November 1, 2011

Fly Away Troubles, Fly Away (Part I)

     A few years ago I was a single mother with dirty dishes in the sink, a car full of stale Cheerios and old receipts, and no clean laundry. It wasn’t that I was lazy (ok, maybe a little) but I just couldn’t seem to get all that stuff clean and also go to work for ten hours a day, and help my son with homework, and cook dinner, and pay the bills, clean up the hairball the cat coughed up, and take out the trash, and unclog the toilet, and bathe, and sleep.

     While visiting my mother one Sunday I asked her for suggestions on how to get more organized. I must have been desperate because I was asking someone for advice that had the same problems as I did (hey, I had to learn it from somewhere). By some random, weird coincidence, she had just read an article in the Sunday paper about FlyLady.

     From that moment on, FlyLady has lived in my head and gotten me through more than she will ever know. Through Baby Steps she helps people just like me (busy and lazy) get their homes on track. There are hundreds of methods out there so what made me stick with FlyLady is that she understands that I am not perfect. She seems to understand that better than I do sometimes. Before FlyLady, if I somehow managed to have everything clean, except I didn’t dust the living room, I was mad at myself. FlyLady reminds us that it didn’t get messed up in one day, and it isn’t going to get clean in one day.

     Something I never got from FlyLady was guilt. A lot of the self help techniques I’ve tried ultimately make me feel guilty because I am unable to follow the “simple” steps to a better life.  FlyLady encourages you to love yourself (FLY stands for “Finally Loving Yourself) and to go easy on yourself when you can’t achieve perfection. So on the days that I don’t get around to doing something, I don’t just give up. I just get some rest, wake up the next morning, and do what I can. Check out FlyLady, then check back here for part two of Fly Away Troubles, Fly Away.

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