Flylady’s first instruction to new members who are known as FlyBabies is “Go shine your sink!” A strange way to get started in a house brimming with clutter dust and grime? Apparently the 12-step process she details for a deeply cleaned sparkling sink maintained by a simple wipe every night provides the impetus for a domino effect. “The sink may seem small — FlyLady is into baby steps ” explains Hindy. “But the point is that it’s a psychological gimmick. I shine my sink every night and while I’m there I think ‘Let me already just clean up and put the plates away.’ ”

As the clean sink is maintained the positive change spreads to countertops stove and floor and the homemaker’s self-esteem starts to rise. Then another baby step is added in the form of another tiny chore every night. In FlyLady terminology this is called “piggybacking habits.”

Goodbye Spring Cleaning

With the FlyLady method chores strung into routines form a system of home maintenance which becomes second nature. In total there are 31 daily tasks.

The morning routine includes making the beds doing laundry cleaning the toilet and reconciling your bank balance every day along with “hitting a hot spot” — clearing the high-traffic clutter dumping ground in your home. The evening requires you to clean the kitchen and living room “for 20 minutes tops ” lay out your clothes for the next day and set the table in preparation for breakfast.

Once a week Fly Lady advises a one-hour housecleaning mission called the “weekly home blessing.” Using timers followers vacuum dust mop empty trash change bedsheets and clean up old magazines. Each task is allocated ten minutes only.

Besides these routines a home needs concentrated attention. For detailed cleaning FlyLady divides a house into five sections or zones which are allocated to the five weeks or partial weeks of the month. Each day the e-mail list will provide a “mission” with a detailed cleaning task in the current zone. Zone 1 which runs from the first day of the month until the first Saturday includes your front porch entrance and dining room. Zone 2 first full week of the month is the kitchen. Zone 3 is the main bathroom and one other room. Zone 4 is the master bedroom bathroom and closet. Zone 5 is the living room. The daily mission to be accomplished in the zone takes about fifteen minutes. Marla asserts that her zone system can make Pesach cleaning redundant. “Just move the tasks around so that you do your kitchen last before Passover. Finish a few days before and then you can open your special kitchen with the clean dishes.”

Hindy is dubious. “I didn’t find that the FlyLady system helped me with the huge project of making Pesach. I wish it did.”

Another essential principle of FlyLady philosophy: clutter cannot be organized — it has to be reduced. Marla admits this can be extra challenging for large families but it is correspondingly even more important. “Get rid of clutter. Families that are large hold onto everything — toys and clothes with no end. This interferes with neatness. I say you can only keep it if you have a system to keep it. And only up to one Rubbermaid bin per clothing size. Have faith that G-d will provide” she reassures in a singsong voice with rich Southern tones. “Let go of the clutter and bless others with your abundance.”

To help diminish clutter, she’s introduced the “27-Fling Boogie,” a FlyLady exercise in which her followers set timers for 15 minutes and quickly select 27 items in their home to discard and 27 items to give away.

Nobody’s Perfect

One of the most attractive aspects of FlyLady is that she shuns perfection. “Good enough is good enough” is an oft-repeated mantra. In the flagship mission — the detailed instructions for shining your sink — number eight reads, If you still don’t like the way it looks, then you can try some car wax. Just know in your heart that you have cleaned it very well now, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Our perfectionism is what got us in this situation in the first place!

I ask FlyLady about this philosophy. “We women are perfectionists,” she claims, “and perfectionism drives your kids crazy and pushes your family away. If you tell a child, ‘clean your room,’ that’s a tall order. It’s too broad, and it comes from perfectionism, from wanting to see it all done. But if you make it a game, drawing lots for what has to be done, and one child gets a paper which says “put all toys with wheels away in the box” and gets praised for doing that, then you are letting go of your perfectionism, and your house will get clean.”

Marla says that the most defeating statement women tell themselves is “I don’t have time.” “I bet you’ve said that today,” she chuckles. “The whole sentence is, I don’t have time to do it right. Or I don’t have time to do it like my mother did. When you hear yourself say that, set the timer for just two minutes, and do the one thing that you said you don’t have time to do. You will have done it. And that can make such a difference in your attitude.”

The most essential piece of equipment for flying, according to Marla, is a timer. “Use it to work for only 15 minutes at a time. Instead of saying ‘I can’t do this,’ replace with ‘You can do anything for 15 minutes.’ The short time commitment helps stop procrastination and reduces opportunities to get sidetracked or bored.

“Just do it — don’t worry if the task is not perfect,” Marla tells me. “Housework done imperfectly still blesses your family.”

Changing the Script

Not everyone, however, is enamored with FlyLady’s homemaking rules. One common criticism of the plan? There’s simply too much of it. Between the morning routine and the pre-bed routine, the zone mission, the 10-minute-hotspot fire drills and the decluttering, the full system adds up to a lot of time spent cleaning the house.

The weight of the chores can also become an object of anxiety all day. The system often seems to be geared toward full-time homemakers, rather than women who work outside the home. After doing all the tasks and reading all the e-mails, there’s not much time left for a life.

In addition, following that level of structure can be challenging when a homemaker has many other responsibilities — especially when the unexpected occurs.”I believe FlyLady only has one child; that’s a radically different thing,” Dena says. “As a frum woman with four kids and a demanding job, I simply didn’t have that kind of time to devote to housework on a daily basis. And I never morphed into someone who loves to clean; I appreciate having a neat house, but find housework incredibly boring and probably always will.”

However, the system is not all or nothing. “You don’t have to read each and every e-mail, either!” FlyLady herself points out, “Feel free to use the delete button for any e-mails you aren’t ready for yet…. And most importantly, remember, you’re not behind! I don’t want you to try to catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are.”

Thousands of women have read Sink Reflections and adopted the parts of FlyLady’s methodology that suit their lifestyle without subscribing to the e-mails and getting nudged repeatedly each day.

“Don’t do it all, just do the things that work for you,” is repeated often by FlyLady adherents. “As much as I love the program, I’ve never embraced all of it,” another woman tells me. Even Hindy, who loves the FlyLady system, doesn’t do zones, nor does she keep the recommended “Control Journal” to store routines and lists and monitor her housework.

After her years on the system, Dena has come away with lasting changes. “Even though I no longer follow FlyLady’s script,” she says, “two points stuck with me: the importance of keeping clutter to a minimum — I think two or three times before I buy anything, and I’ve become very desensitized to getting rid of things I don’t use — and the importance of daily maintenance. I don’t do everything that FlyLady suggests but I do make sure that things don’t pile up past a certain point.”

Flying Frum?

Orthodox families are several times larger than the average American family. Sometimes that entails a larger-than-normal space to clean and keep organized, far more than 5 zones; in other cases, many people are sharing small accommodations, leading to more clutter and more mess. I ask Marla specifically what advice she can offer for Orthodox flying.

“Wheh-el, you have a TEAM!” Marla rejoins immediately in her characteristic drawl. “Embrace your team spirit! Momma doesn’t have to do it all.”

She gives some advice for involving the kids. “Make it fun, some kind of game. Put the chores on slips of paper and let the children pick out of a box. Put on music and walk around putting things away. Whoever puts away ten things gets a popsicle. And always thank your family for their efforts.” For ideas on kid-friendly tasks, Marla actually includes “FlyKids’ Challenges” in her e-mails, with tasks that little ones can do on their own.

When getting the whole family involved, it’s important to remain patient and calm. FlyLady does not endorse nagging your family or getting upset at their lapses. “You’re really only changing yourself,” observes Hindy. “But I’ve found that once the family sees your good habits, they’re contagious.”

For Jewish mothers who like to have the whole place clean on Friday, Marla recommends moving the weekly home blessing from Monday to Friday, or making it bi-weekly. “Why not do the cleaning early on Friday, then take the children out so it will stay clean? And if you keep up with your missions, you’ll look around on Friday after your weekly home blessing and you won’t believe it’s your house. But that takes time — your home didn’t get dirty in one day, and it will not get clean in a day either. If you miss a day’s cleaning, jump right back in.”

Still a system built for the non-Jewish world won’t perfectly fit with our frum lifestyle. When Hindy comes across something like that, she’ll just adapt it to meet her needs. “For example, you get all these hyped e-mails about preparing for Thanksgiving — and it’s only having seven people over for one meal. No three-day Yamim Tovim,” she says. “But FlyLady is about system, not size, so you can adapt it.”

After eight years on the FlyLady system, Hindy no longer lives moment to moment. “I’m able to plan, to make lists. It’s given me a huge gift.”

It all starts with just one slot of 15 minutes. “Whatever it is that you’d like to accomplish, you can find 15 minutes to do it,” FlyLady encourages. “One of my books was written in slots of just 15 minutes.”

Ladies, set your timers.

(Originally featured in FamilyFirst, Issue 516)