Sorry, I just have to toot my own horn today :D Please join me with your own stories!

Ok, you would not know I'm a Flybaby if you walked in my house :rolleyes: I am not quite with the program at the moment. It works great when I do it, but I don't always do it. However, if you had seen my house a year ago, yeah, there's a HUGE improvement and I'm proud :)

Anyway, here's what I did an hour ago.

The back exterior wall of our house had green algae or mold or something growing on it. It's been there since before I moved in here (8 years in May). All that time I keep thinking we should do something about that.

Today I'm out in the yard (warm and sunny!) and putting water in watering cans for the kids. I have the hose in my hand and think that I should try hosing off the green. Nah, that won't work. I need to rent a power washer. Or maybe this weekend I'll get the long handled scrubber out. Maybe some soap to do it right.

Then I realize that Flylady would be shaking her head at me. Don't wait til you can do it perfectly because perfect never comes. Just do it! (or is that Nike? :LOL ) So I start to hose off the wall.

I cannot believe I put up with that green junk on that wall for almost 8 years and it took 15 minutes to get most of it off!!!! (and that 15 minutes includes having to stop and refill watering cans numerous times!) Big, kelly green patches of growth on my house just melted off where the hose hit it (on high pressure). I couldn't reach well enough to do the very top and there are some faint green spots that will benefit from a brush, but OMG, the change is fantastic! The house is actually white again! Almost 8 years I lived with it because I didn't get around to doing it "the right way".

So part of me feels really stupid right now :blush but mostly I'm just really jazzed that I finally got the green off. Yay me! :banana :balloons

I'm not flybabying with the emails and such but I spent some time at the web site soaking up stuff.

Lessee. My big success story to this point is that I actually *helped* DH in a significant way when we crash-cleaned the house for a party last week. We finally found our balance. He does the "big stuff," like mopping, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms. I do the "detail work," like going through papers, putting things on bookshelves and general straightening. The breakthrough for me came when I read over her "throw away, give away, and put away" boxes method of cleaning a room. I used to get so stressed out over the mess the house was in and end up having stuff in so many piles it was ridiculous, then of course running out of time and then DH coming through and scooping it all up and putting it back in one box, thus undoing all my hard work. :rolleyes:

By doing it the way she suggested I actually had a bag of trash to throw out, a pile for Goodwill, and a box of stuff to put away. I managed to actually get some of that stuff put away (not all, but, hey, it's better than it was) and at least the reast of it is contained.

My sink is still a mess, though, but I DID unload the dishwasher last night. Cleaning up the kitchen is my lunchtime project. Ooh. I gotta get back to work (I WAH!)

27-fling boogies changed my life!

Last summer I got rid of an average of two giant garbage bags each week for the whole summer (some stuff went to charity, not all garbage).

I also used 27-fling boogies to get rid of my stbx's stuff. He won't actually come over and go through his stuff himself. So I've just boogied a few times a week and painlessly boxed up all his stuff and put it in the garage. He then took his boxes to his place.

:idea

27-fling boogies changed my life!

I just realized that in the Feng Shui book I just read she has an old Chinese proverb: "If you want to change your life, move 27 things in your house."

Is Flylady a closet Feng Shui fanatic???

:LOL I don't see it, but you never know.....

Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that is where Flylady got it from! I know at least she has mentioned the Feng Shui clutter book on her list.

Shannon, I have a verrrry similar story! Our first house had a concrete patio out the back door. It was covered, but it still got flooded with water whenever it rained. And because there were uneven spots, it would pool and sit there, and grow lush, verdant, healthy tufts of moss. Several square feet, too. My mom suggested tri sodium phosphate. My dad suggested lye :eek . Dh, of course, wanted to go out and buy a professional pressure washer. By spring it would dry up and shrivel in to unnoticable brown spots. And then I'd forget about it. Till every Fall, back the moss came with the first rain. This went on for 7 years! We lived there for 7 years, and finally, getting the house ready to put on the market, I got desperate and just started blasting the patio with the same hose nozzle we'd had forever. And of course the moss was torn right off and went floating away. :rolleyes:

7 Years! I'm not sure what tri sodium phosphate is, but we didn't have any and I kept meaning to get some. I knew I wasn't going to use lye on the patio and kill all the plants and buggies living around it. And dh's pressure washer seemed like over kill. So I figured maybe someday I'd get out there with a scrub brush and scrub it up on hands and knees.

Again, I tell you, 7 years!

Originally posted by journeymom
Again, I tell you, 7 years!

:laugh: We're funny Flybabies, huh? :thumb

I read somewhere once it was called "defeated perfectionism." You know you can't do it perfect, so you don't even try. Yay to Flylady for fighting it. And Yay to all of us for taking our flybaby steps!

I had only a few minutes yesterday between accounts and I set my timer for 15 minutes and cleaned the kitchen like crazy. It wasn't perfect and I didn't finish, but it was way better than when I started. And that felt good!!

yesterday and today!!!

And I have been off the wagon of evening routine and shiny seek for over a week due to a bad flare that put me in bed several days
But I still swished ROFL!

I discovered FlyLady via a discussion on these boards, when I was desperate for a way to put some order in the chaos that had become my life. Her comments and instructions are always simple and to the point - never unaccepting. The bottom line is that we can chose which things work for us and let the others be.

I didn't know that about the number 27 and feng shui!

My laundry is DONE!!!!!