I Believe I Can Fly!

Before I had kids I used to clean my house like a crazy person every Thursday.  I would vacuum under every piece of furniture, including the fridge and stove, steam mop, and thoroughly scrub everything in the bathroom.  Now that I have 2 kids I've been... well.... busy.  Too busy to spend a whole day cleaning, or move furniture when I vacuum.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and along with that comes the all or nothing attitude.  Why vacuum if I can't even do it properly?  I started slacking big time and got into a horrible cycle with my dishes.  I would let them pile up because I just didn't feel like doing them.  Then I'd have to do them once we made every plate we owned dirty and no pots or pans left to cook with.  I would spend an hour just doing dishes.  By the time I was done, I didn't want to wash another dish anytime soon, so the same thing would happen again.  It really was vicious.  And of course I felt that if the dishes weren't done I shouldn't clean anything else because you have to do the dishes first.  It made me feel disgusted with my house, and in turn, myself.  It was embarrassing if someone would stop by unannounced.  I didn't want anyone to know my dirty little secret.

I was doing some random googling one day, and I ran across something called flylady.net.  Someone had commented on an article (I don't even know which article or what it was about) that the only way to clean in her books was the flylady way.  Now these weren't the exact words, I didn't take note of them at the time because I didn't realize that their comment would be the start of a major life change for me.

It all starts with something as simple as shining your sink.  Yup.  That's it.  The first baby step is to shine your sink.  It makes you feel pretty good about yourself to have a shiny sink.  It inspires you to push farther.  So I did.  Now, after a week of keeping my sink shiny, I also get dressed every morning and even put shoes on.  It's funny how wearing shoes can keep you focused.

Shiny sink

 I decided that keeping my sink shiny and clean for a whole week deserves a special treat.  My sink was looking so great that it made my soap dispenser pump look terrible.  So I turned to Pinterest.  I found this great tutorial to make your own mason jar soap dispenser.

New soap dispenser!

Much more "me" than the plastic pump bottle that the soap came in.

I know this is just the beginning.  My house is looking better and better every day thanks to Flylady's simple baby steps and daily routines.   If you are feeling overwhelmed with house cleaning and you are living in CHAOS(can't have anyone over syndrome,) you should definitely check it out.