I want to honor Hestia. The best ways to do this, She told me, were to keep my house clean and tidy, and to be hospitible to guests. Cleanliness and hospitality.
She doesn’t ask for perfection; She doesn’t expect it from mortals. But She does ask for an honest, consistent, effort.
Keeping the house clean is something I find very difficult. I have reasons for my mess: keeping the place a complete sty means no one can enter, and if no one can enter, then I’m safe. My mess acts as walls to keep people out, and for a long time I’ve needed those walls.
But my walls are dangerous to my health; my mess depresses me. So I go on cleaning binges: I bite off more than I can chew, make a bigger mess than there was when I started, and run out of spoons and go to bed feeling utterly defeated. I then ignore the mess until I get another urge for a cleaning binge. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I decided to try doing FlyLady’s program, at the suggestion of Hestia’s priestess. I’d tried it before, but instantly got turned off by the idea that I didn’t love myself because I didn’t shine my sink. Give me a break.
This time I’m ignoring the intense need to roll my eyes at that bit, and just doing the steps. I shined my sink last week before I left for the weekend. Today is Day 2 of the program, because I apparently needed 2 days to recover from school on Monday (it was exhausting).
And, you know, I did notice that shining my sink had a positive effect on my mood. I felt like yeah, I can do this. This is achievable for me.
Today, I get dressed to my shoes, shine my sink before bed, and put post-it notes with reminders in places where I’ll see them. (I’ll also probably clean a few other things, because the house is really messy, but I’m not going to let myself do a cleaning binge.) Tomorrow, I get dressed to my shoes, read my reminders, keep my sink shining, and start to explore the FlyLady website. Day 4 should be next Tuesday, when I’m back from the Island and hopefully have had a full night’s rest.
-M
FlyLady is good as long as you stick with it. The best part, IMO, is the Daily ‘to do’ email that breaks the house down into a managable daily task that won’t take very long to do. 🙂
I don’t think that I agree with “I don’t love myself if I don’t shine my sink” But I do agree with the fact that how you treat the space you live has a reflection on how you treat yourself.
You said it up there, you keep your mess to protect yourself and use them as walls, but I think there’s probably a little more than that. Something that in our psyche’s that makes us think, on some level, that the mess we live in is what we deserve. Whether it’s because we tell ourselves it’s because we did it to ourselves or what. It’s at least something to think about.
After all, if it wasn’t important to Hestia that she teach you to break down your walls and reevaulate why you make yourself live the way you do, then she wouldn’t have you do it. 🙂
My favorite part of FlyLady is setting the timer. You can do anything for 15 minutes. Then TAKE A BREAK, preferably for 15 minutes. Then, if you feel up to it, set the timer for another 15 minutes and tackle a task. You’d be amazed at how much you can accomplish in 15 minutes, and it doesn’t seem as daunting as tackling a whole task or room or whatever.
Good luck!