Customer Reviews

Sink Reflections

5 star:		(319)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The writer of this book, Marla Cilley, goes by another name: Flylady. I own this book and have read it. But there is another way to experience Flylady if you have a computer. You can receive all the wisdom contained in the book by joining her e-mail coaching list. I joined her list over a year ago and it has completely changed my life. Bit by bit, I read and absorbed her wisdom and have been transforming my life and my home.

Because the Flylady had made such an impact on my life, I bought her book immediately after it was published. As I read it, not much was unfamiliar to me because I had been a member of her e-mail group, and yet having it all in one place was very valuable to me. Despite having received a lot of information contained in the book through the e-mail group, I still wanted to own the book and use it frequently.

This book will especially be helpful to people who have a real problem figuring out how to keep and organize their home. Probably every person will find something to benefit them from the wisdom contained within, however, people who really struggle with issues of getting their act together will be especially helped.

I was at my absolute wits end. I have an extensive collection of self-help books on organization and overcoming clutter. Each and every book has been interesting and hope-inspiring, and has presented helpful techniques and approaches. Yet to my great despair,I was never able to find a way to make it all work for me. At one point I decided, maybe I need outside help and hired a very expensive (and famous)organizing professional to help me. I paid several thousand dollars for an organizing plan, and hired these organizers at $75.00 an hour to try to help me overcome my disorganization problem. They even selected me to have a makeover in a famous magazine after seeing pictures of my disorganized, cluttered home. (The story was killed by new editors who took over the magazine, much to my dismay).

It was Flylady's way of teaching and coaching that was my salvation. Her method is so doable. You start with baby steps, and you never do more than you are ready for. She starts you off with one task, and one task only. To shine your kitchen sink. It is so easy to comply with this first step. Even if you never do anything else, it is so simple and easy there really isn't a reason to try.

When you become really comfortable with shining your sink every day, she has you add another step: developing a simple evening and morning routine. Lay out your clothes for the next day in the evening, and get dressed to your shoes every morning. You can practice and stay on these beginning steps for as long as you like, until you feel comfortable to move to the next step. She likes to say that you are never behind and don't need to get caught up. She tells you to take everything in baby steps. You can go as fast or as slow as you like.

Later she add her brilliant strategy of decluttering to your steps. For only 15 minutes a day, you work in various zones in your house decluttering. It is so simple. Anyone can work 15 minutes a day. And, miraculously, you discover the power of what 15 minutes can accomplish.

Things seem to get more complicated later on, but you don't even notice, as she leads you through adding simple daily routines, making a weekly plan, putting together a control journal, learning meal planning, holiday organizing. Because everything is given to you in little pieces, you never realize how much you're doing because you only add each new technique one layer at a time. You build on what has come before and you never feel like you're doing very much more.

A year after I have been putting her methods into practice, I have a completely different mindset regarding keeping my home. I have experienced a year now of chaos-free, much reduced stress holidays. I have done many projects that I've always felt bad about never getting around to. My family and friends all comment on the difference in my home. My counter (which had been for years a source of despair for me, as it had been covered with piles of junk that I would spend hours cleaning, only to have it reappear a couple of days later) is now always clean and clear. The problem of my counter which had been impossible for me to solve, has been so easily and elegantly solved by Flylady. I have learned from her that my counter is a "hot spot", and that nothing can be on it because "clutter begets clutter. By looking at this "hot spot" and putting out fires that erupt in it during the day, I have been able to effortlessly keep it clear.

I still have a way to go. I'm still building on my layers of knowledge with Flylady's system. I have every confidence that her methods will prove to be an answer for me. If you are in despair and don't know where to turn, please give her a try.

Stepford wife? Please! I am an educator with two college degrees and although happily married, have no children and like to work out with martial arts! This book is for ANYONE who feels like the clutter in their house has taken them over. My house was always messy and I had basically given up, thinking that there were clean people and messy people, and I was doomed to be one of the latter. I picked this book up on a whim at a local book store and was instantly intrigued. Imagine, a organizing book that makes no mention of buying nifty new containers or redoing your home to contain your crap! Flylady operates on the principal that if something in your home is causing you stress or if you are looking at it with disinterest or hate, it's time to LET IT GO! Toss it! Goodbye! This was a real novelty to a pack rat like me, and it has truly changed how I look at my home and the items within. While I am far from completely organized yet, it has made a HUGE difference and my home is far more serene now then it ever has been. I am slowly getting rid of everything that is not deserving a place in my life and I am all the better for it. This is the ONE organizing book out there that will really make a difference! Thank you Flylady!

I was convinced that I needed to buy a new (bigger) house, but once I realized I was living in CHAOS (and that somebody knew what that was and had been there too) and that before I rushed right out to buy that new place I had some decluttering to do -- I got right to it. 15 minutes at a time over only about a month (long enough to establish a habit) I discovered that my house was plenty big enough -- I just needed to stop housing all that clutter and instead decide that the rooms needed only to hold essentials -- and that the only true essentials were my family and me.

Now, the effects of the book are reaching into every area of my life -- my Christmas present selection (I don't want to give something that will just be clutter in the hands of the recipient), my purse, my budget, my exercise, my diet, my LIFE.

It is absolutely amazing. Yes, there is a certain amount of "religious" content. I just substitute the word epiphany for God Breeze -- and keep on reading.

The website (and the daily flow of emails and testimonials) are amazingly wonderful. The best part of the book and of the system is -- we clutter-maniacs are not alone and just knowing that someone else has suffered the pain of being so messy that you are afraid to have anyone see your house is comforting -- and inspires us FlyBabies to get moving for the next 15 minutes to make one little spot just that much better.

Also, I would like to reply to the "irreducible chore and it MUST take a certain amount of time" comment: If when I get up in the morning and in using the bathroom sink while brushing my teeth just happen spend time wiping the sink and counter (time I would be standing there anyway) -- is that time spent cleaning or time spent brushing my teeth? I realize that it is both, but that is just one tiny example of how that "certain irreducible amount of time" can be handled.
If in cooking dinner you clean up along the way, is that cooking or cleaning?
If in clearing the table nothing gets stacked in the sink (where it pauses for a week before it makes it to the dishwasher) but just goes straight into the dishwasher, is that clearing or cleaning?
If you know what you are going to wear tomorrow because you have laid it out the night before (and have noticed if the skirt needs hemming or the blouse needs to be ironed -- and so handled it in a few minutes that night), is that just being prepared or is that cleaning?

Above all -- I have discovered that I have too much (and don't need to buy or receive any more) -- and I have discovered the blessings that come to me from giving my too much away to people who have too little.

And all from this little bitty book. BUY IT or go to flylady.net!

I LOVE this book! Marla shows us how to transform our life... in 15 minute segments, zones, quick routines and more. I was TOTALLY in CHAOS (what she calls "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome"), and am still amazed that I can walk through a completely clean and transformed home at all times. It takes NO time to clean my home now, all my years of clutter is GONE, and the positive energy is spilling over into other areas of my life, and completely transforming them too! God Bless you, Flylady, you're helping women find themselves again. Once we get rid of the clutter that drains us of energy... voila! The true woman emerges! Full of energy, love and great ideas! I truly feel you're helping us MUCH more than keeping our houses clean. You're giving us a new way to think. You're so right.. that you can do anything for 15 minutes. Thanks again, Flylady!

Are you living in CHAOS? Do you feel depressed and overwhelmed, especially by your house? Is your dear husband threatening to check into a motel, just so he can find the phone when it rings? Are you always running late and yelling at your babies because you can't find your car keys... again? Believe me, I understand, and so does FLYLady! She is one of us, but she has found the way out, and she is shining her light, one baby step at a time, for us to follow her out of the miry pit of clutter and more clutter! This book will change your life. If you are depressed because your home and your life are a mess, spend a few minutes with our dear FLYLady, and you will find the beginnings of the changes that have eluded you until now. FLYLady shows us how to baby step our way out of our clutter and chaos to a life of peace and productivity. You can do anything for 15 minutes at a time! Even change your life.

Most of us who were born domestically and organizationally challenged are attracted to every new organizing book that comes out. I personally had dozens of them, including the system FLYLady herself once used, the Pam Young-Peggy Jones card file system. (She credits Pam and Peggy with developing this methodology, but I think she is too modest. I love Pam and Peggy, too, but their books did not change my life. This one did. I still re-read the P&P books from time to time because they are very funny, but I was never able to make that complicated card file work (although it was great fun putting it together). But what FLYLady has done is to take the germ of the idea Pam and Peggy had and make it so simple that ANYONE can do it. It's OK to start small. It's OK not to do everything perfectly. In fact, perfectionism is the only thing that is NOT OK: "Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family". You learn to establish small routines, morning and evening, and to spend 15 minutes a day de-cluttering your hot spots.

And somehow, little by little, and before you know it, a transformation has occurred. No more pretending you aren't home when the doorbell rings! Your husband and friends will be complimenting YOU on how great your house looks. Buy this book! Buy 10 copies and give them to your messie friends. Put them in your daughters' hope chests. Donate one to your library. Did I mention it will change your life?

Last summer, I happily donated my organization books (and let me tell you, I had a library and a half!) to our public library. Earlier that year, I had become a FlyBaby and thanks to FlyLady's incredible system, had baby stepped my way into a completely transformed way of living. I will always be grateful!

FlyLady's wit, wisdom and just plain talk speaks to everyone who has ever struggled with organization. I know I speak for thousands of women all over the world who benefit from her system when I say, no one teaches organization better because she doesn't just address the unmade bed or the piles of unwashed laundry. She's been in the trenches, struggled herself and speaks from experience and with victory over the problem. And that makes all the difference in the world.

I also need to mention that I personally know FlyLady (after becoming a FlyBaby) and will vouch for her personal integrity: she walks her talk, every single bit of it. I am buying several of FlyLady's books to give to friends and will treasure my own personal copy, too.

I think I fall somewhere between the reviewers who love or hate this book. While I give it an unqualified thumbs up, that's not to say I like the style. I don't. I am spiky, cynical, irreligious and unsentimental. I cringe when Marla talks about "blessing the world" and "purple puddles" and her "DH". But here's the thing. This book works.

I am not a Stepford wife - I'm a senior executive for a national organisation and I have no family at all, no parents, siblings, partner or children - not even a pet. Because I have absolutely no time for myself and no priorities apart from work, my house was utter chaos. Thanks to Marla Cilley it is now livable and I am able to have friends over without drowning in shame and am gradually reclaiming my life away from the office.

This book contains practical ideas that made me completely rethink my approach to my home. I am not cleaning out of moral duty or to please someone else, but because I deserve a nice place to live. The concept that it is better to do something imperfectly than never to start completely changed my thinking. And permission not to finish - to just do 15 minutes worth and stop - has made a huge difference to my life.

And while I don't like the syrupy stuff, I also suspect that someone without that homespun sweetness could not or would not have written this book and offered this help. So I am just grateful, and Marla can be as religious and as honeyed as she damn well likes, because I truly appreciate what this book has helped me do, and only an idiot throws out a rare gift because the wrapping doesn't suit them - particularly when it is genuinely well meant.

And to the patronising cow who can't believe people don't have time to throw out old toothpaste tubes - not everyone has as much free time as you do, and not everyone has the self-esteem necessary to put their own needs first. Clearly you are lucky enough to have plenty of both time and ego. Perhaps you can now invest in some insight to match.

Thanks, Marla, for your generosity and common sense.

I follow the system Marla lays out in this book and I'm no Stepford Wife. I'm a full time school teacher and bring work home with me. My house is neat, and I have more free time than when my house was a mess. One reviewer stated that there was "irreducible time" for doing housework. True, but I spend 3 minutes doing my only bathroom that the whole family uses, and it looks great. I don't do housework on weekends, get all my errands and housework done during the week, take classes for my master's degree, and still have time to relax. As a matter of fact, this system saves me so much time and money and helps me stay in such a positive mood that I'm beginning to plan how I'm gong to accomplish something I've always wanted to do and didn't have the time or money for--I'm going to learn to fly a plane! (Stepford Wives don't fly planes!)
Now, Marla isn't any Shakespeare, but that's not why you would buy this book. Shakespeare is wonderful, but he doesn't tell you how to find peace and be organized. Marla does, and she knows whereof she speaks. After all, she's helping you find peace, not trying to write the Great American Novel. Take it for what it is--a great way to be more organized so you have more time to read those great works of fiction.
By the way. Her system helped me become so organized that my husband and i can leave for a great 3 day get away now with just 15 minutes notice. That's because now, everythings clean, ready, and put where it should be. We just got back from 3 days camping and mountain biking--we packed,.loaded the bikes, notified the kids and neighbors and left in 15 minutes (Another non Stepford activity!) Marla helped me organize my life so I can HAVE a life! Thanks, Marla

I bought this book as a "gratitude" purchase, but am finding it valuable to have all the information in book form. Flylady's website and emails have already started to change my life - and my house - even though years of trying other systems had not.

I'm very educated and can pull off grand projects at work, but my house has never been neat for more than one day, and that after mad panic cleaning due to guests being scheduled. No matter how much I resolved to not let it get bad again, I just couldn't seem to keep it together. My shame, and sense of failure, were unspeakable. And I thought, permanent. But I just needed to learn from someone who conquered lifelong chaos. This system works, and it is EASY! I simply cannot believe how much less time and stress this system takes, and how much better life is becoming. Oh, Thank God!

Now that flylady's book is in print, more people will be able to start living in peace rather than chaos. What a relief! Thank you Flylady, from the bottom of my heart. And my husband thanks you, too!

This book is a very organized group of emails!

FlyLady doesn't mess with her wonderful system by writing a new plan, this is the emails you get on a daily basis in one handy book.

For those who get overwhelmed by the messages and don't know where to start, this book is for you. Marla has broken the steps down to chapters and it's even easier than the emails make it seem.

I was able to find new ideas from the book that I somehow missed during the months I have been on the list.

The motavating testimonials are also in there! I haven't found anything missing from this book.