Bye, Fly!

I unsubscribed from the FlyLady list after several weeks of trying to make it work. For those who haven't met her, FlyLady is a cleaning and clutter-busting expert who offers a home management system for keeping a household running.

Going from a one-floor condo to a big farmhouse has increased the number of my maintenance chores exponentially. Dave, as awesome as he is about keeping things running around here, now has five acres of land to tend. Mowing it alone takes a full weekend day. So the inside is primarily my responsibility.

I found FlyLady and made my daily cleaning lists, which work well for maintenance and de-cluttering. I changed a few of her tips; lace-up shoes are impractical when I have to change shoes several times a day for different tasks. (Don't wear the muddy gardening boots in the kitchen!) And there are only so many times I can remove twenty-seven pieces of clutter from a room before it looks like an IKEA showroom. I need to keep a few personal items around.

The trouble is not the cleaning advice, but the email newsletter. It's ironic that on a clutter-cleanup list, there are over 30 broadcast messages a day.The volume of incoming email is extreme; I have several FlyLady filters set up and still about fifteen messages get through the net daily.

So how do you fill 30 messages a day with content? Some are reminder notices; start the laundry, shine your sink, etc. They might be useful, except that they rarely arrive in my inbox at a relevant time. I keep getting "put your shoes on for the day" messages after 11:00pm, or "Tuesday is clean the living room day" reminders on Wednesday night.

Some of the messages are missions -- special areas that need to be cleaned on that particular day. Again, when they come in at the end of the day or the next day, they're fairly useless. And if you're using your task list, a reminder email isn't necessary.

The rest of the messages are a mix of lengthy essays on why it's important to stay organized and a large number of rambling testimonials from other people using the program. I'm already on the program -- I don't need convincing ten times a day.

The kicker is that when I unsubscribed, I received a bewildered autoreply from FlyLady that condemned me for leaving the list because I "hate change." Exqueeze me? In the last year alone I renovated a house, moved to an island, took a job, quit a job, started beekeeping, and switched breakfast cereal from Rice Krispies to Raisin Bran (<- not easy!). I hate change?!

The letter also said that I felt her reminders were "negative voices from my past." Uh huh. Or maybe they're just way too much junk mail.

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