Back in the Saddle...Again!

Well, since my confinement and lots of couch or bedrest with my pregnancy, and birth of my velcro baby, my house looks like it was hit by a garbage-filled dump truck.

I have now hired (for nothing!) the services of one Flylady.  (www.flylady.com)

We are going to clean up our monstrous mess in 15 minutes.  You heard that right--15 minutes.  Well, to be honest, 15 minutes per day.

I figured this out.  If we do an extra 15 minutes of decluttering and cleaning 6 days per week in the next year, minus nearly 2 weeks of vacation time, we can have over 76 hours of cleaning and decluttering done.  That's at that 15 minute bare minimum.  76 hours of intense cleaning and decluttering will get us a looooong way to our goal!

There will be no pics for a while, because of my sheer embarrassedness (yes, that is now officially a word because I said so).  But there will, barring lack of electricity, be posts chronicling this for the next year.  So, officially starting on St. Patrick's Day 2010, we begin.

This week, Flylady is focusing on the bathroom and office.  Our office space is small, and yesterday I cleaned off the desk by throwing everything into a grocery bag and stuffing it under the desk for James to go through.  Today I did 15 minutes in my bathroom.  I cleared off the countertop, mostly, and went through my drawer that I could barely open or shut.  It was filled with all kinds of old makeup, expired bottles, and samples.  I found a lot of my earrings as well.

The drawer is not completely done, but nearly everything left in it is something I want.  If I don't use it by the time Bathroom Week rolls around again, it's getting tossed.  I'm going to get a couple of small bins at Walmart tomorrow to organize that drawer.  Amazing what 15 minutes did to a drawer that was bugging me for about two years.

I'm excited!

The kids are doing it too.  Princess got all her clothes picked up off her floor, and Professor and Lion (mostly Professor, because Lion was whining) cleared a HUGE area of their floor.  Lion cried in my arms afterward, telling me he knows he can do it and that he will do it.  I hope he remembers that tomorrow.

In another week or two the kids rooms should be completely clean.

Part of me is frustrated that it will take so long, but at least this way our house will get cleared out slowly, but surely!