Product Description

Fly Out of CHAOS
(Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome)
Into Order--One BabyStep at a Time

With her special blend of housecleaning tips, humor, and musings about daily life, Marla Cilley, a.k.a. The FlyLady, shows you how to manage clutter and chaos and get your home--and your life--in order. Drawn from the lessons and tools used in her popular mentoring program, FlyLady helps you create doable housekeeping routines and break down overwhelming chores into manageable missions that will restore peace to your home--and your psyche. Soon you’ll be able to greet guests without fear, find your keys, locate your kids, and most of all, learn how to FLY: Finally Loving Yourself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9306 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-01
• Released on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In her debut book, Cilley, a.k.a. "The FlyLady" to the thousands who log onto her FlyLady.net Web site, reaches into the everywoman's home to help make her housecleaning more fun and her life more organized. Beginning with "Shiny Sink 101," Cilley explains how a spotless kitchen sink can direct even the most discouraged housekeeper onto the path of well-ordered domesticity. Through several straightforward routines, including the 27 Fling Boogie (the cut-throat practice of quick junk disposal), the Five-Minute Room Rescue ("another step on the road to clutter recovery") and the Hot Spot Fire Drill (for an area that, like a forest fire, takes over your home), Cilley advises her "FlyBabies" on how to overcome clutter and CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome). Filled with testimonials from online followers, the book aims to help readers establish manageable daily and weekly habits by incorporating spirituality and family into the program. Detailed and direct, this is a guidebook for the stay-at-home or working woman who wants to have it all, including her sanity.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
?Take off with FlyLady! Her down-to-earth writing will help anyone who desires to be lifted free from the chaos and confusion disorder causes.?
--Pam Young and Peggy Jones, co-authors, Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise

?FlyLady is the fairy godmother who turned my dungeon into a castle, my Royal Pain into Prince Charming, and my grief into grins. And it all started with shining my sink!?
--Melanie Wilson, Ph.D., media psychologist, author, speaker -- Review

Review

“Take off with FlyLady! Her down-to-earth writing will help anyone who desires to be lifted free from the chaos and confusion disorder causes.” —Pam Young and Peggy Jones, coauthors, Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise

“FlyLady is the fairy godmother who turned my dungeon into a castle, my Royal Pain into Prince Charming, and my grief into grins. And it all started with shining my sink!” —Melanie Wilson, Ph.D., media psychologist, author, speaker

“Chatty and personal.” —Chicago Tribune

“Easy to read and chock-full of helpful ideas for the disorganized.”—Dear Abby syndicated column

"Cilley's humor and good advice will have even the busiest people waking up to a cleaner house in no time."—Sacramento Bee

Customer Reviews

Flylady was the Answer
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.

Lifechanging
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!

Transformed my life... in 15 minute segments
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!