You can fly too

We I have been making some changes around here lately.

Let me backtrack a bit. Many years ago, I was a sucktacular housekeeper. I will openly admit it. I know exactly how it happened too. When I was a kid, there were too many marathon cleaning sessions, or uber long "lists" that were left while the parental units went somewhere for a business related trip. Upon returning, I usually couldn't finish the whole list and got in trouble.

Now this wasn't a "wash your laundry, pick up your clothes, wash the dishes" kinda of list. It was a "wash all the windows to my specifications, scrub the toilets, organize the hall closet" sort of stuff. Kinda hard stuff for a 16 year old. Didn't help that I never seemed to do those tasks "just right".

Sorry mom. Tis true.

Needless to say, when I left home at the ripe old age of 18, I had a "HA HA! I can do what I want" sort of moment. And I did. Then when I did start to care, I was overwhelmed - or depressed and unable.

Don't get me wrong, this was not a case for Hoarders or anything. Just things like unwashed dishes, carpets that needed vacuumed, clutter, and my fair share of DUST. Then one day, I saw that someone mentioned this website called Flylady. I checked it out, and it sounded too good to be true. Clean in 15 minutes a day? Uh, yeah sure. But people KEPT recommending it so finally I decided to give it a shot.

What she teaches you, is that you can do anything for 15 minutes. Each week there is a "zone" that you work on, and every day you get a small simple task to complete. That's all you need to do. No need to marathon clean the entire kitchen, or empty every cabinet. Just do that task, and try to declutter for 15 minutes a day.

Quicker than you might think, my house was whipped into shape. I got rid of so many things, my house was tidied up, and I even discovered I loved to vacuum! I was so much happier, and this was also around the time that I tidied up my insides too, working out and losing weight.

In 2004, I got a divorce, moved to my own place that was much smaller but had a basement for storage. I ran a business out of my house, and then Gene moved in. The house got smaller and smaller. We bought a new house in 2007 and gained square footage, but lost storage.

Life and work gets you busy, and about a month ago I sat there and realized, there was way too much dust, way too much clutter and I had had ENOUGH. I had long since stopped reading flylady because for most of those years, I'd had a pretty good grasp on it. I went back out to flylady, signed back up for her daily emails and started following along.

I know what my issues are:
horizontal surfaces
paper - and the lack of knowing where to file it

Here's it's been just a couple weeks, and my kitchen is shiny (that dishwasher really helps!) Places where I sit stuff, are cleaned off and if I have paper, it HAS TO go on my desk. Which clutters up my desk, but it's in my face and I have to deal with it sooner.

What's happened tho, is that all these horizontal surfaces are now cleaned off and nearly empty. Even that cat has noticed. He wants to jump up and sit in the clean spots which puts him in quite a quandry. You see, Mr. PrinceJingles is not allowed on any counter except my desk, and even then I really don't want him up there.

Which gets to the point of the picture above. He found a spot that he doesn't get shooed off of, and it's not too far from his mamma (that'd be me btw), the dresser that sits in my "hallway" that I refurbished.

It's kinda sad when the cat notices things are better. LOL.

PS. I'm slowly hacking away at that desk and trying to come up with a system that works better for me. It's 8 feet long, this is gonna take a while!