FLYing through June

Somewhat to my surprise, June is going pretty well so far. I thought it was going to be a dreary month, but so far it's OK. For one thing, we've had some rain. I think of June as a green time (I have teal bands on my braces this month), but this only works if we get some rain. Some years June is dry, some years it's soggy, but this year, so far, June has been lovely -- mostly sunny, but with thunderstorms every other afternoon or so -- and everything is green. Our late lilac that I thought was ruined by the May snow is blooming its heart out. When I'm sitting at my desk, like now, I can see it through the east window, and its purpleness lightens my heart every time I look up. Also, a Downy Woodpecker has been spending a lot of time in the half-dead aspen next to the lilac, and sometimes a fat bumblebee visits the blossoms.

I don't want to ignore what's going on in the world. Ukraine is still being invaded. The shootings in this country continue apace, one after another after another. In my state, gun control measures are being proposed. I read about these, and try to think positive thoughts for those who are working on them. I can't think about it very much, though, or read too deeply, because it's just so incredibly upsetting. I feel guilty about that, but I also know my limits.

At Walmart last night (the kids and I ate out at Chili's), I saw a man at the gun counter who looked exactly like a mass shooter. That is, he wasn't a teenager, so he didn't look like the Buffalo or Uvalde shooters, but he could have been the 2017 Las Vegas shooter, for example. A dirty, tough, angry-looking middle-aged man. I didn't see what he was buying -- I quickly detoured to another part of the store -- but he looked the part so well I half expected him to immediately use whatever it was he was buying. I kept waiting for shots to ring out. It didn't happen.

I'm doing pretty well with my plans for the month. One thing I really wanted to do was get the kids into something besides video games. I still want to think of more things for them to do, but I started them on one thing this month -- I signed them up for tennis lessons! And then the first lesson was rained out. But that's OK. When I told them I was signing them up, they were horrified -- and then asked if we could go to Target and buy tennis rackets. So we did that, and then they taught themselves to play. They'll have to unlearn all that on Tuesday, when they finally have a lesson (unless it's rained out again), and are taught proper form, but I think it's OK. I'm impressed by the current state of tennis rackets -- it's so much easier to hit the ball with these big rackets they have now. I have been using an old racket of Rocket Boy's to play with them, and it works much less well.

We've played three evenings so far (one in the pouring rain, see photo), and Teen A has also played with his friends twice (he rides off on his bike with his tennis racket stuck in his backpack. It's such good exercise, even if you don't know what you're doing.

Another one of my plans was to finish my middle-grade mystery novel that I started back in, I think, October? -- and that isn't going well. I spent some time one day rereading what I'd already written and printing out clean copies, and another day maybe half an hour writing about two thirds of a page. That's all. I'm really having trouble getting going with it, mainly because it needs to be reorganized and I get a knot in my stomach every time I think about doing that. I think I'm going to have to resort to the 15-minute trick. Instead of trying to work on it for an hour a day, I'm going to have to set a timer for 15 minutes and force myself to do nothing else but work on it for those 15 minutes.

I like to write, honestly I do. It's just always hard when you get stuck. This week I will use the 15-minute trick to try to get unstuck and we'll see if things get a little easier.

My other June plan is going really well. That's the FlyLady! For those who have never heard of her, the FlyLady is a goofy older woman who lives in North Carolina and wheedles, coaxes, nags, and cajoles her followers to clean their houses and keep them clean. She also encourages everyone to exercise, drink water, have a weekly Date Night and a weekly Family Fun Day, and get a good night's sleep. She's very Christian -- of course -- and she posts YouTube videos of herself playing tedious religious music and singing along to it in her thick southern accent. 

All of this, I realize, would be hard for most people I know to take. And I'm not sure why it doesn't annoy me. Maybe I got used to all the hyper-Christian stuff when the kids were little and I was reading all the hyper-Christian mommy blogs to find ideas for craft projects. It's disturbing to realize how many people in this country sign on to this "Jesus will fix all our problems" mentality, but it is what it is.

Anyway, the FlyLady's Christianity seems to lead her to being very loving toward her flock of what she calls "flybabies," which is I guess what I am now, too. You get this strong sense of affection coming from her. She really wants you to have a clean house, and she also wants you to be happy!

Her website is very confusing, with a lot of repetition and some inconsistencies. I have been studying it all week and I keep getting lost. Her methods are also somewhat confusing. (There are lots of other (Christian) bloggers and YouTubers who use their channels to try to explain how to "do" FlyLady, such as The Secret Slob and That Awkward Mom, and I found some of their posts and videos helpful.)

Basically, there are three main components to her method.

1. A morning routine and an evening routine that you do every day.
2. Tasks associated with the days of the week -- special things to do on Monday, Tuesday, etc.
3. Cleaning that you do every month, divided among the weeks and based on her concept of "zones" in your house -- the first few days of the month you clean Zone 1, the second week you clean Zone 2, etc.
   

In addition, you're supposed to spend 15 minutes per day "decluttering," because she believes you can't clean if you're drowning in clutter. It's possible that the decluttering is supposed to be done instead of the Zone cleaning, or maybe it's part of the morning routine. I'm not really sure. I just add it in as an extra thing I do each day. It's only 15 minutes. Anyone can do that.

The main things I like about the FlyLady are these:

• All the tasks are small and manageable; most take only 15 minutes.
• She tells you exactly what to do each day (you can modify it to fit your own life).
• I really like routines and schedules, so I eat this up. Someone who prefers to do whatever occurs to them at any given moment (e.g., my husband) would probably not like this.
  
• I can see results already.
• She's so ridiculously loving and kind. All over the website -- and throughout her emails, which she sends me about a dozen times a day -- all these nice comments telling me to take care of myself, go easy on myself, don't work too hard, don't beat myself up. There's no shame. She's like a loving grandma (even though she's around my age, maybe a little older).
  

The morning routine is very complicated, but I'm working on it. She's very big on "baby steps," i.e., you don't have to do everything all at once. Just gradually add tasks and routines as you're ready. My morning routine (a mix of my existing one and hers) is as follows:

1. Get out of bed and run to the bathroom to pee. I want to add two things to this: brushing my teeth, which I normally don't do until halfway through the morning, and what she calls "Swish and Swipe," which is basically cleaning your bathroom in five minutes. But those will come later. Can't completely change your life all at once.
   
2. Go back to my room and close my door (Sillers likes to come in with me; Baby Kitty usually waits out in the hall), take off my nightgown and hang it up on the back of the door, brush my hair, put on antiperspirant, weigh myself.
3. Get dressed, including earrings. The FlyLady wants you to "get dressed to shoes" and the shoes should be those that tie, like sneakers. I ignore this advice, even though she says you can have special clean shoes that are only worn in the house. I like to be able to feel what's under my feet. If I have shoes on, I might step on Sillers, since she's often underfoot.
4. Climb back into bed, record my weight in my weight journal, take my temperature (a relic from early pandemic days) and record that too.
5. Open the curtains and (this is new) make my bed. I used to leave the bed unmade on purpose, so I could climb back in whenever I wanted, but she's right, the room looks much nicer if the bed is made. And I can always sit on the bed to read, I don't have to be IN it.
   
6. Gather up the cats' dishes from the night before and take them to the kitchen. Start a pot of tea. While it's brewing, prepare the cats' wet food and distribute it, and then the dry food and distribute that. Also water, if they're low. 
7. Put away the clean dishes (this is new). This only works if you've done the dishes the night before. I managed to go to bed with a clean kitchen FIVE out of the last SIX nights. It's so amazing to get up to a clean kitchen.
8. Start a load of laundry. Yes, every day. When I first read this on her list, I thought, well, that's ridiculous. I don't need to do laundry every day. I do about 3 loads a week, typically. But I tried it, and I found that in fact I have a lot more laundry than I think I do. This week, on Monday I washed some blankets and towels, on Tuesday I washed my clothes, on Wednesday I washed the twins' clothes, on Thursday I washed (by hand) three vinyl tablecloths that had been sitting in the garage since they got dirty last fall/winter, on Friday I washed a bunch of cat blankets and a little rug that Sillers pooped on (sigh), on Saturday I washed (by hand) Teen B's old sorcerer costume that I have been meaning to wash since last Halloween, and today I am doing the kids' laundry again. Now, I won't have tablecloths and Halloween costumes to wash every week, but I can see already that I have a lot more things that need washing than I've been acknowledging. For example, sheets! I didn't even wash any sheets this week, and all three beds need changing.
   
9. Eat breakfast, drink tea, swallow my pills, take my blood pressure. Fix the kids some breakfast if they want me to. Clean up whatever mess has been caused by breakfast.
10. Decide what we're having for dinner and start the prep if appropriate, or decide when in the afternoon I need to start it (I normally do this anyway, but with FlyLady's encouragement I'm being a little more deliberate about it).
11. Review my plans or make plans for what I'm going to do the rest of the day.
    

As you can see, I already had a morning routine, and following hers just adds a few things (making the bed, putting away the clean dishes, starting a load of laundry). They are very significant additions, though. I'm a believer already. By the time I finish these 11 tasks each morning, I feel incredibly competent and on top of things. Also a little tired. It's a good time for another cup of tea and a brief rest.

The evening routine is much simpler. Here is mine:

• Feed the cats and scoop their litter boxes.
  
• Convince the kids to turn off the TV and put on their pajamas, read a chapter to them, say nighty-night, and close their door.
• Do the dishes! (a FlyLady thing -- I normally leave them till morning) If I've kept up with them throughout the day, this isn't hard. If the dishwasher is anywhere near full, start it. If there are dishes that don't fit in the already-full dishwasher, wash them by hand.
• Bring my "done list" up to date for the day, set up my "done list" for the next day, write down a few important things that will need to get "done" that day. (This isn't a FlyLady thing -- I was already doing it every day and I like it better than a standard "to-do" list.)
  
• Take my shower (every other night), brush my teeth, put on my nightgown, climb into bed and read until I'm sleepy, but no later than 11:30 pm (this is the FlyLady's influence).
  

The FlyLady wants me to lay out my clothes for the next day, but since my wardrobe consists mainly of t-shirts and drawstring pants, I feel it's not necessary. Sometimes I'll think, "I might like to wear a green shirt tomorrow," but if I wake up and feel like putting on a blue shirt instead, that's totally OK. It's not like I waste a lot of time deciding. It was different when I had a job.

She also wants me to spend a few minutes before bed clearing off a Hot Spot (a place where clutter tends to accumulate), but since I'm in the early stages of addressing my clutter problem, everything is a Hot Spot right now, so I don't worry about this.

So that's the morning and evening routines. If someone only did those things their house would be in better shape than mine usually is, but of course this is just the beginning. Every day there are also a few other tasks, based on either (1) the day of the week, or (2) the Zone we're currently in. 

I'm still thinking about the day-of-the-week tasks. Some of hers work for me and some don't. For instance, she calls Tuesday "Plan and Play day." That's the day you're supposed to plan your meals for the following week, as well as various other things. Then you're supposed to go have coffee with a friend. Well, the coffee part is OK, but I can't see planning meals on Tuesday! The FlyLady thinks you should grocery shop on Thursday, which she calls Errand Day. I could definitely see doing errands on Thursday, in fact this week I planned and accomplished three errands that day, but it wasn't my main grocery shopping day. I did that on Tuesday. This week I'm planning meals today and I'll probably shop tomorrow. So, you know, I'm working this out. But even if her "Days" don't match with what I want to do on those days, the whole idea of having "Days" exactly matches up with how I live my life. I get enormous pleasure out of making schedules and having themes and all that. So this works for me -- I just need to tweak it.

The third part of her method is Zone cleaning, and I guess that's where the real "cleaning" part comes in. This past week we were in Zone 5 for the first two days (that's the living room) and Zone 1 the other three days (that's the front porch, entryway, and dining room). My book group is coming here in just over a week, so I was pleased to be able to focus on the front part of the house. (This coming week is the kitchen, also very important.) Each day I spent about 15 minutes doing her task for the day and another 15 minutes "decluttering" an area in the front of the house (such as the top two shelves shown here). Sometimes her cleaning task for the day is also to declutter something, so those days I did two decluttering sessions. At 15 minutes each, totally do-able. 

As the week went on, the more I decluttered, the more aware I was of how much there still is to do -- and why I normally have such a hard time doing anything. I think I could declutter something every day for a year and not be done. That's how bad our house is and how overwhelming. But if I decluttered something every day for a year, our house would look so amazing.

One thing about decluttering that's hard is that it requires you to throw things away. That goes against my strong sense of reduce-reuse-recycle. But you know, with a lot of stuff there just isn't anything you can do except throw it away. Little broken toys. Stained, torn things. On Wednesday I "decluttered" the top of a piece of furniture next to the couch which has a wicker basket on it. The wicker basket contains an assortment of gloves, hats, and shoes. I went through the gloves and threw away those that were too small for anyone in our household, had no mates, and/or were stained and torn. It is a sad fact that NOBODY wants a pair of small white winter gloves that are ripped and stained. They belong in the trash. If Rocket Boy were here, he would put them in a free pile out in front of our house. But nobody would take them, and eventually they would come back in the house, back to that wicker basket, and THAT'S WHY OUR HOUSE LOOKS THE WAY IT DOES. One of the reasons, anyway.

So anyway, this is going well. My plan is to continue with full-on FlyLady for the month of June and then see where I am. Rocket Boy will probably come back in July, and while he's here I might do a modified version of it -- more cleaning and less decluttering, since it would upset him to see me throw things away. We'll see. It's a long time until July.