Housekeeping Progress Report: How Did This Happen?

It is my second Friday of following (read: attempting to follow) a new homemaking/housecleaning routine/schedule/suggestion.  And somehow, by about 9:30AM, we were actually ready to do our morning installment of homeschool.

Huh?

No pull to check my email and blog?  No pressing cleaning project?  No new Seasonal Notebook entry to work on just really quick and then we'll get to homeschooling right away?

Huh.

I ran with it.  I've been wanting to do our Prayers and Circle Games followed by our Reading Lesson (with Bob Books) in the mornings, just after my basic morning routine, and before I delve into the day's Daily Focus.  And today, I actually did it!

Of course, I wasn't comfortable being totally on schedule, and since my routine said I could take "email breaks" during my Daily Focus time, I did just that for a while.  But the morning was nice.

I know that I need to give myself time to settle in with this new routine.  The beauty of my new system is that I do not seem to be fighting the way I naturally work.  I love FlyLady and most of her system.  I am seriously indebted to her for helping me to change my way of thinking about housecleaning and daily routines.

Actually, I think this new system would be a quick "crash and burn" if it weren't for my FlyLady training:

• It's OK for something to be good enough.
• I don't have to do everything that needs to be done in the room to check it off on the list.
• It's OK if I don't get to something today or this week.  There's always next week.

And so on.

I just never got very far with FlyLady's Weekly Home Blessing Hour, so my house didn't get cleaned well very often.  I get the concept--it's kind of that "quick tidy" you do before company arrives, assuming your house was mostly clean already.  And I get the idea that FlyLady encourages people to keep their homes "15 minutes worth of messy," meaning that you could quickly straighten the house in 15 minutes.

While I really benefit from the AM and PM routines I have set up, and I like the idea of Zone Cleaning, I don't manage to do it regularly.  Therefore, my home is never "15 minutes worth of messy." It's not a disaster, but to do the dusting and the mopping, I want to spend a little time straightening the room, maybe attacking a project in that area that has been nagging me.  Then I can get to the maintenance cleaning and dusting.  I'm sure FlyLady would disagree with me and tell me that I am thinking about it too hard.

But then, when do I get to these projects?  FlyLady would say that I should do them after my AM routine is done.  With my new system, I am seeing major projects (OK, by "major project," I mean something like washing my shower curtain or going through the bag of miscellaneous objects that's been sitting in the dining room for two months) actually get done!  And then in the interest of checking off most of the list, I do the dusting and mopping too!

So, here I am on a Friday, with the list of distractions shrinking, project by project.  I am looking at a relatively clean house.  One where I've recently gone through the girls' clothes, packing away the unseasonable items or the ones that don't fit.  One where that bag of mystery junk has been sorted.  One where the shower curtain, while retaining some mildew spots to be worked on, is back to being mostly white.  And on top of that, the floors are clean, the tub has been scrubbed, and most of the dust is gone.  Should I add that we have actually stuck with our homeschool plan for the week and I've accomplished all the activities I've planned?

This is definitely a "Go Me!" post, and I assure you that most of my weeks do not go this smoothly.  But it sure is nice when one does.  Oh, and don't worry, in a few weeks, I'll have a newborn in the house making all of the above impossible for a good long while.  ;)