The Fly Lady Cleaning Method

hey everyone how's it going i'm steph welcome back to my channel the secrets love where we are learning everything to do with habits daily routines and generally just making our lives a little bit easier so today i'm going to rewind it all the way back to the very beginning and we're going to talk about the basics of the flylady system so if you're new to my channel this is the system that i used to take my life from complete mess secret slob into being a little bit more organized having systems routines and generally making my life a lot more peaceful if you've already heard of the flylady system and maybe you've gone to the website chances are you might be feeling a little bit overwhelmed or a lot bit overwhelmed that is totally fair and completely understandable there are so many words and terms and kind of different systems meshed into one that it can just feel like ah where do i start what does this mean how do i even do this and if you're already overwhelmed that's not fun at all so today i'm going to walk through this entire system step by step breaking down every single point and making it super easy for you to understand and hopefully get started i like to break the flylady system into three main components number one daily routines that's things that you're going to repeat every single day day in day out the second component is the daily focus this is a different task for every day of the week that you then repeat weekly the third component is zone cleaning and this is a monthly repeating task where you're cleaning different areas of your house one week at a time so to sum that up the three components are daily repeating routines weekly repeating daily focus and monthly repeating zone cleaning you with me good all right so let's start with component number one the routines this is where i recommend everyone get started because having daily habits and routines in place set up a perfect foundation to build an organized life an organized house and keep things generally clean if you're short on time or energy this is where you're going to focus the majority of your time it's the biggest bang for your buck the flylady system breaks the routines into two sections morning and evening and every day we're repeating the exact same tasks the morning tasks in the flylady system are getting dressed to shoes making the bed emptying the dishwasher doing a quick swish and swipe of a bathroom which is just wiping down one of your bathrooms really quickly starting a load of laundry and checking your calendar the habits in the evening routine are laying out your clothes for tomorrow prepping for tomorrow setting out anything you need at the door finding your keys clearing your hot spot which is an area that just collects clutter in your house for me it's a desk that we have clearing your hot spot for two minutes shining up your sink your kitchen sink and starting your dishwasher i want to make an aside and really emphasize that your life is not the same as anyone else's and your habits and tasks may need to be swapped around to fit your life or maybe taken out completely or maybe you need to add something else in that you know hasn't really been covered it's so important to customize any system to fit your life because it's your life you're organizing so that's the first component routines moving on to the second component daily focuses and this is the first place where people start to get a little bit tripped up because routines daily routines that makes sense the daily focus though is super simple again it repeats weekly each day takes care of one section of your life so you're not having to think about it all the time so the daily focuses are as follows monday is weekly home blessing a lot of people call it weekly reset or weekly refresh too and you can call it whatever you want on this day we're doing six tasks vacuum mop dust change the sheets empty the garbages and polish all the mirrors and doors 10 minutes each task for a total of one hour in the main traffic areas of your house so for me that would be hallways kitchen dining room living rooms that kind of thing not getting into any corners not doing any super deep cleaning just quickly covering the main traffic areas of your house one hour and stop i'll link to a video about weekly home blessing up here day number two is plan and play day so she calls this kind of your home administration day where you're going to pay bills answer emails respond to invitations maybe send invitations write cards letters all that kind of home office stuff and then the play component is making plans with friends or family or setting up different events again just basically a whole home administration day i love this one because i often will feel like i have all this stuff to do in terms of home administration so if i just dedicate 15 minutes on tuesday sit down get it all done i know my bills are paid i know i've responded to emails i know that stuff is just all taken care of wednesday is anti-procrastination day and this one is actually my all-time favorite so on anti-procrastination day you're going to pick one task that you've been just procrastinating and get it done this can be something as simple as making a phone call booking an appointment sending a card returning a package it does not have to take a long time but it does have to take that one little thing off your shoulders that you've just been dreading doing thursday in flight lady land is aaron's day this is the day when you can stack all of your errands and run around and get everything done all at once you're not having to leave your house a bunch and go into town a whole bunch of times everything you need to get done is in that one block of time friday is car and bag day this is another cleaning one where you're going to take your purse or your backpack or your diaper bag and just quickly go through it get rid of any garbage receipts file things you need to file give it a little bit of a clean out and then go into your car and do the same thing we're not cleaning our car or detailing it by any means just pulling that garbage out maybe extra jackets i have little kids so my car turns into a disaster every single week and it just helps you keep on top of those two things car bag where clutter tends to accumulate and if you let it get out of control it can get really frustrating saturday is family fun day it's all about focusing on your family or your friends or maybe yourself getting out and doing something fun together and usually it's something that you've planned for on tuesday plan and play day and then the last day of the week sunday is renew your spirit day and it's meant to be a day of self-care kind of loving kindness where you just take a break rest relax and recharge for the week ahead so those are the daily focuses there's seven of them and if you've been at my channel before you know that i've switched things around i've changed the names of things to suit my life and i completely and fully encourage you to do the same there is no wrong way to set up your own cleaning system this is just a really good starting point a really good place for jumping off last component component number three zone cleaning and this is the one i get the most questions about of all but once you master it it will change your whole life so zone cleaning is where we get into that detailed cleaning of our house remember on mondays the daily focus is weekly home blessing and we talk about doing the main traffic areas we're not getting into corners we're not doing any nitpicking cleaning but zone cleaning that's where we do that so how zone cleaning works is we're going to divide our house into five sections the fly lady system has pre-prescribed sections that you can divide your home into and then also a detailed cleaning list for each one i can link to her detailed cleaning list below but i encourage you to divide your house up in a way that works best for you so i've changed mine a little bit and i'll link to my detailed cleaning list below but basically what you're gonna do is each week you're going to focus on cleaning in one zone so for example zone number two is the kitchen that's the same for fly lady and for me zone two is the kitchen so i have a detailed cleaning list that lists everything i need to get cleaned in the kitchen at any point so cleaning out my fridge my freezer cleaning the cabinet fronts all that stuff that just you know needs to get cleaned every once in a while every month hopefully and i'll just work as much as i can in that week in that zone i usually max out at about an hour and that's important because you're not always going to get the whole list done every week you get as much done as you can in whatever time increments that work for you and then when zone two comes around the next month because you rotate you start again where you left off it does take a bit of time to get going with zone cleaning especially if you haven't given your house a really good deep clean in a while but eventually as you clean it more regularly it becomes easier you get faster and you don't really have to think about it anymore in flylady system she does the first week of the month we do zone one second week of the month zone two third week of the month zone three etc etc it does get confusing though when the month is only four weeks long or there's a half a week at the beginning and a half a week at the end and she does do a little bit of shuffling with zone one and zone five so if you are going to follow her zone cleaning system it's easiest just to check on the website to see what zone they're in i changed it up a little bit to make it simple and i just do zone looping so any given week i do zone one the next week two three four five i dedicate an entire week to each zone and then when i finish zone five the next week is zone one so it doesn't line up with the weeks of the month but it's a lot less confusing for me so you can choose to do it however you like a lot of people really like following along with the website and then a lot of people just like to kind of have a less confusing system that works for them okay so those are the three main components of the flylady system if you work and establish these systems and routines into your life your house is going to do a complete 180 and look fantastic i did say i was going to go through the entire system so there are a couple other things i wanted to mention they're kind of like little bonus things the first one is daily missions these are detailed cleaning tasks in the zone that we're currently working in and i think they're just a way to kind of motivate you to clean something you may not have thought of so if you're in the zone with bathroom she might say you know clean behind the toilet tank or go through your makeup case and clean it all out just all different detailed cleaning things it doesn't really replace zone cleaning so much as just gives you a little bit of motivation to get one small task done and i mean if you did the daily missions every single day your house would be super clean but i do think it's a lot to add zoe cleaning plus the daily mission together so if i was just starting out again i would just choose one or the other i prefer zone cleaning but again the daily mission is short and sweet and it's kind of fun feels like you're you know getting something done another thing you may have seen in the flylady system is what's for dinner and basically this is so simple it's just a question that you're supposed to ask yourself sometime in the morning about what you're going to have for dinner later in the day so if you create a meal plan this is probably super easy but if you don't have anything kind of ready this is a good time to pull out meat from the freezer or check that you have the right ingredients or you know come up with something at all just so that when you get to that 4 30 4 45 5 o'clock time and it's time to start making dinner you're not feeling panicked and rushed so you've just kind of given it a little bit of forethought earlier in the day a similar one to this is drinking your water every day and doing 15 minutes of what she calls loving movement exercise and again these are just little things to motivate you and remind you to take care of yourself don't have to include them in your daily routines if you don't want but that's what they are something you might be wondering about is where does the decluttering fit in if your house hasn't been tidied in a while or you're feeling really unorganized chances are you might have a little bit of extra clutter around i mean even if your house is organized you probably have extra clutter around it's just i don't know a part of life so the fly lady system does say to do 15 minutes of decluttering every single day that's totally something that you could work into your routines i find that overwhelming so for me i usually like to set aside times when i declutter so i won't do zone cleaning for a month and instead i'll do decluttering so the week one zone one i'll just declutter in that zone instead of doing deep cleaning i find this works better for me but if you have 15 minutes every day and you want to do a quick declutter that's what the flylady system does say to do last thing and you know this is another one i get a ton of questions about the control journal and i could make a whole separate video about the control journal because it really can be so helpful and just a really amazing tool but the basics of it is it's just a place usually a binder or a duotang or folder where you can keep all of your lists and kind of keep track of this whole system so you can keep your daily routines that you check off every day a lot of people keep them in plastic you can keep your detailed cleaning list again you could keep it in plastic you can keep a map of your house with your zones you keep your favorite recipes or some of your favorite meals a to-do list your budgeting stuff the whole purpose of the control journal is just to have a place to keep all of your lists and keep yourself organized when i first started this system i did use a control journal but eventually as i modified it and kind of simplified it for myself i did come up with my own version which is this weekly cleaning schedule it's all on one page so you can see i've got my routines my daily focuses zone cleaning um a little bit of a meal planning section and then just reminders or kind of a to-do i also usually end up writing all over the back and making a complete mess of it but that's what it's meant for it's just a tool to stay organized and stay on track so i don't really well i do have a control journal where i keep some of my master lists but i don't reference it every day anymore i just use this one sheet which is usually just on a clipboard or sometimes i hang it inside a cupboard and then it's right there so if you want to build a control journal i say go for it it's definitely a really helpful tool if you want to use my weekly cleaning schedule it's completely free head over to my website and it's just under the printable tab and yeah it's there along with the detailed cleaning list that i mentioned earlier but i will link to the flylady's detailed cleaning list below because that is the original system and that's what we're talking about today so if you see something here that you think might work for you i highly recommend getting started with the baby steps so flylady has an original 31 day baby step system which you can follow along on the website or i can actually also link to my friend diane in denmark's 31 fly lady baby steps below that's the ones i use to get started and since then i've created my own 21 days to a clean home baby step system and there's a full printable package and everything you can go through i'll link to that below and what these all do is just walk you through the system helping you build these habits step by step day by day so you're not trying to start the whole thing in one day trust me that's a mistake and you can kind of start to learn these habits slowly even over the course of 21 days if you do with me or 31 days if you do it with diane you will see a massive massive change in your house and i guarantee you will pick up at least one habit that you will keep for the rest of your life for me it was making the bed it is a complete game changer so definitely go and check those out if you want to get started today thank you so much for joining me for this step-by-step flylady breakdown if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below i'll do my best to answer them or if enough people ask the same question i'll just make another video to answer that question alright have a wonderful day i will talk to you very soon bye

Channel: The Secret Slob

Views: 192,692

Keywords: flylady, flylady cleaning system, fly lady cleaning method, fly lady, secret slob, the secret slob, flylady method, flylady cleaning, flylady zone cleaning, flylady system, flylady routine, how to flylady, what is the flylady cleaning system, what is the flylady cleaning method, how to start flylady, how to do flylady system, how to use flylady, flylady cleaning schedule, secret slob printables, how to start zone cleaning, how to keep house clean

Id: jjzF8Gup6bQ

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022