Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Fly Lady Feb. 3



How to Save Your Saturdays

by the FlyLady, Marla Cilley


Our whole lives we have played "Catch Up on the Weekends"!
This put a sense of dread into our daily life. We no longer looked forward to a wonderful weekend filled with fun with our friends and family.
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This all started when we were children. It is how our mothers did it! We would have to spend all day Saturday cleaning house or we were banished to our rooms for the evening. I truly believe this is why we despise cleaning house. It has always been a punishment for us.
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I want you to have a reward for your Home Blessing Efforts. A Saturday to play is a great gift for you.
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The solution to saving your Saturdays is very simple. Let's think about how many hours you spend frantically cleaning to catch up from a whole week tossing your routines out into the street. Between our piling and procrastination, our homes look like a bomb went off.
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You can look at a room and see evidence of the things that were done this week. You know, the package that had to be wrapped for a birthday party or the whole week's worth of mail piled on the kitchen counter that is about to fall into the floor.
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On Saturday you don't wake up all excited about cleaning all day. You sleep in a bit, then drag around in your pajamas for a couple of hours with a pot of coffee to get you moving in the right direction. By the time you get started it is already noon. The next six hours are spent cleaning like a banshee so you don't feel terrible. All the while you are yelling out orders for everyone in the family to get in gear.
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I get sick just thinking about what we have done to us and our family, all because we lie to ourselves with these words: "I DON'T HAVE TIME"! The truth is that what you don't have are ROUTINES.
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You have the time, you just choose not to do anything because you don't think you have six hours to do it right. Well, you don't have six hours to clean like a banshee -- but you do have 15 minutes. Implementing just five minutes in the morning, when you come home from work and before bed will give you back your Saturdays.
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Maybe we can call this our 5-Minute Room Saturday Rescue. The secret is to pick up after yourself and get the family to do it right along with you. It can become a fun game. Set your timer three times a day -- mornings, when you get home from work or school, and just before bed. Everyone has to put away the things that belong to them. It is up to you to remember to do it. When you forget you only make it harder to do the next time.
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This does not mean you can leave the dishes in the sink and on the table. This is part of cleaning up after dinner and shining your sink. If you do this all week long then on Saturday you can do your Weekly Home Blessing Hour. With your piles put away and hot spots extinguished, your Weekly Home Blessing Hour is a breeze. Then you are off to have some fun.
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For more help getting rid of your CHAOS, check out the FLYlady's Web site and join her free mentoring group at http://www.flylady.net/, or get her book, "Sink Reflections," published by Bantam. Also look for her New York Times Best Selling book, "Body Clutter," published by Fireside. Copyright 2010 Marla Cilley Used by permission in this publication.

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