Cleaning the house! Who, me?

Have you ever heard of The Flylady? If not, you can check her out at Flylady.com. She also has a Facebook page. One of the biggest parts of following her advice on organizing and cleaning is to do things in 15 minutes chunks of time. You can do anything for 15 minutes. I used to try to follow her advice about making a Control Journal for keeping routines but I found I focused more on creating the journal than using it to help me clean the house!

So years have gone by since I tried any of her suggestions. Recently, I've been having the urge to purge junk out of the house and get it more organized. Sort of like "Spring Cleaning" except in the Fall. The timing is perfect because we like to decorate for Christmas on the week-end after Thanksgiving. Well when I went to The Flylady on Facebook, I saw people playing a Flylady Bingo game. The idea is to make a list of 6 things you want to do in your house, laundry, dishes, etc. Then one person on the site volunteers to call a number. What ever number they call, you do the corresponding chore on your list for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, you go check the site and see what number gets called next. Three numbers are called for the first 45 minutes. Then next next 15 minutes is a break. Then the last three numbers are called. I joined in a few days ago and it's really motivating and a lot of fun. I've been really seeing a difference in my house.

Sometimes I put a chore on my list more than one time. I learned after the first time I played that I finished the game with a lot of unfinished jobs. The next game I played I listed laundry three times because I had a lot of clean clothes to put away. I'm planning on playing another round this afternoon. Then nice thing is, you can jump into the game anytime you want. You don't have to wait for a new game to start. I figure 15 minutes worth of cleaning, organizing and purging junk is better than none!

If you struggle with being motivated to clean, this is a great way to make it fun! Even Chloe gets into it and wants to help me!