I love Flylady and have been a “flybaby” for six years. She has definitely been a mentor for me; it’s not a cleaning “system” but rather a way of life. To check more out go to: www.flylady.net and if you get overwhelmed I’d be happy to walk you through it.
I get her emails in a digest form – which is really the only way in my opinion b/c you would get inundated with emails otherwise. In one of her recent “Morning Musings” she wrote about clutter, which she often does, but I was struck by one of her points about the storage in older homes. Storage is always a selling point when you are looking for a new house or adding on– but FlyLady begs the question, What are we actually storing?…here’s a snippet:
“When you look at older homes, you see a house with very little
storage. When I think about a hundred years ago, we were not a society
of stuff! We had just what we needed. Everything had a place because
we didn’t need all those extra closets or cabinets.
Now we have to have not only tons of closets, drawers and cabinets at
our fingertips; but we have off premise storage and portable storage
that gets delivered to our homes. Just make a phone call and your
clutter can be put in a hermetically sealed container and placed into
humidity controlled environment for posterity. I know that these
people need to make a living too. Our clutter is not only costing us
big bucks when we purchase it but we can do pay by the month plan to
give it a home for eternity. The clutter is going to keep sucking the
life out of us one way or another.
What is STUFF anyway? One of our members gave it an appropriate
meaning; Something That Undermines Family Fun! It gets in our way, it
tugs at our hearts, it begs for your attention and it takes money from
our family to keep it in storage! It is time to get rid of the burden!
That is what it really is; a burden we have to carry with us. It gets
dumped on us with all its guilt from extended family. Our homes are
not museums, storage units or landfills.
Our homes are our sanctuary from the world. They are our place to
relax and celebrate living; not just existing. “ – FLYDAY, Morning Musing: A New Month, A New Habit
