Fabulous Finds Friday: FlyLady

Hey, guys!  Welcome back to Talk Fabulous!

It’s March, the month of spring.  With spring comes warm weather, beautiful flowers, green grass, birds chirping, and spring cleaning.  How glorious those sound, until we get to the cleaning part.  To commemorate this time-honored tradition, this month’s Fabulous Finds Fridays will be all about cleaning.   Today, let’s talk about how to simplify the cleaning process so we can spend more time outside and less time inside.

I’m not fond of cleaning, AT ALL.  I have a terrible habit of putting it off and putting it off until it all piles up into a Saturday full of chores.  I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I want to spend my Saturday. Knowing that I needed some help getting out of this cycle of craziness, I took to the App store.  There’s gotta be an app for that, right?  Lo and behold, there are apps to help you get organized with your cleaning.  One particular app caught my eye and it’s called FlyLady.  I first heard about FlyLady about 10 years ago from a co-worker.  She had just had her first child, her husband was in vet school, and she worked full-time.  She was a busy mama!  She started using FlyLady with really great results.  I figured an internet brand that had that kind of staying power must be good, so I downloaded the app (you can find it on the iOS or Google Play Store by searching for FlyHelper). FlyLady also has a website with the same information here.

So, what is FlyLady, you ask.  Basically, it’s a system designed to help you easily get organized, reduce clutter, and establish routines to clean your home.  FlyLady is big on doing little things to make life easier and more enjoyable. Primarily, I use the app as it’s super convenient having the information I need right on my phone. The information on the app corresponds to the Launch Pad on the website.  There’s tons of wonderful information on the website too, and I would recommend checking it out.  Today, though, I’ll just be talking about the app and the Launch Pad.

When you open the app you’re greeted by 6 buttons: Routines, Tasks, Zones, Day Plan, Meal Planner, and Timer. Let’s quickly touch on each category to give you an idea of what this is all about. Routines is pretty self-explanatory. FlyLady devises a morning, afternoon, evening, weekly, and monthly routine for us.  I find this quite helpful.  In the app, this is completely customizable.  You can easily add or delete items to fit your needs.  I would recommend not deleting any task until you’ve tried it for at least a week.  You might be surprised by the result.  Clearly, I’m speaking from experience.  😉  Tasks give you a spot to write down your own to-dos.  This is where things go that I’ve been putting off.  Zones is an especially useful area.  FlyLady breaks your home into several zones and assigns tasks to each of them.  Every week, we tackle a different zone.  The Day Plan is also very useful.  All the information we need for the day is listed here including our daily routines, which zone we’re on, and much, much more.  The Meal Planner I haven’t used much yet, but this could be a great way to plan meals.  Finally, the timer is just that, a timer.  This comes in pretty handy at times.

Now you might be asking, “Missy Ann, this is all fine and good, but why should I use this system?” FlyLady stands out from the others because it’s easy and doable.  Open the app and you could start with something right now.  It’s all about baby steps with FlyLady.  She reminds us our homes didn’t get messy overnight and they’re not going to get clean overnight either.  She suggests a timer for usually 15 minutes per task, then moving on to something else.  That way we’re not spending half our Saturday cleaning.  As I mentioned earlier, she’s also big into doing little things to make life better.  For instance, making your bed in the morning.  I’ve never been one to make my bed; it’s just going to get messed up later.  However, when I started making the bed, you wouldn’t believe the positive effect that had on my psyche.  The rest of your room could be a complete disaster, but if your bed’s made, everything seems clean and you’re happier.  I just barely scratched the surface here.  FlyLady truly has something for everyone.  I highly, highly recommend checking it out.  You won’t be disappointed!

This was a long post.  Thanks for hanging in there!  Have you tried FlyLady or another system?  Let me know about your experience in the comments below or on the Facebook page.

That’s all for today.  See you guys in my next post!

lylas,
MissyAnn