FLYing with FlyLady

I posted that one of my New Year's Resolutions was FLYing. What is FLYing?? It's a new project that I started in November. Anyone who's ever been in my room in Monmouth (or Smith dorm room) knows that I have a major problem with clutter. Really major! FLYing is a way to set routines and de-clutter your life and home.

My mother sent me the link to FLYing (www.flylady.net) last November, and as soon as I read "Are you living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome)?" I knew that this was something for me. In fact, I'd been meaning to have a few people over for awhile-- it was time for my annual Ladies' Christmas Bash, after all!-- but my apartment was so out of control that I didn't feel able to send out the invites. I'd have to do so much work to make it presentable, it didn't seem worth the effort for one evening.

Whoa, how my view has changed since then! Part of FLYing is realizing that YOU deserve a clean home; it's not just something for when company comes over! And you'd be a lot happier without your clutter; it weights you down and prevents you from doing things, like having a fun evening with friends because you don't want anyone to see it. So de-accessioning your clutter, ultimately, is about loving yourself enough to get rid of it. (There are many FLY-Lady slogans. One of them is: You can't clean clutter. You can only get rid of it! And clutter=anything that you do not need, love, or want.)

I have so many momento-like things in my apartment and room back home-- mugs, pamphlets from museums/aquariums/temples/other places I've been to during trips, tons of movie and entrance tickets, a lot of stuff I thought I would eventually scrapbook, stuff going back to my first year at college! Well, scrapbooking everything is simply not going to happen. It's kind of like blogging-- sometimes I just don't have time because I'm too busy doing stuff. When I stopped blogging last year, it was because I thought: I can live my life, or I can blog about it. There didn't seem to be enough time (outside of school, in a place where I had internet access) to do both. But even when I have time, I don't scrapbook. And, at this point, blogging is much easier and keeps just as good a record of everything. So out with the scrapbooking stuff!

FLYing has helped me to realize that even if I don't have the momentos (the stuff which seems important at the time but becomes clutter) to prove that something happened and was important to me, it still happened. My memory can be quite sporatic at times, so I think I was hanging onto things in order to remember them. But I don't really need, still love, or want T-shirts from my high school math club or 7 different TAM t-shirts. So when I was home over Christmas, I spent some time clearing out some of that clutter. There's still a lot left, but I made progress!

I'm still a bit amazed every time I come home to my Tsushima apartment. This past week I was finally able to clear all the clutter off my kitchen table; I seriously have not seen the full surface of that table since a few weeks after I moved in, back in August 2008! It's a bit chilly in the kitchen to eat meals there now, but I look forward to breakfasts there this spring. The last one I can remember having at that table was a 3 AM jet-lag granola snack in 2008. Everything is so much more open, too. There's plenty of room to roll out the yoga mat or play with the balance ball that I finally dug out of the closet!

The #1 FLYing commandment (if it can be called that)-- the first place you start-- is shining your sink and keeping it clean. I didn't really get it at first, but now I know: not having a clean sink is such a deterrent to any cooking. I'm not perfect, so some days there are dishes hanging out in the sink (although those days are getting fewer!). When I see the dishes, I think: Ugh! I have to clean up those dishes if I want to cook anything. ...having a clean kitchen slate to start with, so to speak, is very inspiring for cooking adventures. Everything's ready to go, I can use any pot or dish I want at a moment's notice. With a clean sink, I notice other clutter in the kitchen, too, and can deal with it a little at a time. And waking up in the morning to a clean and shined sink? Priceless.