(no subject)

[phineasjones]

4 june 2007


so i started on flylady yesterday. which, of course, means i shined my sink. sadly, my sink is old crappy, painted-over porcelain covered with scratches and stains. it will never be perfectly clean and shiny. but i know it's clean. and that's what counts. right? right.

so, what if there were a community for fannish-types who were interested in flylady, or doing the flylady thing or whatever. would anyone out there be interested? this is about home cleaning and general life organization,if you're wondering. the website is here. it's corny, cheezy, all that stuff. but it's also really effective. so, let's see who would be into that.

[Poll #997666]

Comments

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I'm not big on flylady, but i'm all about the lj support. and as i'm subscribed to several blogs about eliminating clutter, i'm all about the eliminating it this summer. and you, phineas, can make almost anything palatable. except beans.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

hold on just a minute there, my misguided little friend! if you think i can't make beans palatable, you've got another think coming. now that i can't eat soy, i eat beans like it's my job. and i know how to cook 'em up real tasty-like. i had some for breakfast! i'll be making some more for dinner! and if you don't like my beans, well, i'd say there's something weird in ainsleyville.

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it's usually only takes the look of beans to make me somewhat queasy. Between the look and the texture (I'm very picky about certain textures; there's not much fruit I can eat without it being smothered in something, though I'm working on that), the taste of beans hasn't mattered much.

But for you, I'd be willing to try them.

(and I'd have thought you'd been around more than long enough by know to know there's not much NOT weird in ainsleyville! :P )

[jjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Look, I now get some of the due south references in your polls. Not all of them, but I'm working on it!

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yay! i know! i was thinking that as i typed the poll. :)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I might go there. My sister is in love with FlyLady - seriously, I think they might get married in a civil ceremony, even though my sister is already married, so that would be, you know, illegal. And she's been trying to get me to go there forever, and I have tried, several times, but I've always stubbed my toe on the gender issues and gagged on the, um, tone of it. (I don't *want* to be hugged, damn it. Certainly not by a woman who calls herself FlyLady, which I always picture as being some horrible mutant fly-human hybrid with an obsessive interest in garbage.) And they don't have a "FlyBaby cynic who really doesn't like all this touchy-feely crap" category for beginners that I could find.

But! I would like to have a cleaner house. It isn't like it's dirty in here, but we've been living here for eight years, and I am really starting to see the effects of not having to put everything in boxes every two or three years: we have Too. Much. Shit. Just - random shit. And our house isn't big enough to have a lot of random shit in it without looking like it's full of, well, random shit.

Plus, I think this would be way more palatable if I was doing it with fans, and in a fannish context. So, yeah, I'd do it - I've just talked myself into changing my vote up there to yes.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yeah. exactly.

i had a great run with flylady a few years back. but then i got distracted and let it go and now my house (even though i moved less than a year ago) is going to bury me in clutter. when i was going strong with flylady, though, i felt great. there are so many handy systems for keeping track of just about everything. i want that back.

but you're right, there's weird gender stuff and there's god all over the place and... well. many of those people seem to be from a different planet. so it makes perfect sense to me that we can help each other through it. mock the corny parts and use the helpful stuff. right?

ok, then. guess i better get on this.

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

see, that's exactly what i was thinking about a fannish one -- that we could take the bones of Getting Things Done and mock the rest.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think that's the way to go. you are very smart. :)

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

it makes perfect sense to me that we can help each other through it. mock the corny parts and use the helpful stuff

Hi there. Checking out your journal and noticed this, cuz I happen to have Flylady's book. I, um, kind of have a collection of books about organizing, and I'm too disorganized to actually have them totally work for me, but, you know, each one helps a little bit. My kitchen sink is always pretty much good, cuz I can't stand looking at it if it isn't, and I keep stuff mostly clean, but the clutter is an issue. Always has been. I'm a visually oriented type who has to have stuff where I can see it or it might as well not be there! So I've actually found some other books much more helpful. Especially Organizing for the Creative Person by Lehmkuhl & Lamping. Great book.

But anyway. I like the idea of fen supporting each other at this, because we understand each other's pack-rat tendencies and our obessiveness and our creative-type orientation. And so on.

I don't recall the gender issues and the God comments in Flylady's book, but I didn't read it cover to cover, and I pretty much ignore that kind of thing, anyway. I try to get the value an author is offering and ignore any "noise." "God" is pretty much a nonsense word, anyway: who really knows what anybody else means by it, you know? So I kind of mentally substitute Spirit or Universe and I don't worry about it.

There's always de-cluttering and organizing I can do. I'm beginning to think I'll never actually get to where I think I'm truly organized, but hopefully I can be a little more organized...and make peace with the rest. :)

Anyway, cool idea. And I am VERY IMPRESSED at how well you pimped DS. Yay! We should have, like, a Scout badge for that. :)

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yeah, i have flylady's book too, but i haven't found the book as helpful as the system in general - website and reminders included (though the reminders get a bit out of hand). the gender stuff is rooted in the basic assumption that we're all a bunch of housewives trying to get our homes in order. she says she's including everyone, but she's really talking to women and a specific class of women at that. and makes comments about the 'dear husbdand' all the time. and then she has things like "god breezes" which are supposed to be, like, inspiring moments or something. she doesn't get specific with the god stuff, but it's there and it freaks me out a little.

but, yeah, i like the idea of a bunch of us doing this together. it was marginalia's idea. i think we'll have to give it a go.

oh, and thank you. i wish i could get paid for fandom pimping. then i could quit my day job! if i had one.

[marginalia.livejournal.com]

ooh, thanks for the suggestion for _organizing for the creative person_. i just placed a hold on it.

[eanja]

I came over here viaainsley. I've done flylady on and off, and should get back to making some effort to keep the apartment neat. If lj could do something related w/out the 37 extra posts a day that the yahoo group has, it would be great.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yeah. i figure we could use a community to filter out the constant barrage of e-mails about "purple puddles" and the like. i think we'll be giving this a go. i'll keep you posted!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, great idea! I love FlyLady's system, but have a bit of a hard time with the "culture," so to speak.

She sends out fewer reminders btw. I think it just got to be too much for most people, so now you have to sign up to a separate list to get them all.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

oh, yeah. it's the culture that's the problem. whew.

hm. i wonder i if i got on the wrong list. or maybe it's better than it used to be and i just blocked out how bad it was. :) i don't mind it too much most of the time. if i get too annoyed, i could always put it in a different e-mail account or use the digest-mode or something.

we'll be posting about the community soon!

<3

[ainsley.livejournal.com]

I'm technically still on the mailing list, just set at important announcements only, or something. It was a very recent change, in May IIRC, in which she adjusted the format because of the overwhelming number of e-mails.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

oh, interesting. good to know, thanks.