It's been a while since I've done a review on the blog.
I'm extremely busy right now with life things, and those life things include a need to do a heavy declutter/purge.
I am still in Vine and pulling in lots and lots of random stuff, though, and one thing that came in yesterday was this:
Amazon.com : 4Pcs Adhd Cleaning Planner Schedule and Checklist Organizer, Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly DIY Home Household-Cleaning Plan Book
Not an affiliate link because I'm no longer an affiliate.
Anyway, my immediate reaction was EXTREME OVERWHELM and disappointment with the quality. I mean, they're fine for a notebook that WILL be consumed, really, but the pages are difficult to turn and that annoys me, personally.
Every page is completely packed and it's overwhelming. There are SO MANY TASKS on the daily task list.... Who has time for that????
After a bit I came back to it and it's obviously designed for stay-at-homes and not for people that work outside of the home or even who work from home. This is for someone who's job it is to keep the house clean.
Sat it down again, came back again, and noticed some things.
So it's basically a breakdown of tasks by day, week, month, year, etc. and you're supposed to write in the book both to check off tasks and add your own. There are layout sheets in the back of the book where you can fill in all of the tasks yourself instead of trying to follow the suggestions in the book, too. The daily checklist, of which there is one, would be fully consumed the very first day. What?
Still terribly overwhelming, and I noticed it's not been proofread very well.
This is a monthly decluttering list. You're expected to do this once a month.
Something that bothers me is things like "Tupperware without lids" and "Scratched pots & pans" being in the same list as "Unusued Appliances" where all the words are capitalized. That's not important but it's something that makes me notice a difference and get annoyed.
I guess we're doing "Scratched pots & pans" and "Unused Appliances" twice every month. But why are we doing that EVERY month and not once or twice a year?
The repeats..... They annoy me..... My brain wouldn't see those as days off, either, it would just run in circles annoyed about it being a repeat day.
So this person went and took some Flylady resources, probably from the old-old version of her website, and had them self-published via Amazon or didn't realize Flylady is an established brand because the seller is NOT Flylady. If I click on their store link, it's all phone cases.
Now I understand why it's so damn overwhelming. I tried out Flylady years and years ago (it's very different, now) and hated it. It was very demanding, very, very specific to a point that it was causing me more stress than providing benefit (GO CLEAN THIS ROOM but I don't HAVE THAT ROOM, clean ONE bathroom but I have FOUR BATHROOMS, for example), and extremely overwhelming. Not only because of the program itself, but because by joining the program (which was free), you joined the newsletter mailing list whether you wanted to or not and that woman would email you CONSTANTLY throughout the day. I mean CONSTANTLY. 10+ emails DAILY.
She'd insist that every day you shower in the morning and take a bath in the evening. The bath was your treat for a day of non-stop cleaning. You weren't supposed to stop cleaning all day until bath time unless you were eating.
Flylady seems to have changed since then. Or maybe it hasn't and just looks different. There's an app, now, and a shop where she sells cleaning tools. I'm not tempted to try the program again, no.
In the end these books are just a huge checklist in pastel rainbow colors, times four for some reason, and checklists have never worked for me at home.
It worked ok at the gas station I was working at until recently, but that checklist was also much, much smaller.
I've tried many, many programs similar to this over the decades and literally none of them worked for me. The closest to working was UFYH and even there, the only part that did work for me were the weekend challenges where Rachel would post a task you were supposed to go do RIGHT NOW, then another in about a half-hour or so. For some reason that works for me. I tried her guided cleaning journal and that was not it for me at all. I think I ended up tossing it since I'd already written in it and it wasn't like I could donate it at that point.
It's not a bad guided journal at all, it just wasn't for me.
But here's the link if you want to try it:
You're better than your mess.
UFYH has the right attitude for me, too. Less demanding, more encouraging, and with a sense of "This does suck, you're right, but it needs done so let's get it done. We can do it."
