Perhaps you just need a system to help keep your home in order. Most systems of this kind were invented by Americans, who generally like to streamline everything. One of the most popular is Flylady. Flylady in the Russian way is more adapted for our compatriots.

A bit of history – Marla Scilly the flying housewife

Flylady, or "flying housewife" (from the English Flylady, fly – to fly), is a system invented by the American Marla Scilly based on the book by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. The name "Flylady" was born at the very beginning of the existence of the system and had nothing to do with flights. FLY was an abbreviation of the English phrase finally loving yourself – "love yourself at last." However, very quickly, fans of the system introduced flight terminology. Newcomers to the system are traditionally called "Flybabies", even if their age has exceeded retirement.

flylady movement

In 1999, Marla Seeley began sending out materials about her system by e-mail. Two years later, the website www.flylady.net was launched, which still sends daily reminder letters to registered participants about what needs to be done around the house. As of 2010, the mailing list had over half a million active subscribers worldwide. Plus the active sites of the Flylady system, translated into many languages of the world by fans of the system – the Flylady movement is gaining more and more popularity all over the world.

The Flylady system and its basis

According to Marla Seeley, there are people who are organized from birth, these usually do not have problems with the cleanliness of housing, you can come to them at any time of the day or night, and everything will sparkle. Such people sincerely do not understand that someone cannot cope with cleaning.

There are also unorganized housewives who do not have a mountain of dishes in the kitchen and unironed linen in the room that make such housewives sad, and cleaning on weekends turns into torture for them, because it is not clear where to start, everywhere is a mess. For such, the Flylady system was invented, offering a number of simple sequential steps, by following which you can significantly reduce the level of clutter in the house and stop suffering at the thought of the upcoming cleaning.

Ideally, followers of the system may come to the point where they stop doing spring cleaning altogether – daily minimal efforts allow you to keep the house in order without a fierce battle with chaos twice a year.

The system is based on two ideas: getting rid of unnecessary trash and moving forward in small steps.

How to get rid of trash?

Flylady offers followers a simple thought, junk is impossible to streamline. As long as there are too many unnecessary, unused things in the house, cleaning turns into shifting rubbish from place to place, wiping dust from rubbish, organizing rubbish and other care for it. Therefore, the followers of the system begin to get rid of unnecessary things.

“Your house has been cluttered for days and will not be perfect overnight" is the basic principle of “decluttering” a house. The system offers different ways to get rid of trash: you can quickly walk around the apartment, pick up 27 unnecessary items and get rid of them. You can set a timer for 15 minutes and collect unnecessary things during this time. There are days when the mailing list reminds: it's time to go and throw out some junk.

It can even take several months to completely empty an apartment, balcony, mezzanine, pantries and wardrobes from unnecessary things, depending on the size of the housing and the passion for accumulating “emergency reserves” in case of a nuclear war. Marla Seeley suggests keeping only the things you love and actually use, giving them to other people or throwing the rest away.

In the future, Flylady recommends a balanced approach to purchases and purchase only what you really need. Having bought, say, new jeans, it would be a good idea to throw out the old ones, otherwise in a year you will again find several worn-out pairs that you no longer wear in your closet.

In addition to the obvious benefit of freeing up space, this measure clearly reduces the amount of dust in the house. Which, no doubt, is good for the health of all family members.

Cleaning plan

Any major or emergency cleaning drives an unorganized housewife into depression, because it implies great achievements in everyday life in a short time.

After such cleaning, you usually don't feel like taking on a mop and a rag for a long time, and the house gradually returns to its original state.

Therefore, the Flylady system suggests taking small steps, but every day. Basic principle anyone can do anything for 15 minutes. You just need to start a timer and do during this time what the system recommends for today – always make a cleaning plan. This technique allows you not to get tired. In addition, driven by a clear time frame and having certain instructions, people manage to do much more than if they thought about how to end it.

Breaking things down into small steps and moving slowly, steadily, incrementally is really effective, as has been proven by positive reinforcement training experts in humans and animals. What's more, the principle of "slower ride – further you will" ultimately leads to faster results in the development of new behavior skills, whether it be cleaning, jumping into the water or rhythmic gymnastics.

Cleaning with planning

The Flylady system has a certain set of tools that allow you to bring cleaning to automatism. The main ones are zoning, cycling, planning, performing routines, weekly cleaning with the help of planning. In addition to these purely practical methods, there are psychological ones: wear lace-up shoes at home, dress every morning in such a way that it would not be embarrassing to open the door to the postman, and wash the sink in the kitchen every evening. There are a number of special tricks, which can be found on the system's website or in the mailing list. Let's briefly talk about the main tools.

Weekly cleaning

Flylady divides the house into zones, and dedicates every week of the month to work in a certain zone. The zones, of course, are designed for the average American home, which has more space than a typical Russian apartment. However, they are easy to adapt to our realities.

Weekly cleaning is for five weeks. So, the first week of the Flybaby month is devoted to 15 minutes daily cleaning in the hallway and dining room. The second week they spend 15 minutes daily in the kitchen. The third one is in the bathroom and the nursery (in our apartments, the toilet will also have to be included here). The fourth week passes in worries about the bedroom. The fifth is in the living room, the common family room (the one we usually call the "hall").

Zone cleaning

Thus, during the month we devote time to every corner of the home – we do cleaning by zone. At the beginning of following the system, it is mainly about getting rid of unnecessary trash, paper deposits and the like. When there is no rubbish left in the zone, the time will come for a detailed cleaning, one day to wipe the baseboards, the next to wash the toilet, and so on. The newsletter will remind you what to do, so there is no need to think about what to do today.

It may seem silly to follow a to-do list in the hallway, for example. But for those who give up at the thought of putting things in order, this can be a good choice, because someone else has already come up with a sequence of actions, and you just need to follow the beaten path.

Flylady's principle – cyclicity

All housework is not only divided into zones, but also looped by weeks and months – this is the main principle of Flylady. That is, a series of actions you perform in a certain sequence, depending on the day of the week. The system offers a ready-made option. You can come up with your own. Let's say if it's more convenient for you to shop for next week not on Thursday, as Flylady suggests, but on Saturday, there is no need to follow the precepts of a guru with religious fanaticism. Each month is also a cycle of developing a new good habit. Let's say one month you're working on getting rid of unnecessary paperwork, the next you get into the habit of drinking a certain number of glasses of water a day, and so on. Again, no one forbids you to choose your habit (daily morning exercises are no worse than getting rid of electricity bills from a decade ago) and work on it.

In the year there are larger cycles of preparation for the New Year holidays is one of them. Flybabies start buying presents and preparing the house for Christmas not at the last moment, but almost a whole block in advance. The big plus is that at this time there are still no queues in the stores and you can plan purchases, instead of rushing around the shops, frantically remembering if the children of the second cousin of the mother-in-law are covered by surprises. Cyclicity is actually always present in our lives days, weeks, months, seasons. Even fruits and vegetables ripen and are present on our table in certain cycles. Moreover, smart followers of a healthy lifestyle fit training into cycles of strength, fat burning, endurance, etc.

Cleaning sequence

Flylady offers to plan almost everything, from the menu for the week, continuing with the shopping list and ending with business and meetings. This implicitly implies the presence of a pair of diaries, one for work and meetings, the second, called the control journal, to control the execution of household chores according to the Flylady system – it is very important to follow the cleaning sequence.

This may seem a bit over the top, but if the house is a complete mess, it may make sense to celebrate daily: washed the sink, tied the shoelaces, made the bed. Each tick on the to-do list means that you are already well done, and serves as a certain reinforcement. The need for an audit trail can be left open. But it is known for sure that planning menus and purchases allows you to significantly save money, eat more balanced and control the availability of products and household chemicals. And of course, there is no doubt about the need to plan meetings, visits to the doctor, school affairs, circles and sections of children.

Daily routines or cleaning rituals

Marla Seeley herself calls daily routines the most important tool of the system. It sounds scarier than it really is. Cleaning rituals are simply a list of things to do every morning and every evening. It is optional, you can adapt it to suit your lifestyle.

In the most general form, the morning routine may include making all the beds, wiping the mirror and sink in the bathroom after washing, loading the washing machine, laying out yesterday's dried laundry in places (relevant for those who work at home or sit with a child). An evening routine might consist of a quick scrubbing of the toilet with a dash of detergent, wiping surfaces in the kitchen, preparing clothes for the next day, making sure to clean the kitchen sink, and so on.

In general, routines should not take more than 15-20 minutes and do not imply laundering as such, only superficial cleanliness in those places that get dirty easily and quickly in everyday life, because they are constantly used by all family members.

To answer a possible yes question, Flylady suggests wiping down anything that looks clean daily. Then it just won't get dirty. Let's say, once washed the stove will remain shiny in the future, and the mirror in the bathroom will no longer have to be scrubbed from toothpaste streaks.

Washing clean may seem somewhat redundant. On the other hand, if you wipe once a week, you will have to work on surfaces and plumbing. You can try, suddenly the proposed mechanism suits you.

Cleaning by day of the week

Flylady suggests calling (and considering) cleaning a blessing at home rather than a tedious chore. This is definitely a matter of semantics. Whatever you call a mop, it still just cleans the floor. But there are a couple more rules about weekly cleaning: it should last no more than 1 hour 10 minutes – this is the first. And secondly, any cleaning on the days of the week is better than none. In the sense that there are no ideal, verified, documented and carved in stone ways to do cleaning. And even if you fall short of the high bar of your mother or mother-in-law and just wipe the floors in the center, it's better than not washing the floor at all.

Timed cleaning

They also offer to clean on a timer, no longer than 10 minutes per operation, and you need to act superficially and quickly (because you already clean the corners imperceptibly during daily fifteen minutes in the zones). In general, such cleaning involves spending 10 minutes vacuuming in the rooms, mopping in the bathroom, toilet and kitchen, dusting mirrors and glass doors, changing bedding, throwing out unnecessary newspapers and magazines (for those who have them), throw out the garbage from all the baskets (for those who keep a basket in each room).

As you can see, some of the points are not particularly relevant for our realities, so they can simply be omitted or replaced with more pressing tasks. Flylady allocates Monday for hourly cleaning, which is not particularly suitable for working Russian women. Nobody forbids you to choose any other day to clean up, or just break this hour into ten minutes and do one thing every day. Dust on Monday, vacuum cleaner on Tuesday, etc.

Photo Flylady – shoes with laces

Flylady suggests starting the day by wearing lace-up shoes. It doesn't have to be shoes – T-shirts are fine.

The point is to feel more collected, this time. Being ready to immediately take the trash to the trash cans is two (more relevant for the American middle class, who has a personal trash can in the backyard). Three – for those who do not work “in the presence”, this does not allow them to loosen up and walk around in wrinkled pajamas before the arrival of their husband. Four – lace-up shoes are difficult to remove to collapse on the sofa in front of the TV, instead of ironing three shirts on a timer. Relevant for those who do not go to work.

Photo Flylady – how you should look to feel comfortable.

Dress well every day

This, of course, is more important for those who spend most of the day at home – housewives, new mothers, freelancers and shift workers, like "a day in three." You are not required to wear evening wear or a business suit. But Flylady suggests dressing neatly and neatly before embarking on daily activities. The explanation for this is very simple, when you look neat and fit, you feel better. In addition, you do not need to rush around the apartment in search of pants if the neighbor calls at the door.

Wash the kitchen sink every night

Despite the quite visible results, this tool can rather be attributed to psychotherapeutic. The sink is the starting point of the entire Flylady system, it is proposed to take the first step from it: just go and wash the kitchen sink properly. And this is the end of every day: wash the sink if it needs washing, or just wipe it dry.

What's the point? Also in positive reinforcement for those who are depressed from the inability to clean up. In the morning I came to the kitchen, and there was an island of cleanliness. In the evening I washed again, made an effort on myself, well done.

You can argue about the advisability of such a fixation on the kitchen sink. In general, no one forbids you to choose your starting point, maintaining which in order will help to maintain strength and confidence for further work to put the house in order.

Common Cleaning Questions

The system has existed for many years, so it has been chewed up and sorted out to the smallest detail. However, there are a number of typical cleaning questions that arise for those who are just introduced to it and decide whether to try it. The biggest complaint is the shoes.

Is it true that you need to wear high heels every day?

No it is not true. The height of the heels is not regulated in any way by the system, it is just a comfortable shoe that you can spend all day in. The meaning of the laces on this shoe is outlined above.

What's wrong with slippers?

Because they are easy to throw off. You can try to perceive shoes simply as part of a working home uniform. Well, they are, and the author of the system believes that they are needed. In fact, Marla Seeley, of course, will not come to you and check whether you are barefoot or in lace-up shoes.

Is it true that for the successful implementation of the system you need to buy a special diary, rags, brushes and a universal remedy for everything directly on the Flylady website in America? Not true. You can do without all these wonderful items. After all, your goal is to get rid of unnecessary things, and not at all to buy new ones.

Common cleaning mistakes

Despite the short time spent on housework every day, the Flylady system gives results quite quickly, there is more order in the house. At this point, it's easy to get overwhelmed and start making the cleaning mistake of over-structuring your life and your home.

Very often, fans of the system begin to buy up every conceivable box, chest of drawers and containers for folding and organizing anything, purchase tags and stickers in industrial quantities and organize everything in their closet just to post photos on the Internet in the community of fans of the system.

Flylady does not require a complex system of labeling things and serious care for boxes and folders. If you catch yourself buying up the entire assortment of a Swedish furniture store or an entire stationery store, you may have been carried away. Think about whether you really need all these things that you are going to lay out in so many boxes? Flylady proposes to make life much easier, not to complicate it with the introduction of a sophisticated system for storing and packing a bunch of things.

Also, do not fall into a cleaning rage and buy all kinds of products for washing everything that is in the apartment. First, mixing detergents with different effects can easily lead to unpredictable chemical reactions and, for example, poisoning. Secondly, you probably have underused supplies of all-purpose detergents waiting in the wings. And thirdly, in a few weeks or a couple of months after the start of the system, you will wash off the most depressing dirt (yes, in small steps every day). Then you will definitely not need special potent agents for washing different types of dirt, you will need something universal to maintain cleanliness.

Recharging the batteries

Last but not least, Flylady suggests planning everything, including recharging your batteries. In the list of things recommended for doing every day, there is always a little time (the same 15 minutes) for yourself. It can be a salt bath, a short yoga session for relaxation, a face mask. No matter what, every day.

At first glance, it seems that 15 minutes a day is nothing. However, 15 minutes in a warm bath is enough to relax tense shoulders. And this is already a lot. In addition, the system allocates weekends for communication with family, friends, recreation and entertainment. All this will allow you to recharge your batteries without waiting for complete exhaustion and breakdown.

Do you find it strange to plan time with your family and put it in your diary? On the other hand, if there is no other way to carve it out, and the whole weekend is spent ironing and cooking, then why not try it? After all, what do you have to lose? Other than a bunch of junk?