It's a big deal to me damn it.

Dear Flylady,
I found your site 17 months ago. I was smitten with your idea's, I made a control journal and I read ALL of it, instead of doing things one day at a time, I plowed through thinking I could do it all. I'm sure you can guess what happened.
I crashed, and burned.
It has been an ongoing battle for me keeping up with the house. Well let me tell you a bit about us here at the Mc house. I am a SAHM, and my DH Spaghetti, works 2 jobs, and a 3rd in the summer. We have two children, Bagel who is 3 1/2 and Weaky who is 21 months. We also have two boxers, and two cats. Phew. So with that said, Spaghetti works, and works, and I get ALL the house hold responsibilities.



I am getting better at picking up after myself, and everyone else, I have realized that CHAOS is how we live, and then when guests are coming over, we choose the room they won't see and shove everything in there. And that room then suffers for months before the clutter is removed.



My biggest issue? Laundry. I shudder at the word. I have always done poorly at keeping up with laundry, even when I lived at home and my mom did my laundry!!



I found an older blog post about how I was sitting in a 1x1 square of carpet in my bedroom. The ONLY part of my carpet you could see. The other 8x8 floor space, and 3x10 space was COVERED about 2 feet high with clothes. Some dirty some clean. I later found a blog post on how I had 18 garbage bags, and 5 laundry baskets FULL of clean clothes to be put away. Amazingly we still had clothes on our backs, we just had WAY to much clothes.



Fast forward to summer 2009, I purged like a good flybaby. I was donating BAGS of clothes, my daughters clothes went to a friend who was having a baby girl (I gave her 12 bags!) and my son's 3 bags of clothes went to my cousin for her baby boy.



Each time I donated I felt a weight come off my shoulders, it made me want to purge more! I needed to sort through the clothes, decide what was to keep, what was to hopefully fit into (those are bagged and in the attic. I wrote a date on them, and I have 1 year to fit into them, or they go too!) My husband lost weight so we had to go through his clothes as well.



So if you want to know my old habits of washing, drying and putting away? Well they were slim and none. I washed, then dried. Then it sat for a few days. Then I would have to re wash the stinky clothes in the washer, and yes even some of them got mold on them from this lazy habit! I would carry the clothes up two floors to our bedroom, and dump the clean clothes on the floor, I would do this all day, dumping 4 big baskets onto the floor. Well after caring for two small children all day, the last thing I wanted to do was fold or hang clothes. We ALWAYS lived out of baskets, or the floor pile. I would iron as need be.

(yes we lived like this for 11 years)

Or if we even were close to catching up with laundry, lets say I had a load in the wash, a load in the dryer, and a load to go in. To me that was caught up, I would ignore the evil chore for a week! Well you know where that got me. Back to piles and piles of laundry.



It was frustrating, making us late for work, for family get togethers, not to mention I would get stressed trying to dress myself, and family from a mess of a monster pile! I remember one day, walking into my daughters room who was 2 1/2 at the time, she had dumped over a basket of clean clothes in her room, and strewn them about. I asked her why she did that. She said to be like you mommy.



I was sad that I was that role model. I cried to myself, and vowed that I would have to teach her the right way to be like mommy.



After the great purge was over, and the Holiday's ended. I started on January 2nd 2010, I started doing loads of laundry like crazy, usually 3-4 a day, folding and hanging them as I went, never dumping a clean load onto the floor like before, if I was too tired to fold, it stayed IN the basket.



As of today. January 30th 2010, I have caught up.

I cried. I am SO proud of pushing myself to get this done right. It has been 11 years of laundry piles, and procrastinating, but I did it.



I did it by myself, no need for my husband to try and take the kids away for a day so I can fold, or have my mom take bags home to help out. I needed to do it myself. I thought of you and your quotes and comments often, your Tweets asking me where my laudry is often saved the day.



My Dear Husband and I can now enjoy our retreat of a bedroom like we should, it's pretty and a treat to go to.

Thank you Flylady. Thank you.



Flybaby,

Queen of Feisty



P.S. share this message with anyone who needs it. I hope it inspires. Now I am off to see how many nights in a row I can shine my sink, so far 4 nights in a row is my max, but I am trying, I fly and crash, and fly and crash, but I just keep flying...
 
 
Blogger note: This is an email I sent to the flylady, if you need to get organized in anyway, or start cleaning check her out. She is A.MAZ.ING, and no I did not refer to my husband as Spaghetti and myself as the Queen of Feisty for real... silly readers... and noe that I said on FB a few days ago that I was caught up, I was with the people clothes, I have spent a few days washing rugs, and blankets. I can proudly say that today I have NO laundry.