Time to get the FlyLady again.

I mentioned on an e-mail loop that I was feeling overwhelmed by the stuff in my apartment.  (If there was a way of saying over-over-whelmed, I'd say it. I imagined hiring a dumptruck and people to throw stuff out the window.) Someone on the loop suggested FlyLady. The website is not new to me. It was a great resource about 20 years ago, and I don't think anything else has improved on it. So I looked it up and today I'm cleaning my sink (the best way to start).

Today, my complaints are too many. I'm behind on serious amount of paperwork. I've got a serious amount of arthritis pain in several body parts. I had to call in sick this morning, but must, must, must get to school tomorrow. Origami club starts tomorrow. And I have to cover for a teacher. I'm too sick to practice singing this evening and, while I got away with not practicing last week, this week I'll have to sit out praise chorus. As I write this, I'm not as bad off as I felt this morning. But it's important that I got started on the sink.

Dear Archie

It's 3:30 AM and I'm wide awake. I'd set my alarm to four so I could get up and do a little house cleaning. I'm wondering how being sick in bed can mess up a whole place, but here I am. I really need to do a lot of housecleaning, but Flylady (a great website) suggests doing it a bit at a time. Starting with Clean Your Sink. It's amazing how having the habit of having a clean sink will spread out to the whole house. I started the sink project yesterday. I'm going to have to buy rubber gloves, brillo, and a new sink trap. Flylady has a whole page on how to clean a sink, and then how to maintain it.

Today's cleaning involves cleaning my bed. My bed is actually a living room futon which is slowly falling apart because I assembled it myself and the bolts are unscrewing. I put a box spring under the mattress which gives it stability and height and now it's actually a queen size bed. I have a few Guatemalan quilts on it. One as a large cover, another as a throw rug. Since it's a large bed, it tends to accumulate stuff. Dirty sox and a blouse, clean pieces of an old sheet I tore up to use as rags to wipe out my clean sink, my computer, charging cords for palm pilot and cell phone, magazines, a large pad that vibrates in 5 places and heats up (It was a gift from an ex-daughter in law to help out my bad back. I call it "my boyfriend"), two buckwheat hull pillows, a bunch of the explanatory notes that come with refilled prescriptions.

Well enough domestic chatter. I thought I'd like to write to you, but I'm not too good at small talk and really don't know what to say to maintain an online conversation. As I look it over, it sounds rather bloggish and I'll probably put a copy of it in my blog (which has been neglected lately). But consider it an effort for friendly chatter.

And I'll try to


attach a funny for you.

Progress and progress

I let go of some pride and let Alicia and her sister in law give my house a thorough cleaning. I don't know how she did it. She even did the ceiling fan and I don't know how she reached it. She's about 4'10'' and her sister is much shorter than that. They even cleaned the venetian blinds. They were exhausted when they left at 7 and I try not to think about it because I came home and went straight to bed at 3:30 and feel like a slacker.
One of our teachers rushed to the hospital this morning (test results yet to be disclosed) and I covered a few eighth grade classes. Actually the teacher's husband, who is also a teacher, popped in frequently. We both were at a loss on the algebra (the course work on the graphing calculator magically erased from my head) so we just chatted with them. I had them taking turns telling stories about bone breaks. Riveting!
I've been following Renovaré pamphlet on discovering my current rhythms of life and filling them with a deeper awareness of God. (I just misplaced it, but I'm doing the exercise anyway). I'm reading my grandmother's old prayer book daily too as a way to start and end the day. I'm trying to keep it simple and as close to my old routine as I can so that I can keep to it.

Washing the stairs

With our recent cooler weather and my last week before going back to full time work, I've been doing some cleaning that I haven't done in years. I have been cleaning the common areas of my building. 

Someone else is paid to do this, but my landlord is a softie and won't "retire" the lady who is definitely too old and probably too infirm for the job, so if it gets done at all, it gets done poorly. I don't complain because my landlord hasn't raised my rent since I moved here and so I'm grateful my landlord is a softie. And I'm pretty old and infirm myself.

So back to the cleaning. I've scrubbed the landing and have scrubbed half of the stairs. Today I hope to finish the stairs. Four years ago I scrubbed all but the bottom four stairs (They remained for contrast). Since then I've had two knee replacements and my kneeling days are over. And until my surgery, I was a hands and knees sort of cleaner. It's the only way I can do a good job. So now I'm a stand and bend or sit and bend cleaner.

Nobody has done the stairs since four years ago, so you can imagine what they're like. A bucket of cleaning water does no more than four steps. Yesterday I did nine steps (stretched one bucket to five). 

I'm feeling so grateful that I am feeling well enough to do this. Did my apartment floors too this week. And the thing is that I'm feeling better and better as I go along.

Update - done with the stairs! Recommended music for cleaning.