FLYing without sanity

In October 2010, I read an article that told me about FLYlady. An incentive to declutter and clean, according to her doctrines.

Which mostly boils down to do a little, achieve a lot. FLYing come from the acronym FLY, which means to Finally Love Yourself. Love yourself, stop being a perfectionist, look after your appearance and your home, and feel that you are blessing your home and your family with every little chunk of housework that you do. Get organised, never clean again. Swish away every day and never see dirt again.

You start with a clean sink. Then you have to keep it clean, which tends to mean the area around the sink gets clean too. Each day you also get sent that days "flight plan", which focuses on a room each week and gives a specific task for that day.

Marvellous. I signed up, it's all free, and had a shiny sink and pretty clean kitchen for a while. I lapsed, as is the way, and have never really got back. But I get the emails every day. All seven million of them. Have done since October 2010.

Now you see, FLYlady is certifiably insane. Aside from the blessing thing and God blowing breezes of difficulty to help you on the path to sanctity, she is also bonkers. And very very American. I don't mean that offensively, but she constantly pushes her products which can only be shipped to the US, and she seems to think all FLYbabies (for that is what we become) have a certain not-very-British lifestyle. She also uses American-ish language.

I do not possess the following which FLYlady seems to assume I do:

A basement
Spare rooms for sleeping/playing/doing mad things in
A tumble drier

Periodically she suggests you clear things to the basement or into another bedroom that you don't use. Righto.

Laundry in FLYworld consists of wash, dry, put away. No ironing. Ever. I'm not sure what she does with shirts.

To be a successful FLYbaby you must arise each morning and dress fully, with hair and make up done, before any of the rest of your family are up. And it is imperative that you put on shoes, lace up shoes at that, or you won't feel motivated to clean and clear. Ok.

FLYlady is big on her control journal. Here you write down your daily tasks and all your important data so that you know what you're doing, and so does anyone else that has to step in. A family calendar is essential for organisation.

Um. I have an iPhone and Google. Thanks but I'm sorted.

I also have two apps on my phone - Home Routine and Errands. Errands alerts me periodically to remind me that I meant to clean the kitchen floor or similar. And I dismiss them, so they alert me again. And again ad infinitum.

The emails arrive in endless trickles of madness. A daily flight plan, and then many sales emails, testimonials from sometime ever, and motivational tips on just about everything. Get fit! Wear better clothes! Woah. I just want to get tidy.

So. Her premise is that you can do anything for 15 minutes. Each of the daily tasks should take less than 15 minutes, and to declutter you do 15 minutes at a time. She advocates a timer for the 15 minutes so you know when to stop/change. She has a strategy for crisis cleaning to get out of CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) which involves timing 15 minutes in one room, then moving to another room and doing another 15 mins. And so on. Makes sense, does work. You don't finish a room, when the 15 minutes are up you move on. You'll be back and really, 15 minutes is no time. Before you know it you've done each room twice and the house looks like other people's houses look when they need gutted. Which is progress for me.

But doing hair and makeup before breakfast? Wearing lace up shoes ever? Writing everything down in a non electronic format? She's lost me.