FlyLady

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FlyLady is a group set up by Marla Cilley, aka the FlyLady. This group is centralized around the website FlyLady.net in combination with a Yahoo! Group. It is a support group that offers advice, tips and humor to assist people in keeping their homes neat and tidy. Subjects that are covered include clutter, routines, weekly cleaning with focus on the zone of the week (five in total), self-esteem, and perfectionism. The information is provided for free, however there is a small store at the website where tools are sold for organization, decluttering and cleaning.

FlyLady was established in 1999 as a variation on the system created by Pam Young and Peggy Jones ("The Slob Sisters") in their book called Sidetracked Home Executives. It started as a mentoring email group and grew into the website, Yahoo! group, and store that it is now. There are currently over 380,000 members.

Marla Cilley has written that the name "FlyLady" was originally her online name, as she was a Fly fishing fan and instructor. She then used this nickname when creating the e-mail list and web site. One of the members of the FlyLady e-mail list later created an acronym for FLY: Finally Loving Yourself.

The basics of the FlyLady system are outlined in Cilley's book Sink Reflections (Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-38217-9) and on the web site. The system encourages "baby steps" to develop routines and habits to organize and maintain your home. The primary focus is on Finally Loving Yourself to make you and your family's lives easier by decluttering, menu planning, "anti-procrastination" day, and planning ahead by establishing routines. Cilley's website is comprehensive. Attention is also given to organizing personal finances, taking time out to pamper yourself, date night, family fun night, and ideas from "Flybabies" (people learning to fly).

More recently Marla Cilley and Leanne Ely have come out with a New York Times bestselling book called Body Clutter: Love Your Body, Love Yourself (Fireside, ISBN 1-416-53462-8), which aims to bring the same approach to looking after your body as to looking after your home.

The Flylady System

New recruits to Flylady are called "Flybabies" and are introduced to "babysteps" - a series of 31 daily tasks which introduce and then reinforce aspects of cleaning and decluttering which build into a daily routine, with tasks split into morning routines, after work routines and bedtime routines. A crucial part to the flylady system is that you should only spend 15 minutes doing something, as otherwise you will become bored and get sidetracked.

Once flybabies have learnt the basic habits and are able to manage their daily routines, Flylady then advises including weekly routines, whereby each weekday is assigned an additional task - Monday is daily cleaning, Wednesday is errand day, Thursday is grocery day and Friday is "desk day" - sorting out paperwork and finances.

Once your home is decluttered and your daily and weekly routines established (which may take months, depending on how cluttered your home is!), Cilley advises "zone work" - each month, the home is split into five zones, and a daily 'mission' is set in that week's zone. Each mission covers more detailed cleaning but should take no more than 15 minutes. Some missions are repeated in subsequent months, so that the missions take less time as there is less clutter and cleaning. As this point, Flylady recommends you tackle detailed zone cleaning, which cover the kinds of tasks you would usually expect of a spring clean - cleaning skirting boards, cleaning windows etc. However, as you should only tackle what you can do in 15 minutes, this spreads the detailed cleaning over a period of time, so that rather than 'spring cleaning', you simply do a little bit every day and your home stays tidier and cleaner.

Flylady Reminders

Daily reminders of the routines, zones and missions are sent out when you subscribe to the Flylady groups. There is a UK group which sends out reminders according to GMT rather than US timezone, and many alternative 'non-official' groups.