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HC interviews Marla Cilley, aka FlyLady, on making a permanent difference in your household environment:
HC:
It’s a new year and a lot of us see this as an opportunity to leave the "old us" behind and get a fresh start. Creating a new home environment can play a huge part in that. If I were to make a resolution to keep my house totally clean from here on out, what would you say to me about that?
Marla: What I would tell you about that is to forget about resolutions … pat you on the back, give you a great big hug and say, "Resolutions have always set us up for failure." We do not need a new year, a new month, a new week to start fresh. We can do it any day of the week, any hour of the day. We decide to take the baby steps that it takes to establish a new habit.
HC: How do I get into a habit that is completely different from how I’ve been living?
Marla: Well, you have to think about what that habit is. I mean this global thing of having a new environment in your home — that is just huge. You have to sit down and logically think about what it is you are wanting to change, what’s not working and why it hasn’t worked. Then establish the baby steps that you want to take to get to the goal that you’re after.
HC: What is a baby step?
Marla: A baby step is a tiny little behavior modification. For changing the environment in your home … go to bed at a decent hour.
HC: Interesting. That’s probably not the first thing someone would think about. How would that affect their indoor home environment?
Marla: It affects the way you get up in the morning. Your body gets the rest it needs and you have the energy to do what you need to do.
HC: Then what kinds of habits would help someone gain control of their home?
Marla: The first thing you’ve got to look at is what’s out of control. Is clutter falling out of the kitchen door, hitting you in the foot? Are the children’s toys everywhere, total chaos reigning? And "chaos" for us is "Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome."
Let’s say you stand at your front door as if you’re coming into the house for the first time. You look straight ahead into the living room and there’s stuff everywhere. That clutter is what’s keeping you with no energy. It drains the life out of the family. If that clutter was gone, you would feel like the house was clean, even if it wasn’t spotless.
Now my habit is to sit in a chair with my feet propped up. And on either side of my chair I have a table. And each table tends to become a hot spot. So a couple of times a day, I clean off those hot spots, put away the things I have placed there. And at night I do it before I go to bed, so that I get up in the morning to a clean surface.
Clutter is a big obstacle to feeling the wonderful environment of our home hugging us. That’s what I believe homes should do. You should walk in the door and feel comforted.
HC: How does guilt become an obstacle?
Marla: "I’m a lazy person." I get e-mails like that every day. And I say, "No, Honey, you’re not lazy. You’re just not focused. I can help you keep from getting sidetracked."
You take that guilt, coupled with perfectionism — and all of us were taught, if you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all… The perfectionist says, "I don’t have time to do it. I’ll do it later." So it becomes procrastination.
I teach them they can do anything for 15 minutes. Anything. I teach them that the timer is their friend. And it will keep you focused if you use it. I use my timer all day long.
HC: While I’m acquiring new habits, what happens if I miss two or three days because my life gets crazy?
Marla: Life does get totally crazy. If I miss a day, I can jump back in the next day. Two days, I don’t beat myself up. I look at what’s going on and say, okay, I’ve already done three days this week. It’ll be okay. At the bottom of every e-mail I send out, I have those words. Jump in where you are. You’re not behind. Our perfectionism thinks we’re behind. I want people to start fresh every day, not look at yesterday, because yesterday is old news.
HC: How long have you successfully maintained your own home?
Marla: For six years now.
HC: Have you ever gotten off track during those years?
Marla: Oh, yes. It happens occasionally, especially when I had a week in the hospital. When you have a week like that, you don’t beat yourself up because you are sick. You can’t do things that you would normally do.
I teach people to build a control journal — a home operations manual, that’s what I call a control journal. You start out with your before-bed routine. What do you need to do before you go to bed to get ready for the next day? You start small. You can’t do it all at once. But you build on three things: lay out your clothes for tomorrow, brush your teeth, make sure the [kitchen] sink is shining before you go to bed. And then you can add to that: police your hot spots. Pick up the toys off the floor. Have the children do it — a two-minute fire drill, gathering up all the toys and putting them back where they belong.
You get up in the morning, you walk into your kitchen — and it’s clean! You walk into your living room, and there’s nothing on the tables except the pretty stuff.
FlyLady is personal coach-by-e-mail to thousands. She weaves her way through housecleaning and organizing tips with homespun humor, daily musings about life and love, the Sidetracked Home Executives (SHE™) system, and anything else that is on her mind.
