Getting Organized With Flylady

Have you heard of the Flylady? Also known as Martha Cilley, the Flylady has been helping people just like you take control of their home organization woes since 1999. Whether you just need a little help keeping tabs on all of your piles, or you need to do a major organization overhaul and don’t know where to begin, you might be able to make sense of the madness using the Flylady’s techniques. While she has several books available for sale, you can get started for free by going to her website. Here are a few of the strategies that you’ll find on the site and in her books:

Instead of making a bunch of to-do lists and having random notebooks all over the house containing emergency information, recipes, school calendars and chore charts, the Flylady says that you should keep it all in one place. That place is your Control Journal. She’ll walk you through the process of transforming an ordinary binder into the tool that will help you conquer clutter and chaos.

Martha advocates breaking your home into various zones. These include the dining room, the master bedroom, the living room, and so on. Each week, a different zone is the focus, and each day there is a simple cleaning task or two to do within that zone. For example, one day you might be dusting the corners of the ceiling and the tops of the door jambs in the dining room, and the next day you might be washing all of your knick knacks.

This is probably the cornerstone of the program. The Flylady has you setting up specific routines which you will follow in the morning, when you get home from work, and before bed. One very important routine to do before you go to bed is to shine your sink. Another is to set out your clothes, even on weekends or on days that you’re working from home. These might seem inconsequential, but on her website, she’ll explain why they’re important.

Even if your home is utterly disorganized, you will make progress just by taking small steps toward a better system. Her mantra is that you can do anything for 15 minutes, so if that’s all you can handle, you’re 15 minutes closer to a well-organized home.

If you are looking for better home organization, there are hundreds of programs out there to help you. Between a good program that keeps you on track and various home organization products that will help you tame your various tigers when it comes to clutter, you can be functioning in a much more efficient home in a relatively short time! If you feel as though you are drowning in all of the organizational tasks that must be accomplished, try checking out the Flylady for some ideas on how to take control of your situation.