Help! I've started working and I can't sit down!

Well, I've used today to try, *try* to get caught up on all the not-as-important stuff that I had to ignore while baby was in the hospital.

Mostly, that meant cleaning, sorting, re-organizing, labeling, and a little bit of time deep-cleaning the bathroom.

I've discovered that ya can't do things twice in order to find out which is the better way of doing them. Have you ever been tempted to drive home twice in a row taking two different routes to see which way is faster??? However, by the time you try the one route, then get back to the beginning to try the second route, it's not a fair trial because it's a different time of day -- traffic will differ, whether or not you hit the lights or whatever....

That's kind of how it is for me with cleaning the house. I get started in one room, but because I have to take some of the paraphernalia to another room, I end up in there for a while, and then zig-zag back and then re-trace those steps, and eventually things look cleaner but I wonder if I had stayed in the one area, would I have gotten done faster???

But again, I can't go back and give the alternative way of cleaning a fair shot because, well, things are already cleaner...

I used to have a cleaning cart but I gave it to a girlfriend who ooohed and ahhhed over it that I could tell she would make better use of it than I did. It was a wheeled contraption with a trash can and three baskets, one labeled "Put away Upstairs," another labeled "Put away Downstairs" and the last one marked: Give Away.

As the Clueless Mama trying to conquer clutter, I've determined that cleaning up is all about decision making. Each item has to be judged and placed in one of the three categories: Put away, Throw away, or Give away.

Now, now, nobody likes to judge things. It doesn't feel nice. I just remind myself that I'm not judging the intrinsic value of the clutter, but rather I'm judging what to do with the item!

This has helped me a lot, because now I can throw away things that are actually quite valuable -- like my son's 100% test score. Putting it in the trash does not mean that he no longer has 100% on his test. The value of the item remains the same! It simply means that I don't have to find a way to try to make clutter seem like decor.

FLYLady is the QUEEN of de-cluttering. She teaches us to overcome CHAOS (an acronym!! You know how I LOVE acronyms!) by fun little activites like the 27-fling boogie. CHAOS stands for Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. And the 27-Fling Boogie is when you just breeze through your household with the goal of getting rid of 27 items. Woo-hoo!

Well, today's post is a little unwieldy in my train of thought, but that's a reflection of how my cleaning techniques were... just keep on movin' from one thing to the next...