Clean the Sink

Last month I spent a few days with my daughter (see Start Stepping) and grandkids who live a plane-ride away. Three small kids and her place was spotless. Everything was organized. I've been trying to get organized for well longer than I want to admit. She introduced me to a website called flylady.com. Check it out. I've read more magazine article and self-help books in the last few years than I can count and not one of them gave me any usable advice or motivated me to get started. Since that visit, I've cleaned my office at work. There are now 6 boxes under the desk and four drawers that need sorting yet. I plan to do one per week.
The most important thing I've learned from my daughter and from flylady is to clean my sink and put out the hotspots. At first I thought I was going to go nuts trying this program. It seems soooooo slow, "Day one: clean your sink."
Please--really! So everynight last thing before I go to bed, I clean my sink--actually I clean all of them. A funny thing happens. Flylady says if the sink is full of dishes, take them out and clean your sink. The idea is when I wake up in the morning and walk into the kitchen, I will feel good about looking at a clean sink. Well, I can't just take everything out of the sink. That seems kind of silly, so I put all of the dishes in the dishwasher before I clean the sink. In the morning I have a clean countertop and I have a shiny sink.
One of the other silly things she suggests is making my bed. I haven't made my bed since I lived at home and my parents made me do it. Really what's the point. I'm just going to crawl back into it at the end of the day. Yep I've been saying this since I was probably six. The big deal is when I come home to my shiny sink and my tidy bed, I don't feel overwhelmed. The other thing is hot spots. You know those places where folks like me pile the mail, my keys, my bag, everything I just dragged from my car to the house--my diningroom table. Well actually it's my whole hose, but flylady says to put out one fire at a time. When I cleaned off the diningroom table and made a new rule that NOTHING is allowed to spend the night on the diningroom table another funny thing happened. The nearby furniture which was the only place left to put the laundry to fold later and the newspaper to read later and well you know, suddenly doesn't have anything on it either, except the dog, who after nine years will not quit sleeping on the chair. She a very small dog and despite that I have kept the chair and the sofa clean for three weeks, she still sleeps on top of the back of the chair. Now I can fold the laundry quickly on top of the diningroom table and put it all away before I go to bed. So I have three hotspots undercontrol and these three are the places where I need the most space: my office, the dining room table, and gotta have someplace to sit down, so the sofa.
My son came home for winter break and was quickly introduced to flylady and my mission. If he stays up later than me, he has to clean the sink. And when he walks in the door--nothing--is allowed on the diningroom table. I asked him to take a quick look at the website so that he would know what my goals were and not undo everything. Suddenly I can almost see the floor in his room. It's catching both ways. Get overwhelmed with clutter and your kids learn to do the same thing. Fortunately my daughter is motivating an end to the clutter madness. Be sure to find her blog in my favorites and subscribe so you can share in her next life changing adventure. 100 hundred pounds in one year. It took me a year to lose 25 pounds, but I have no doubt she will do it. Meanwhile, I gotta go clean my sink.