To think that this FLY business is just another way of trying to convince women that service is what they are meant for?

[madamez]

We've had house-work-is-what-FAther-Xmas-made-women-for.
We've had housework is the standard on which a woman's morals are judged.
Now we have housework as therapy: FInally Loving Yourself. What's loving about knocking yourself out with drudgery? Surely it's more self-loving to say, bollocks to doing more than the minimum, mess is no big deal and my time is far too precious to wipe skirting boards twice a day?

Oh, believe me, as a cleaner of bogs (by profession), I can assure you that women make far more of a crapola mess than men do.

It's the smell in female toilets that gets me (apart from when the urinals in the gents get blocked which is at least once a fortnight). Why do some women make that fish-like smell when they wee?? Don't they drink enough water?? .

I am often shocked by the state of public ladies loo...

I do the bulk of cleaning in our house - but that's mainly because my tolerance for dust is a lot less than DH's - I can't bear fluffy floors etc. So, I'm doing what actually makes me feel better, rather than supressing it just to make a point!

If Fly helps anyone to manage that better, regardless of gender - then why not!

I've not read the whole thread.

I did FLYlady about 18 months ago now, I have never been able to get back into it again. I have always lived in a state of chaos, and never have anyone over as a result.

Those few months where I was on top of everything were incredible. I wasn't ashamed of the state of my house. I felt calmer, I felt happier.

Some people are born to make a cup of coffee, wipe off any spillages, wash the spoon/put it in bowl/dishwasher, drink coffee, put the cup in bowl/wash it/dishwasher.

Other people are born to make coffee, spill water, milk and coffee across work surface, wander off and drink coffee, put half drunk cup on mantle in lounge, go out for the day.

There are obviously tweeners, but those are the extremes. If you are one of the second by nature, and then marry a matching one, you will live a life of mess.

It doesn't come naturally to you to sort it, you MN/read books/go out/have a bath - anything than sort it.

FLYlady slowly seeps in and kicks you into doing it as you go. It is always a conscious effort, but it is a hell of a lot better than the life before.

The married man? Apparently he has to do most of the housework himself because his wife has such low standards. Presumably he's looking amongst other things for someone better at cleaning. Laughing as I type. Don't worry I didn't continue the correspondence. I'm not interested in anyone who's married.

But more seriously I think once you get a routine at home it's much easier. I remember the difference between the early days of our marriage with young children and not being on top of things domestically and how much better we did both get at it after a few years once we'd got routines working well and there are good systems now at home which means it all runs fairly smoothly.

What Flamesparrow said.

Also 'FLY' doesn't stand for 'Finally Loving Yourself', or didn't originally - it was something to do with Marla Cilley being into fly fishing, and so she got a nickname from that! The 'finally loving yourself' was just something made up later to add yet another self-esteem-boosty thing, I think. A bit saccharine, IMO.

The bottom line is that Flylady is aimed at slobs - where a slob is not someone who is 'not quite perfect' but someone who is way down at the other end of the spectrum feeling miserable about having a permanent backlog of a dozen washloads waiting to be done (btdt!). The sink thing is just to have somewhere to start - you can do it with something else as your 'shiny sink' but it does help to have one place you always start.

I am a feminist and one test for me for something like this is: would it make sense as a system if I was single? This would - there would be more stuff that was irrelevant in terms of the actual chores being given as examples in many cases, but the core ideas - breaking things up into small pieces, getting into routines, doing time-limited bursts of things that it's possible to finish rather than setting the goal as 'do this completely' and then putting it off forever... etc. etc. those things, basically time-management ideas with domestic and parenting chores as the examples in question, work fine regardless of who is trying to do them, because the point of them is to help get the work done, not to justify one person in particular doing the work.

It's like Flamesparrow says, if you're the sort of person who procrastinates a lot and fails to get down the housework things - or ANYthing not fun - that you yourself want to do regardless of whether you want that because of social pressures or purely from within, then you're the sort of person Flylady can work for.

It does raise an interesting issue IMO though which is: can a household work reasonably efficiently without one person more or less in charge (regardless of how much work is delegated)? I think the 'in charge' status defaults to the woman often, and also being in charge tends to make you end up doing more and not delegating enough in a way that can be a bit pernicious and from a feminist point of view I think that's worth watching out for. That's a totally separate issue to the question of time-management and motivation tips, though!

I don't like too much routine. Makes me feel confined and put upon. I prefer tidy up as I go, do the washing when the basket is bulging, chase the bin men with the rubbish when they wake me up My only routine is to tidy up the night before the cleaner - or when I'm lazy that morning! I think I use up all my organisational skills at work (where I am known as a queen of process) and resent having to use them at home. I did find that having my own home (when dh moved out) made me much more conscious of how much mess I made (dh used to do most of the tidying up before) and make more of an effort to keep things neat

I think if you both work full time you don't need an in charge person in terms of domestic jobs. We didn't. But we did have people in charge of particular jobs. So I could not think about washing for 10 years because my ex husband always did that, thought about it, put the washer on etc. He could not think about packing school bags (unless I was away that day). He never did the tax returns, I did. Etc etc so I think yes divide tasks up and that person always does those tasks but what you don't want unless you have a housewife of course is that one of the two full time workers either does everything at home or asks the othe to "help". That is where the unfairness lies.

Agree with Xenia. No one wants to feel put upon, and dividing according to skills and preferences is only sensible.

I agree that every adult should be able to keep up with laundry, dishes etc, and I also agree that neatness or disinterest in housework are not remotely gender specific. I have known some very neat and houseproud men, for one thing. But most men still, on some level, expect housework to be done by women. I do more of it now I have DS, because I cook more and obviously there's more washing, but I still don't bother with hoovering more than about once a fortnight, dusting about once every six months etc. I only wash up when there's enough stuff to make it worth the bother (ie a good sinkful) And if anyone visiting comments, I smile and say 'I don't like housework'.
But before having DS I knew several men who were as messy if not messier than me, but it was only me who got told I should think about counselling...FFS!

Why doi people view childcare and homecare as 'unpaid labour' and act as if the mandarins should be glad that we do it??
Of course we should do it-we chose to get into this situation!

What would you propose Madame? That we pay other people do do it? Who will pay them? With what exactly?

I have just found a large chunk of cheese behind my toilet

standards are slipping

rofl MP

I'm with TrinityRhino, I really feel like shouting "You just don't geddit!!!"
I am a natural slob. Since ds2 was diagnosed with dyspraxia, I realise that that is what I have too! And it's not easy to be like this. Also dh is what Flylady describes as BO or Born Organised. If you are Born Organized, you don't need Flylady. Dh notices things on the floor that need to be picked up and he picks them up. On a Saturday, when I am working, he gears the ds's into action and by the time I come home the house is vacuumed, the kitchen is tidy and there is a dinner in the oven. Without Flylady, I drive him nuts. With Flylady, I don't.
And the basic first principle is to look after yourself. The first thing you are instructed to do every day is get dressed to shoes, hair and make-up. No school runs in PJ's, no being embarrassed by a neighbour ringing the doorbell at 12 midday with me in a state of disarray!
And where in God's name are skirting boards ever mentioned in Flylady? Possibly in a Zone Mission once a month, it's certainly not a daily thing! And in the Weekly Home Blessing Hour for Vacuuming, the one thing she says is spend 10 minutes and DON'T OBSESS, do the centres of the rooms only. Flylady is a list of rules written by a slob for other slobs so they don't feel so shit about themselves all the time. Anthea Turner she ain't!
And BTW, I work 4 days a week, dh works fulltime and it works quite well for a couple with minimal time for housework and not enough money or inclination for a cleaner.

It's relatively easy to turn yourself into a disciplined and organised person actually.

My secret weapon is tonnes of lists.

I do think there is a strong streak of female looniness around cleaning

I have at least 2 friends who actually clean up for the cleaner

in case she looks down on them as being dreadful slatterns or something?

Who are these mad cleaning women?
I don't know anyone like that.
I find most people's homes bloody minging tbh.

oh yes lists

I write lists that include things I've done so I can tick them off immediately

I didn't really mean 'in charge' as in 'gives the orders' or anything like that. I agree that dividing by skills and preferences is best - but that illustrates the idea I think - one person generally taking the final responsibility in each of those separate domains (laundry, bins, whatever) - in our house the things that get left for longest tend to be those where we haven't got one person more 'in charge' than another (so if it's a horrible job we both put it off hoping the other person will weaken and do it first!). Because dh just always does the bins then he tends to do them in plenty of time knowing it'll be him doing them anyway. Because I do tax, he does nothing at all for that, and because I know it's down to me only, it's something I'm relatively on top of. It's the in between things that get left longest and make us most depressed (because they get done a lot later than either of us would really like, ideally), even if arguably those are the areas where we divide the actual labour most evenly! But I suspect this is where more women end up giving in first every time, and so defaulting to having sole responsibility for some of the grottier jobs.

Sole responsibility for some things but not all things (giving freedom to plan and get good at doing that thing, while knowing other things will be done by the other person), while also being able to ask the other person to do plenty of the work, is what works best IMO. With flexibility, of course, and consultation. I think you need that rather than no one having sole responsibility, but labour theoretically divided more evenly. But then if you accept division of areas of responsibility rather than just quantity of labour, then where one person is at home more, more areas of responsibility can naturally fall to them - it's being sure that's proportionate rather than something happening by default because they're the woman, that's important from a feminist point of view. I agree that there is a problem with some men's expectations of disproportionate domestic work from women - I don't agree that Flylady either makes that worse or depends on that attitude, though.

My best friend, MD.

She is cleaning mad gawd bless her.

Today she managed to get the importance of cleaning into a leftie rant about how society is instant gratification obsessed!! Cleaning to her is a moral activity, honestly.

She ALWAYS cleans up for the cleaner, which she has about once every 3 months for a 'blitz'. Getting a cleaner for her is a big treat, like a massage for me....

And she is not an isolated loon cos my other mate thought it was totally normal to clean up before the cleaner came, too

I obviously live in loony ladyland

I actually want to look after my own children and dh.I like doing it.

A little off-topic, but do you notice how at dinner parties the women tend to help clear the table and the men sit around? Try letting the women do it for the first course, and then after the second when they start getting up to do it again announce that the men will now clear the table.

Bookworm: it's bacterial vaginosis

Well said, Moony.

When you're dead and gone, and people can be arsed to buy you a tombstone, I would rather mine said,

HERE LIES DESI
A loving Mother and Wife

then

HERE LIES DESI
Who worked for a cunt, all her life