VeianetClean House In 15 Minutes A Day: The Experiment
April 1st 2010 23:21
Family Canteen:
Category: Cleaning and Organizing
Clean House in 15 Minutes A Day: The Experiment
Can you clean your house in 15 minutes a day? That is the promise given by quite a few websites and cleaning shows lately. Even an Oprah regular guest seems to making the promise. Being the hopeful experimenter that I am and really wanting to do less cleaning, I decided to try them out.
First on my list was Flylady. A friend claimed this system could get my house clean in 15 minutes a day, so I figured ÂWhy not?Â
Flylady is the pseudonym for a woman named Martha Ciley. SheÃÂs a former packrat who wrote a book called Sink Reflections and her site seems to have taken off from there. There are over 300 000 subscribers to her mailing list and from the testimonials I have read this seems to be something of a cult. A cult, mind you, of women with messy houses. Being rather disorganized myself I thought maybe this was the cult for me. Boy was I wrong.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day? The Plan.
The Flylady system seems to work on helping you to declutter your home by cluttering up your inbox. On some days I received over 15 emails from Flylady. Some days it was more. While there were a few good housekeeping tips in these emails, most of them were sales pitches for FlyladyÂs cleaning supplies. Like a feather duster. A magical feather duster, no doubt, but I really donÂt need 5 spammy emails a day trying to sell it to me. I also couldnÂt get over the annoyance of every woman on the list being called MarthaÂs flybabies. This is where, to me the site went from helpful and informative to cult like and arrogant. But anyway, on with the housekeeping.
The flylady system demands decluttering one room for 15 minutes each day. Your house is broken into zones and you work at cleaning one or two rooms in a zone each week. The next week you move on to the next zone. You are also given a mission to complete each day. Missions like scrub your sink faucet with a toothbrush. This zone is then left for a month while you move around the other zones.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day: A Glitch
HereÂs the first problem I encountered. There are 5 zones on the list. Zone 1: the entrance, front porch (yes outside) and dining room. Zone 2: the kitchen Zone 3: bathroom and one extra room Zone 4: the master bedroom. And finally Zone5: the living room. These zones encapsulate 5 rooms of your house, the front entrance and the porch. I donÂt know about your house but my house has a lot more rooms than this. With this plan I had to completely ignore 2 bathrooms, the family room, 4 kids bedrooms, and occasionally the laundry room, depending on which extra room we were focusing on that month: the laundry or a childÂs bedroom. Now this might work for a very small home, but anyone with more than 2 bedrooms in their house is going to run into trouble here. Half your house will be ignored.
Problem number two? Cleaning a house takes more than 15 minutes a day. Even if you follow the step by step methods given on the websites. This site first tells you to clear the clutter from a room for 15 minutes, but then goes on to say not to pull out more than you can put away in an hour. So which is it, 15 minutes or an hour? After you finish your 15 minutes or one hour of decluttering, there is the small mission to do that for room. Despite the small size of the missions it still takes a few minutes to get them done and you are already well over your 15 minutes of housecleaning for the day. But youÂve only touched one room.
Once a week the emails encourage you to do something Martha calls the weekly home blessing hour. During this hour you sweep and mop the centers of your rooms, dust, windex, take the garbage out and change the bedsheets. These jobs are to be done on Mondays. Try this for a little trick. As the dirt on your floors piles up around you, boldly look your spouse and children in the eye and say,ÂI only sweep on Mondays. It will be sure to gain you some Âoohs and Âahhs of respect at your new organized housekeeping system.
The main idea of this system seems to be that if you get the clutter out of a room, eventually it will stay clean. I believed it. I tried it and guess what? It does not work. If you have an average sized home and want the entire house clean, not just a few rooms each month you will find this system to be horribly inadequate.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day? But it Is Not Clean.
There is some good advice on this site so I will give the creators credit for that. Wiping down the toilet and bathroom sink every morning is a nice idea as is cleaning your kitchen sink at the end of each night. Putting in an extra 15 minutes a day to get rid of clutter will keep your house cleaner, but the housework itself was nowhere near the amount required for even an average small home (refer back to the weekly sweeping).
Anything is better than nothing. This is what Martha tells her flybabies. I will have to give her that one. If your house is a complete disaster and you want to clean it slowly, you canÂt get much more slower. But if you want your house to actually be clean, and do not enjoy an inbox full of spammy emails, this is not the system for you. Not only was my house not clean, but my inbox was so full I could barely escape the computer.
Stay tuned for Clean Your House in 15 Minutes Part 2.
Can you clean your house in 15 minutes a day? That is the promise given by quite a few websites and cleaning shows lately. Even an Oprah regular guest seems to making the promise. Being the hopeful experimenter that I am and really wanting to do less cleaning, I decided to try them out.
First on my list was Flylady. A friend claimed this system could get my house clean in 15 minutes a day, so I figured ÂWhy not?Â
Flylady is the pseudonym for a woman named Martha Ciley. SheÃÂs a former packrat who wrote a book called Sink Reflections and her site seems to have taken off from there. There are over 300 000 subscribers to her mailing list and from the testimonials I have read this seems to be something of a cult. A cult, mind you, of women with messy houses. Being rather disorganized myself I thought maybe this was the cult for me. Boy was I wrong.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day? The Plan.
The Flylady system seems to work on helping you to declutter your home by cluttering up your inbox. On some days I received over 15 emails from Flylady. Some days it was more. While there were a few good housekeeping tips in these emails, most of them were sales pitches for FlyladyÂs cleaning supplies. Like a feather duster. A magical feather duster, no doubt, but I really donÂt need 5 spammy emails a day trying to sell it to me. I also couldnÂt get over the annoyance of every woman on the list being called MarthaÂs flybabies. This is where, to me the site went from helpful and informative to cult like and arrogant. But anyway, on with the housekeeping.
The flylady system demands decluttering one room for 15 minutes each day. Your house is broken into zones and you work at cleaning one or two rooms in a zone each week. The next week you move on to the next zone. You are also given a mission to complete each day. Missions like scrub your sink faucet with a toothbrush. This zone is then left for a month while you move around the other zones.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day: A Glitch
HereÂs the first problem I encountered. There are 5 zones on the list. Zone 1: the entrance, front porch (yes outside) and dining room. Zone 2: the kitchen Zone 3: bathroom and one extra room Zone 4: the master bedroom. And finally Zone5: the living room. These zones encapsulate 5 rooms of your house, the front entrance and the porch. I donÂt know about your house but my house has a lot more rooms than this. With this plan I had to completely ignore 2 bathrooms, the family room, 4 kids bedrooms, and occasionally the laundry room, depending on which extra room we were focusing on that month: the laundry or a childÂs bedroom. Now this might work for a very small home, but anyone with more than 2 bedrooms in their house is going to run into trouble here. Half your house will be ignored.
Problem number two? Cleaning a house takes more than 15 minutes a day. Even if you follow the step by step methods given on the websites. This site first tells you to clear the clutter from a room for 15 minutes, but then goes on to say not to pull out more than you can put away in an hour. So which is it, 15 minutes or an hour? After you finish your 15 minutes or one hour of decluttering, there is the small mission to do that for room. Despite the small size of the missions it still takes a few minutes to get them done and you are already well over your 15 minutes of housecleaning for the day. But youÂve only touched one room.
Once a week the emails encourage you to do something Martha calls the weekly home blessing hour. During this hour you sweep and mop the centers of your rooms, dust, windex, take the garbage out and change the bedsheets. These jobs are to be done on Mondays. Try this for a little trick. As the dirt on your floors piles up around you, boldly look your spouse and children in the eye and say,ÂI only sweep on Mondays. It will be sure to gain you some Âoohs and Âahhs of respect at your new organized housekeeping system.
The main idea of this system seems to be that if you get the clutter out of a room, eventually it will stay clean. I believed it. I tried it and guess what? It does not work. If you have an average sized home and want the entire house clean, not just a few rooms each month you will find this system to be horribly inadequate.
Clean House in 15 Minutes a Day? But it Is Not Clean.
There is some good advice on this site so I will give the creators credit for that. Wiping down the toilet and bathroom sink every morning is a nice idea as is cleaning your kitchen sink at the end of each night. Putting in an extra 15 minutes a day to get rid of clutter will keep your house cleaner, but the housework itself was nowhere near the amount required for even an average small home (refer back to the weekly sweeping).
Anything is better than nothing. This is what Martha tells her flybabies. I will have to give her that one. If your house is a complete disaster and you want to clean it slowly, you canÂt get much more slower. But if you want your house to actually be clean, and do not enjoy an inbox full of spammy emails, this is not the system for you. Not only was my house not clean, but my inbox was so full I could barely escape the computer.
Stay tuned for Clean Your House in 15 Minutes Part 2.
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