I shall never be a Fly Lady

About a year ago, I took one good look at my house and thought I’d scream. I am a terrible housekeeper. Don’t get me wrong–I love BEING in a clean house. It’s the scrubbing toilets and bathtubs and cleaning the nasty stove burner parts that get me crazy. I hate the process. I dream of a day when my books will help me live the dream. No, not bestsellerdom (although I dream about that, too). No, it’s the day when I can afford to have someone else clean my house.

I tried to do Fly Lady. She advocates taking baby steps and gradually reclaiming control of your housecleaning. Some people swear by her. Those of you who can handle it, I salute you.

To give you an idea, Fly Lady works like this. Each day you do one or two small tasks and make them a habit. Example:
Day 1: Shine your sink.
Day 2: Get fully dressed down to your shoes, and shine your sink.
Day 3: Start a Control Journal.
Day 6: Clean a Hot Spot (a really messy area) in 2 minutes, then stop.

Boy, this sounded great to me. 2 minutes? Hey, I can do that. But this is what my Fly Lady routine became:
Day 1: Stare at caked on sink goo. Realize that I really should clean it, but I left my Haz Mat suit at work. Will a blow torch get those decaying Cheerios off?
Day 2: Stare at my wardrobe before getting dressed. Realize that all my cute little outfits were all pre-childbearing suits. Curl up in a fetal position and contemplate the euphoric moments when I used to fit into that size without holding my breath, not fearing that I would blind my children should a button spontaneously blast off my jeans and shoot their eyes out.

Go downstairs and ponder whether I have any hydrochloric acid to throw in the sink and eat away at the gray film that’s been there since Thanksgiving.

Day 3: Try to find a spiral notebook to become my Control Journal. Cannot find the file cabinets containing spare notebooks because they’re buried beneath mounds of receipts, old manuscript drafts, coupons I don’t want to clip, and bill stubs. Go back and study the sink. Wonder if homemade explosives might work to chip off the cement of Spaghettios from last Thursday.

Day 6: A Hot Spot? You’re kidding, me, right? The entire HOUSE is a hot spot. Wade my way through the kitchen, trying not to step on the landmines of alphabet refrigerator magnets, wonder exactly what my son was thinking when he brought down his entire collection of baseball bats and wiffle balls, then come face to face with a pile of bills, daycare forms, coupons that already expired because I delayed clipping them, and lottery tickets that didn’t have a single number right. Get a large cardboard box. Dump all paperwork in the box. Contemplate whether a ceremonial burning in the backyard would work.

Stare at the kitchen sink. Decide that it’s just going to get dirty again….but I clean it anyway. And for an hour it stays clean. Thankfully no animals have nested in the garbage disposal.