My mother's house never looked like this...

[rikibeth]

I'm with adpaz. I want to START from a clean house, and then I could manage routines to keep it clean.

Yes, I've tried FLYlady. The routines are good, but I cannot handle all that glurge that comes along with the reminders. And BatLady's and alt_fly's reminders are NOT detailed enough.

And I am fundamentally not patient enough to handle "it didn't get this messy in a day, it won't get clean in a day." I don't care. I want it clean NOW NOW NOW. And I think it DID get this messy in a day -- the day we moved in. Right?

I am also really burnt on cooking at home. I want to run the kitchen in my house the way we run it at work -- certain staple items always in stock, and make familiar and new dishes from combining Stuff On Hand, and just replenish the raw materials as needed. I need to figure out what it is that people will EAT, as components, and then make sure we just stock for that. And I have to take into account the diabetic and the picky eight-year-old, AND a budget. Aaaaaargh.

I had this desk all clean a few months ago -- whenever it was I made my post about Legos. It's a pit again. I do not understand it. I do not know why it is a pit. But there is stuff everywhere, and it's a disaster.

WHERE ARE MY HOUSE ELVES?

Comments

[adpaz.livejournal.com]

Relaxing in Acapulco with mine, I think.

It's hard, but we can BOTH do it. We'll get our places clean, we'll visit, we'll keep supporting each other and we'll be fine. We CAN conquer this!

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I bet I know what happened to the house-elves, mine at least. They mistook doll clothes that Charlotte left lying around for a termination notice.

We'll do it.

[cleverthylacine]

Sadly, I think your elves and mine joined Dobby's rebellion.

Yet another reason to shoot the m*therf*cker. Wizards and wizarding creatures never expect bullets.

WHERE ARE MY HOUSE ELVES?

[arden-ranger.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the cat ate mine. He has that look in his eye.

[ellensmithee.livejournal.com]

I tried Flylady once, but I failed on the first assignment - bleach your sink. Chlorine bleach is not readily available in Germany because it's not environmentally safe!!!

There, I said it.

[kcarp.livejournal.com]

I want the woodland creatures from Disney's Snow White.

Seriously, though, I say tell all your relatives you want cash for hiring a housecleaning service for the next gift-giving occasion. Heck, for my 2003 birthday, I told Josh to hire someone to scrub and wax my hated kitchen floor. (I still hate it. But she did get all the gunk off and made it somewhat more shiny.)

Or, convince my mother that you're one of her daughters. She loves to come clean my house. And right now I'm at her house, where she tries to do all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. And a fair amount of helping with the kids. I'll use her manic energy any time. :)

K


(And omigosh, I want that Tom Riddle icon.)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I have to find all the surfaces under the clutter before the cleaning service can clean! It's NOT the scrubbing and such that's the problem. It's the STUFF!

[kcarp.livejournal.com]

I know that pain.

For me, it was SEVERAL layers of decluttering and simplifying and all that crap. As in, get rid of all I thought I could, then move on to another room, then another, and then go back to the first room and do it all over again.

And a healthy amount of learning to organize. Unfortunately, no two people organize the same way, so I won't even ATTEMPT to give pointers. If I lived closer, I'd offer to come drink your alcohol and help with filing. Liz and I do this.

But hey, at least I'm finally rid of most of the baby clutter. Too bad stepping on legos hurts more than stepping on too-small socks.

K

[lintra.livejournal.com]

Now, we have this very informal labor exchange service amoung my circle where before parties, if requested, someone usually ends up over cleaning someone else's house. Jenn has done it for me more than once, and vice-versa.

We get a lot done when we do this. Maybe you can have Amber over for a weekend of cleaning, and then vice versa.

When I say cleaning, I mean throwing away everything you can. I've discovered that's the key to cleaning. (Or giving away, whatever...)

Of course, this comes from the lady who has not tackled the waist deep basement room, even though her kid was out of town for three weeks.

[technomom]

Coolness. We do work trades, as well. My housemate and I are helping another friend get and stay clean and decluttered/organized in exchange for some serious home repair and improvement work.

[technomom]

I cannot stand FlyLady. I've tried subscribing a couple of times. The constant nagging managed to make me hate checking my email. I felt it was pretty damned condescending, too.

I greatly prefer Sandra Felton's Messies books. She has a "must get it done NOW" method called the Mount Vesuvius plan. She doesn't suggest it, but realizes that sometimes you need it CLEAN NOW!
http://www.messies.com/

The Organizer Lady emails from her site come twice a day if you sign up - much less intrusive than FlyLady.

[technomom]

Hit post too soon, darn it!

We've found it WELL worth the money to pay a cleaning service $100 every other week to come in and clean the bathrooms, floors and all surfaces, control cobwebs, etc. I just can't do it, physically, any more, and nobody else wants to (or has the same standards I do).

That reminds me - I need to ask them about cleaning the fridge and oven again.

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

I've been reading a book about getting organized for people with ADD, "ADD-Friendly ways to organize your life," co-authored by a woman with ADD and a woman who is a professional organizer, and it's really opening my eyes. I'm letting Drew get things organized to get started (since the fibromyalgia does limit the energy I have for the getting-organized project), especially the kitchen, but I hope to be able to maintain it using the ideas from the book.

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

I hear you.

Imagine trying to keep a place as tiny and cluttered as mine clean. Now imagine that you don't have a dishwasher or a washing machine.

darthsatyr is in the midst of a massive reorganization which should help things once it's done. But in the meantime, of course, it's messier than ever.

[pixel.livejournal.com]

WHERE ARE MY HOUSE ELVES?

"I had one once, then I accidentally handed it a tasseled pastie. Last I saw it the thing was skipping gaily down the street, it's freeing bit if clothing twirling happily before it."