My Shiny SinkYou may have noticed that it’s been awhile since I’ve made a post. The reason is that I’ve been focusing on straightening out some kinks in my life. I’m not going to go into all the gory details, but suffice to say that 2003 has been a bit of a hectic and crazy year.

There has been too much on my plate and I haven’t been dealing with it well. So I began about a month or more ago to focus and re-think on everything that I’m involved in and how I should be handling my affairs. I’m now on the downhill side of this process and I’m starting to see some positive results, which is encouraging. What helped me get over the hump and on the “downhill” side was something rather surprising and unexpected.

I was sharing my experiences with some friends of mine in the Palm OS User Council. We were chatting in IRC and I mentioned some of what I was doing. Jennifer Shelamer made the comment that if I was looking to get organized, I need to take a peek at FlyLady.net. Greg Gaub chimed in and said that he highly recommended the site as well. I had never heard of the thing and had no idea what it was about, but figured I’d go check it out.

In a nutshell, FlyLady.net is a web and e-mail resource to help get you build good habits in cleaning your house. Since I was looking to clean a bit more than just my house, this sounded like something that could apply. Then I read “… Do you feel overwhelmed, overextended, and overdrawn? Hopeless and you don’t know where to start? Don’t worry friend, we’ve been there, too.” and that nailed it on the head!

Feel free to read more, but for those that have no interest, I’ll sum it up. FlyLady helps you create a system of routines to help you manage your home. The goal of the site is to help you build good habits that enable to not only have a clean house, but give you the time to focus on the rest of your life.

The first step is to shine your sink. My first thought was “I don’t have time for this.” There’s an old Louisiana saying that goes, “When you’re up to your ass in aligators, that’s when you remember you were supposed to drain the swamp.” I had a bunch of gators with lockjaw firmly clamped to my glutes and had been carrying them around a little while, so taking time to go shine my kitchen sink seemed absurd. I did it anyway.

Then I began taking some baby steps and things began to click. Starting with small routines, I’ve made some serious headway with getting my house cleaner and more manageable. I’m now starting to apply some of those same principles to the rest of my life. For example, for my company my sink is my billing and I need to keep it clean and sparkling.

I’ve only just scratched the surface with this FlyLady business, but I like what I’ve learned thus far. I haven’t setup Zones or started a Control Journal, but my sink is still shiny after three weeks and I have a simple morning routine and evening routine that I can build on. I’m taking it slow and making progress little by little. What’s helped make the difference is a little thing that the FlyLady says in all of her e-mails, “You are not behind! I don’t want you to try to catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are. O.K.?”

Being a perfectionist, those words are very encouraging and have done wonders to keep me focused on the task at hand. Who knew turning over a new leaf would begin with a shiny sink?