Sunday, August 02, 2009
"My Sink is dirty" or "Why FlyLady is on Crack"
I was intrigued. I mean, I would LOVE for my home to be clean(ish)! Maybe this FlyLady gal could convince me that I don't despise laundry. Perhaps this site would redirect the urine stream of the males in this household to actually go INTO the toilet, so I wouldn't have to scrub it off the cracks and crevices behind it! (Which, I have to ask; WHAT THE HELL? Who designed toilets? A MAN. That's who. A man who never has to scrape dried pee from tiny nooks and crannies. If a woman had designed the toilet, it would be streamlined and straight. No nesting grounds for bodily fluids to congregate. MEN! Gah...)
FlyLady: Getting Started.
Go Shine Your Sink. Hmmmm. The premise behind a clean sink is that if you have at least ONE THING clean in the morning, you won't feel quite as depressed and ready to slit your wrists when surveying the towering pile of dishes awaiting scrubbing. I actually see the validity in this point. I mean, I DID clean the sink and then the counters and Hey! Before I knew it, the kitchen was pretty damn clean! Holy Shit. I LOVE FLY LADY. I am an instant convert! Give me that Kool-Aid now!!!
I was so hyped, I had to jump to Day 2. This lady was AWE.SOME. What genius idea would she have next?!?
Get Dressed to Lace Up Shoes. Ok. I was really confused. Southern ladies, is this common language?? "Lace up shoes?" When I read that she wanted me to GET DRESSED as in clean and make-up with shoes and hair and, and... Well. I actually laughed at Miss Fly. Surely she wasn't talking to ME!?!? Seriously? I forgave her for this little discrepancy as I knew she didn't really "know" me. She didn't realize that I don't have the DESIRE to get "dressed up" every day. And that if I could really find the TIME to get dressed and made-up, then I damn well wouldn't be scrubbing my kitchen SINK!
There must be a good point coming up. Right? I skipped ahead through the remaining 30 days to see what she had in store for me. (Best line in the entire site: "Nothing says I love you like clean underwear." Actually, LOTS of things say I LOVE YOU more than clean underwear. Such as a big bottle of wine and a babysitter. Well, the babysitter wouldn't be sharing the bottle of wine with me. But you get the picture. This conversation doesn't really fit in right here, but it was too awesome to let it lie on the blog edit floor. As if I really have an editing floor. Could you imagine if I did, though? The little bits and pieces of blogs that never made it, scattered amidst the granola bar wrappers and unpaid bills... Hey, it's MY blog, damnit. I'll digress as long as I want to.)
Days 3-31 contain such genius ideas as "putting paper in a binder" to make a journal of cleaning ideas, posting sticky notes all over my already cluttered house and allowing myself 15 minutes a day to do whatever I want.
Again I laughed. Surely she jests? What the hell does FlyLady think I am doing on the freaking internet??? This is my time! I find time for myself!! That is not the problem. The problem is HOW DO I MAKE THIS MESS GO AWAY?? How do I KEEP it away?
And how can I accomplish this feat without ever doing any cleaning myself?? She continues on to say that this will make my life easier if only I read through their 15-20 EMAILS A DAY. As though I don't have enough junk mail each day to scan, she wants to add MORE chores to my list?!? And expect me to scrub my freaking sink, too???
Honestly. Within an hour I had crushed on FlyLady harder than I crushed on Mikey in the 7th grade (he was so cute!) and broken up with her faster than the guy who hid the whole "I sell cocaine but it's not a big deal, right?" in high school.
And so I am back to living in a cluttered, messy home. The papers are strangling my desk. There are Cheerios crushed into the carpet. My bathrooms were cleaned 2 days ago, but are showing signs of pee on the floor by now. And my sink? My sink is dirty. And I am ok with that.
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Also, do you know that The Chicago Moms is up and running? Check out my first post for them. You will be impressed beyond belief with my parenting abilities...
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10 comments:
This brings to mind a male friend's comment on behalf of the self-closing lid and re cleaning up toilets after standup men...."we don't like to touch it either". They make a disgusting mess for someone else to resolve. Many years ago a friend of mine got sick and tired of cleaning pee off of everywhere, so she raised her son to sit down and point it into the bowl. When she remarried, her husband was instructed to do the same. And anyone who didn't was responsible for cleaning up the mess. Now, this makes sense to me.
Good Grief - I about hijacked your whole comment section with a diatribe about man-pee. Apparently this is a subject I get worked up about.
If you want to see carnage, just come over to my house.
Deb, I'd love to hear it.
Lou, I'll come over for coffee, but do I really have to check out the toilets?!?
I tried FlyLady too. And failed miserably because, as you know, having 3 kids at home with you essentially 24/7 does not allow things to *not* get cluttered and messy. And if you spent all day making sure that happened, nobody would like you and you'd be exhausted. My, start-the-day-right routine involves setting up the coffee pot, so all I have to do is push the button and by the time my cereal is gone, coffee is ready. It's genius really.
(and about your bottle of wine and not sharing with the babysitter, it depends on your babysitter.)
Tracey - I actually had so much to say on this subject, that I vomited an entire post about it over on my blog. Come commiserate!
Fly lady EVIL, big bottle of wine and babysitter GOOD!
Yeah, FlyLady is ridiculous. NOT intended for single moms with 2 jobs. Clutter? Check. Dog hair? Check. Dirty undies? Check. But -- 2 happy kids? Check.
We're good, thanks anyway, FlyLady!
Oh yeah, I too have tried Flylady!! Some of her tips did help, but it didn't last long. It's exhausting trying to keep up. House is right back to messy. And all those emails were annoying!! I may try it again once my kids start school.
Hilarious! My Fly Lady experience was similar, a very brief relationship. All I have left to remember her by is the daily digest of twenty emails that I delete each day.
I do think of her each time I clean out my sink which, unfortunately, is not every day!
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