The next part of my binder is a section called “Zones”.  This again is straight from FlyLady, actually I printed them right from the site.  (The printable detailed cleaning lists are when you scroll to the bottom of the page)  I  should probably update mine now since I printed mine over 6 years ago!!!  I’ve always wanted to change them up a bit to fit our needs a little better.  For example, in the living room zone, she has to vacuum the rugs and we don’t do rugs at our house.

The basic idea of the zone cleaning, is each week you are in a different zone (living room, bedroom, etc.) and this is when you do detail cleaning in that area of your house.  So, theoretically, the whole house should be “spring cleaned” in a month, every month.  This is just what works for me.  I’ve been doing it this way for 6 years, and my house is never perfect, but it is easier to keep up with then before I did it.

The other part I have in the Zone section, is FlyLady’s Crisis Cleaning.  I do this when I find out someone is coming over later and I feel like my house is a disaster and I don’t know where to start.  I love this page because it tells me what to do when I am usually in a panic.  Now I don’t do this when you (Mads, Greta, Liz, etc) come over, it’s more when John says “my mom and grandpa are coming over for dinner in two hours”.  I go to the page, follow what it says and it gets done without freaking out.

This page in my Binder is titled “Weekly Home Blessing Hour“.

This is straight from Flylady. It covers once a week cleaning that needs to get done.  The idea is to use a timer and only do each item for 10 minutes – then it takes just over an hour to do it all.

I just love the name of it. It’s so much better than weekly chores or to-dos.  And it’s true you are blessing your family by doing these things.  I’ve tried to change it to include more things to do, but it is too much.  FlyLady has this one just right for me.

I usually do the Weekly Home Blessing Hour on Mondays.  Sometimes, when the house is particularly trashed by Friday – I’ll do another Weekly Home Blessing Hour in preparation for the weekend.  When I worked, I did one blessing each night of the week, so 10 minutes a night.

Here’s a link to my weekly-home-blessing-hour, if you want to download it.

Another fun thing FlyLady did was to record herself walking you through the entire Home Blessing Hour.  I love this.  It’s on my iPod and when ever I need motivation, it makes me feel like I’m not doing it alone and sometimes that helps.  I can’t find where to link to this right now, but if you are interested in it I can email it to you.

History….I’ve had my binder for 6 years now and it is a living thing that changes when our needs as a family change.  I started it when I started following the Flylady group when I first got married.  I had a Binder at home and a smaller one at work that helped me be much more productive at work.  Now, as a stay at home mom, it has changed with each new kid and gets tweaked by me (or on nudging by John) when needed.

My issues…FlyLady calls hers a “Control Journal.”  I used to call mine the same, but then I realized that my to-do list, routines, and my false sense of control was becoming a “god” to me.  Let me explain.  At the end of the day, I found myself judging if I had a good day by how much I got done.   By if the kids were doing what I said.   If I got dinner on the table. If my “systems” worked on my behalf.  It was a whole myriad of little things that dictated if I had a good day and ultimately, if I had control over my day.  When I realized this, it was a sick feeling.  I was getting my affirmation from my own evaluations and my systems, instead of from God.  So the long of the short of it, is that I don’t call it my Control Journal, because for me, I have a control problem – so it’s just my Binder.

My Binder sits open on my kitchen counter 24/7.  Friends come over, look at it, question it and show interest in it and I become bashful.  I don’t really know why I am like this about my Binder.  It might be because some of the items on my routines are so trite, it’s embarrassing that there are some days I need to look at it.  For example, brush my teeth or eat lunch.  It might be because it seems to me, such a nerdy thing to have.  Why would I have all this stuff in an adult “trapper keeper” on my kitchen counter? Or it might be because that managing my home, seems like such a “natural thing” for women to just know how to do and for me it is not.  Or a little bit of all these things.

So, for me, I am baring all in this series of posts in hopes that it may help or encourage someone else.  I’ll go through page by page of what is in my Binder,  link to the pages that you can download and make your own.  More to come….