put each sequence of tasks on index cards and laminated them. They hang near my front door on a book clip. And a label that may or may not read “Amanda’s Chores.” Shut up.
Admittedly OCD as all of this sounds, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. My house doesn’t smell like shrimp, I can see the bottom of my closet and I’m not dressing like I should be manning the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. It generally doesn't take me more than half an hour. I don’t know that I buy into the whole “loving yourself” that's big on the FlyLady scene but I am digging life in the newly-sparkling can-eat-off-the-floor Camp Yupsicle more than usual. Much as I bitch and moan about adulthood, it occasionally has its privileges.
