Saturday Scramble: FLYing Starts with the Sinks

On January 6th I finally “shined” my sink.  According to  Flylady, shining your sink is the first baby step in clearing clutter in our homes and learning to FLY (Finally Love Yourself).  True, not everyone struggles with anxiety in cluttered environments, but as I happen to be a clutter stressed person who married a more…clutter relaxed person, I decided to give Flylady a try.   Flylady offers a system for organizing and managing a home that is based on the concept of daily routines and a focus on small, time- and space-limited tasks.  Having a large family and working full time makes keeping on top of cleaning a challenge but Flylady suggests tackling hot spots in 15-minute segments. Our dinner dishes are usually left to the morning but since the plumber was coming the next day to fix a drippy faucet I loaded the dishwasher and took some Comet to it.  And then when I got home from work in the evening, I was shocked to discover that this happened:

My husband had emptied the cabinet underneath, and scrubbed it down, then reorganized items we wanted at hand and put the excess of cleaners down in the laundry room.

And then this happened:

That weekend we started a larger project tackling clutter in the kitchen.  We cleared off and removed a small bookcase that had been under the window and a desk that had become a dump pile of our youngest daughter’s toys, art supplies and randomness.  It created more space so everyone could sit comfortably around the dinner table when we’ve got a full house.

There was a lot of clutter in that area, and we kept setting the timer in 15 minute intervals, so we’re still in the middle of this: 

Sorting her art supplies into bins that can be stored in a cubby in the living room or for longer term storage in the basement…and because she asked that we take a break to take care of this:

…which became an improptu lesson in Library Collection Management!  The top shelf is her “special collection” (most favored, inscribed books of any genre or format) and the other two are generally grouped by genre.  As with any personal library collection, hers tends to consist of favorites so the discarded or “weeded” pile contained in two shopping bags was modest.

Just 8 days after that first shining sink, my husband spontaneously cleared the bottom of our closet and removed his pile of shoes to a under the bed storage box:

And finally…coming full circle…. yesterday my oldest daughter texted me this: