The Clean Sink Club
Back in November I was in the kitchen cooking on Sunday night and heard a piece on the radio program "To the Best of our Knowledge". It was about clutter, a subject near and not-so-dear to my heart. One of the segments was the host speaking to a lady who said that she turned her life and her clutter around by starting off small: every night she would have a clean sink. Eventually the rest of it followed. I thought "it's worth a try" and started following the plan.
I went on the web to track down the source and find that Marla Cilley is known as The Flylady and not only has a book out, she runs a listserv for Recovering Packrats (she will send you up to 15 messages a day telling you to do certain things), and many sing her praises far and wide. I didn't know there was a newsgroup for those trying to recover from clutter (alt.recovery.clutter) where people post the mundane little things they do to get out from under and give each other support. I don't wanna go there since I am trying to spend less time on netnews to try do deal with mine (so of course I set up a blog. hah. although if I figure out the embedded blogs thing I think that might be an excellent place to keep my boring-to-everyone-but-me list).
Anyway, I kept it up and was pleased with the results - and as the lady said, I started doing other things - but fell off the wagon when my back was injured about a month ago and I really had trouble bending down to load and unload the dishwasher. My back is better but I am not as rigorous - I left for Seattle with a WAY messy sink (all the baking gear) and haven't been keeping it up. But last night I loaded everything up and degunked the sink; and this morning I was so pleased to have a clean sink that I started other cleaning things - containerized the bulk items sitting in bags on the counter, did the hand wash, rinsed out empty bottles for recycling. Which I had to stop myself from continuing since today I really need to file all the papers that survived the purge last week before the housecleaners come Monday and can't make that bed :-). I also did a load of laundry, which is apparently a FlyLady "morning routine" task (although I think this is oriented to women with kids who have DAILY laundry, not adult-only households in drought-prone areas who have WEEKLY laundry).
I like the approach of starting out small - a lot of the organizing books are by people who are, as FlyLady's slang goes, born organized. I think that's what I liked about the Morgenstern book - she wasn't and taught herself how to be! Although if the book gets lost in the clutter (hah) I can always go to the website.
Back in November I was in the kitchen cooking on Sunday night and heard a piece on the radio program "To the Best of our Knowledge". It was about clutter, a subject near and not-so-dear to my heart. One of the segments was the host speaking to a lady who said that she turned her life and her clutter around by starting off small: every night she would have a clean sink. Eventually the rest of it followed. I thought "it's worth a try" and started following the plan.
I went on the web to track down the source and find that Marla Cilley is known as The Flylady and not only has a book out, she runs a listserv for Recovering Packrats (she will send you up to 15 messages a day telling you to do certain things), and many sing her praises far and wide. I didn't know there was a newsgroup for those trying to recover from clutter (alt.recovery.clutter) where people post the mundane little things they do to get out from under and give each other support. I don't wanna go there since I am trying to spend less time on netnews to try do deal with mine (so of course I set up a blog. hah. although if I figure out the embedded blogs thing I think that might be an excellent place to keep my boring-to-everyone-but-me list).
Anyway, I kept it up and was pleased with the results - and as the lady said, I started doing other things - but fell off the wagon when my back was injured about a month ago and I really had trouble bending down to load and unload the dishwasher. My back is better but I am not as rigorous - I left for Seattle with a WAY messy sink (all the baking gear) and haven't been keeping it up. But last night I loaded everything up and degunked the sink; and this morning I was so pleased to have a clean sink that I started other cleaning things - containerized the bulk items sitting in bags on the counter, did the hand wash, rinsed out empty bottles for recycling. Which I had to stop myself from continuing since today I really need to file all the papers that survived the purge last week before the housecleaners come Monday and can't make that bed :-). I also did a load of laundry, which is apparently a FlyLady "morning routine" task (although I think this is oriented to women with kids who have DAILY laundry, not adult-only households in drought-prone areas who have WEEKLY laundry).
I like the approach of starting out small - a lot of the organizing books are by people who are, as FlyLady's slang goes, born organized. I think that's what I liked about the Morgenstern book - she wasn't and taught herself how to be! Although if the book gets lost in the clutter (hah) I can always go to the website.
posted by Charlotte at 8:39 AM
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