I can’t believe you asked that.\u00a0 But, I had it coming.\u00a0 The blog’s been perilously silent the last several days.\u00a0 Trust me, you’ll probably wish it remained that way after tonight.\u00a0 But somebody, somewhere has been wondering, so here goes.<\/p>\n
Clutter has been driving me nuts.\u00a0 My house isn’t that bad<\/em>, but it isn’t that good, either.\u00a0 I will be moving early next year, so I need to get rid of stuff I know I don’t want before then.\u00a0 It just makes sense.\u00a0 I’d also like to get in the habit of keeping a neater house.\u00a0 My friend Valerie over at In My Little World<\/a>\u00a0 and The G.I. Way — Day by Day<\/a> has been following Fly Lady for a couple of months now.\u00a0 I looked in on FLY Lady<\/a> a couple of years ago, but I just didn’t see it for myself.\u00a0 I’ve changed my mind.\u00a0 I subscribed, and now I’m getting the reminder emails and the testmonials and several other emails each day (I delete the ones that aren’t right for me and use the rest to help me accomplish my goals).\u00a0 There are really two principles to getting started:\u00a0 Don’t go to bed until you’ve shined your kitchen sink, and you can do anything in 15 minutes.\u00a0 Of course, the secret is to start where you are and work from there.<\/p>\n Each week focuses on a different area of your home, and eventually, if you keep at it a few minutes at a time, you get the clutter picked up.\u00a0 Each month focuses on a different trouble area.\u00a0 For many people, that trouble area is laundry.\u00a0 August’s focus has been laundry.\u00a0 I’m blessed that laundry has never been a problem for me, but I don’t have several kids to try to keep up with either.\u00a0 I still remember what it was like when I was a kid and there were six of us living in the house — there was always <\/em>laundry to be done, so I understand why they’ve spent the month focusing on getting into the habit of tossing a load in the washer first thing in the morning.\u00a0 I also understand why they’ve emphasized not letting it sit in the washer and making sure it gets put away when it’s clean and dry.<\/p>\n So, in short, I’ve been working FLY Lady routines.\u00a0 Several major clutter areas are now GONE.\u00a0 The multiple rows of books TBR on my dresser?\u00a0 Put away.\u00a0 The clutter on my bathroom sink?\u00a0 Gone.\u00a0 The Rubbermaid boxes of extra toiletries stacked next to the bed?\u00a0 Labeled and stacked in the closet where I can get to the one I need when I need it (next to the bed, things always got stacked on them).\u00a0 The clutter on the ice cream table in the living room that’s been driving me nuts for months?\u00a0 Gone.\u00a0 None of these things took more than 15 minutes at a crack to knock them out.\u00a0 Most of them took less.<\/p>\n Oh, don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I have LOTS more “Hot Spots” — the places clutter tends to collect, but I’ll get them cleared up over time, and keep them from coming back.<\/p>\n What else?\u00a0 I got the shipment from Amazon.\u00a0 I’ve been reading The Dip<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a short book, but I’m going to have to read it again.\u00a0 There are some depressing things in there, but I think when I get through them and take the time to reflect on them, I think I’ll have learned some useful information that I can apply.\u00a0 And that’s not depressing — that’s invigorating.<\/p>\n I moved to a new office in a new building Monday to do most of the job I was doing as well as a new job.\u00a0 I’m really looking forward to retiring, and it can’t come soon enough.\u00a0 Until then, I have this to get through.\u00a0 Repeat after me:\u00a0 Cul de Sac.\u00a0 If you don’t know what that means, you haven’t read The Dip<\/em>.\u00a0 Go get it.\u00a0 You owe it to yourself to know when to quit and when to push through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can’t believe you asked that.\u00a0 But, I had it coming.\u00a0 The blog’s been perilously silent the last several days.\u00a0 Trust me, you’ll probably wish it remained that way after tonight.\u00a0 But somebody, somewhere has been wondering, so here goes. Clutter has been driving me nuts.\u00a0 My house isn’t that …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,10,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-reading","category-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}