For those who know me (and you don’t even have to know me very well) I like things organized, neat and clean. I’m pretty good at getting my room, my house, my life organized, neat and clean but keeping it that way… well that’s another story.
Introducing
Flylady!!!
For those of you who are not familiar with Flylady, it is a full house cleaning system where you start by developing daily habits and routines to keep your house neat & tidy(Beginner Baby Steps). Then you break the rooms in your house up into “zones” and each week you do certain cleaning missions to clean that particular zone. That way your whole house is being continually cleaned top to bottom throughout the year in small sections instead of the traditional spring and fall cleaning spree’s our mom’s used to do that leaves you exhausted for the next day or two :)
I’ve decided to start the Beginner Baby Steps (again) and blog my way through it, but… I also plan to add a little too. I’ve come to realize that keeping my house clean is a lot like keeping my heart clean; its a daily thing. Washing my dishes is a lot like asking God to wash my heart and get all the filthy sin out of it, and keeping my sink shining is just like preparing my life for God to use. It may seem silly to some but it made sense to me, and hopefully it will start to make sense to you too as I go through this.
I am dubbing today, Tuesday, January 31, 2012, as the unofficial Day 1
Because this system is based on developing Morning and Evening Routines I wanted today to put my own habit at the top of my personal list.
It is simply to read my Bible and pray.
You may call this step “Devo’s,” “Devotions,” “Personal time with God,” “Prayer closet,” or a host of other names but the main idea is to sit down, alone with your Bible and ask the Lord to show you something special from His word and speak to your heart.
(by the way this “habit” is not affiliated with the Flylady system, it is my own personal addition and is not necessarily the views or promotion of Flylady.net)
When Kenny and I were getting closer to our wedding day I decided that I wanted to be the best house keeper there ever was. I determined that all the laundry would be ironed and hung up and the dishes would be washed and everything in the house sparkling clean all the time with supper on the table at 5:30 when Kenny got home each night. So I started looking online for cleaning lists when I stumbled across Flylady.net, and as I’ve already explained to you it looks like a very good and efficient plan of action. After getting back from our honeymoon I jumped into the system feet first, I was swishy-swiping, and shining my sink, and doing laundry and the daily missions all right off the bat. A week or so later I was overwhelmed and discouraged, I had taken on more than I could handle, so I quit. You can imagine what the house looked like after a week or two of doing nothing but what I absolutely had to to get by. More recently I got back online to Flylady’s website and saw a tab on the left side that said “Beginner Baby Steps".” I had seen the tab before but had ignored it. The idea of the Baby Steps was to start on day one with one thing – Shining my Sink, and the next day adding to that with another item and continuing on for the 31 days until I had eased myself slowly into the full system.
As Christians, we sometimes see all that a more mature Christian does in service to God and desire to have the same thing without thinking that that person has spent time diligently growing a relationship with God first. If we’re not careful, just like I jumped into the flylady cleaning system and failed, we too can jump into doing all the “right” things and become overwhelmed because we’re not starting with the baby steps of growing in Christ first and adding to that relationship, service for the Lord. This is why I felt it was so important to start out this venture with developing a habit for God’s Word. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:” I am not an expert at cleaning my house or at having a quiet time with my Savior, however, I am constantly seeing my need for that relationship with the Lord and how much my life has changed because of taking small baby steps toward having a consistent walk with God.
How about you, are you developing this habit? Are you seeking the Lord?
