apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

hmmm, are you a flylady follower by any chance?

her methodology starts with shining the sink on the theory that yes, once you do that, as you say, the rest of the kitchen naturally follows. and it turns out, there's a "shiny sink" in every room. making the bed keeps that room from turning into a giant pile of clothing.

ALWAYS sort the mail immediately. Mail is the great enemy of order. It rises in towering stacks on the kitchen table and threatens to overwhelm everything in its path. Controlling the mail is key.

Most mail is crap, and can be disposed of within minutes. The good stuff is few and far between, and bills go into the bill box.

Even just writing it down makes me feel better.

Clean as you go, no matter what you are doing..cooking, showering and getting ready to leave for the day, whatever.

I work from home but when my day ends and I have to leave the house, I make sure my Master Bathroom is always spotless..it just makes me feel better when I return and see a totally clean bathroom.

Indeed Abby! I don't follow so much anymore but a couple of years ago the philosophy really did the trick for me. i love the idea of setting the timer and focusing!

I wash the dishes (i.e. rinse and toss in dishwasher) as soon as I'm done cooking/eating. And when the dishwasher is full, I run it at night after dinner, that way I don't have to dig in the dishwasher for a plate to handwash because I was too lazy to just turn on the dishwasher.
Unfortunately, this method isn't foolproof when you live a roommate, who doesn't understand that the purpose of having a dishwasher is so you don't have to leave dishes in the sink. :/

i try to make my bed every morning. that makes my whole apartment feel better. i also am strict about putting clothes away and tossing dirty laundry in the hamper. amongst many other things...

im kinda ocd though...i love to clean.

I sweep the living/dining room floor at least every other night and sometimes mop as well - floors get awful very quickly when you have so many pets.

I'm also trying to start removing shoes at the door. We track in all kinds of leaves and dirt, despite our doormat.

I'm sort of a reformed slob, changed over years of semi-earnest attempts to improve. Maxwell's book has some good maintenance lists at the end, including things to do every day, like making the bed, dealing with the mail, etc.

Although the flylady site is so gakky, the concept is fantastic. I recently started getting the flylady emails again (don't get the individual ones, since they'll flood your mailbox; get the summary version). Also, most of that summary email I don't even read, but some of it is a jogger to my inner "cleaning self," which might not come out otherwise.

A couple of flylady ideas that are really working for me right now are:
-two minute clean up of "hotspots"
-instead of doing a big cleaning periodically, do 15 minute cleanings more often (setting the timer). I still do weekly cleanups, but this seems to help most with keeping clutter at bay, preventing big messes and making inroads into things I don't want to do - kind of an icebreaker.

Also, if I'm standing around in the kitchen waiting for my tea water to boil or something like that, I'll spend that time cleaning/decluttering/organizing. Using those tiny amounts of time really work.

I don't have a dishwasher so I have to wash everything by hand so that's something I don't often do daily but most times, I'll get in there and wash everything before I begin making dinner or while the water is boiling or something similar.

For a long time, I would often be found calling and chatting with my sister while washing dishes on a Saturday morning, just something that ended up being. :-)

Last night I took a few minutes and gave the bathroom sink a good scrubbing as it was getting rather yucky and to clean my shower, I'll usually do it on Saturday morning at the end of the shower, I have the scrubbing bubbles, scrub sponge handy and just do it while still in there and then use the hand shower to rinse and then do a final rinse of me before stepping out and it doesn't take long to do. Right now I need to vacuum and such but will wait until I get the tree decorated (it's up and strung with lights but that's it at the moment). I also need to pick up the bedroom too.

This is often the case when I live alone in a job that has me home by 6pm or after and tired so not much gets done in the evenings generally. :-(

Ah well.

My friend is a clutter disaster so we're going to be spending some weekends doing my activity called "Decluttering & A DVD."

Dividing each room into sectors. 1hr decluttering, 1hr of watching a DVD. In an 8hr time period that's 4hrs of decluttering and 2 movies!

I should claim this to be his Christmas present.

Pixie,

Gakky? Please define.

Something that's gakky is something that, upon contact with it, forces you to turn your head slighty askew and make a "gak" sound in the back of your throat, lip curled slightly and an eyebrow raised a little.

Gak also means "barf" so it could just be "barfy."

Well put melanie.

For anyone who wants to make their own assessment, here it is:
http://www.flylady.net/

We swear by Bon Ami in our house. I also hide a few containers of the clean-up "wipes" for quick/last minute rush jobs in the bathroom and under the sink.

ok, i love upstate ... i'm looking at the bon ami site right now for clean-up "wipes" and can't find any. help?

laure, pixie

me too. i confess -- i too am a secret flylady follower. the philosophy's so ingrained in me that i can barely remember the time before flylady (i wasn't a slob so much as confused about what to do and in what order)...i felt it was the first step in the journey that lead to a.t. and going from home to haven. the tricks taught me how to keep my home clean painlessly; a.t.'s taught me how to kick it up a notch & make it pretty to boot.

and yeah, pixie, i totally agree, the site's totally gakky but once i got past that -- and the serious deluge of emails -- it sure beat those marathon cleaning sessions and deciding on what to wear by what was clean!

For me, making the bed every morning is a commitment to mental health and order, and it's really nice to get into a made bed every night. No dishes in the sink overnight -- they are either rinsed & in the dishwasher or handwashed. I am not so good about mail, but I try to sort through the mountain at leasst once a week.

I love the idea of setting the timer and doing a 15 minute stint of cleaning or tidying. That's actually doable.

since i live in los angeles and spend hours in my car, i try to keep it as clutter free as possible. i've made it a rule never to eat in my car and to not leave any boxes, shopping bags, files, papers, CDs, etc in the backseat overnight. makes such a difference!

Like Abby, I started out with FlyLady several years ago and found AT at the tail end of the Color contest last year. A lot of FlyLady's tips have become habits: making my bed is part of my getting dressed routine, which comes right after my shower and straightening up/wiping down the bathroom. When I get home from work, mail in hand, I go directly to the kitchen to unload my lunch bag and open the mail. Bills, things to be filed, etc. go in a pile on the counter - envelopes, inserts, flyers (except for the grocery ads) go in the trash; the filing cabinet (for whatever needs to be kept) is next to the desk (with a designated spot for bills) on the way to my bedroom to stash my totebag in a sort of landing area (with space for library books or whatever else needs to be transported somewhere else). I then head back to the kitchen and wash my lunch containers with one of those sponge/brush things with the handle that contains dishwashing liquid and do a run-thru of the house checking hotspots, etc.

Fortunately, my new husband has the same habits - for both of us the biggest problem is/has been 'stuff' and clutter - which we're working on as we combine households.

I've already bookmarked AT on his computer (much newer than mine) and will be calling on the community here for help after the holidays as we start getting ready to sell the house. The walls are white, the bathroom and kitchen have gray accents, the carpet is tan and the furniture is brown striped. Sigh. I'm going to need lots of help...

I think this will be a first (OCD); I spray water on the lines my sofa bed makes in the carpet and then vacuum. What can I say my Mother was a neat freak.

I really get a sense of inner calm when I walk into my studio apt., now you know why, and and everything look the way I like it.

Love Apt.Therapy.


susan