At the bottom of this chart you will see the five zones listed.  Declutter first, Detail Clean next.  Don’t do both in one Zone if you are not READY for it!  In time you will!

I got an epiphany, a realization, an aha moment, a God Breeze as The Flylady calls it!  It doesn’t matter what you call it.  It is just about looking at something I have been looking at for a while but suddenly see it in a whole new light!  

Zones
With Flylady we have five zones.  It is based on most of the time the days of the month spread over five weeks.  To make it easy for you, I will list them out taken from the book “Sink Reflections” by Marla Cilley.

Zone 1 – Entrance/Dining Room/Front Porch
Zone 2 – Kitchen
Zone 3 – Bathroom/Children’s Rooms/Spare Bedroom or Office
Zone 4 – Master Bedroom/Master Bathroom
Zone 5 – Living Room/Family Room/Den

Each zone designates the same week number on the calendar.  With Flylady Kelly puts out the weekly missions for the current zone to be focused on for 15 minutes each day.  Some of my members will put it in my closed group for convenience.  Otherwise you can easily find it on Flylady’s website.

Now, I know in my group everyone is waiting for the missions for the week.  It is like they can’t do anything until they get their missions.  This is all great and I am glad you get excited waiting for them.  The problem is that not everyone is READY for Zone Work Detail Cleaning.  Let me say this again.  Not everyone is READY for Zone Work Detail Cleaning.

What Do You Do Instead And Who Am I Talking About?
Instead, when you are in the Zone for the week, if you are just starting out, starting over, still working on decluttering, this is what you do instead of Kelly’s Missions!  YOU DECLUTTER 15 MINUTES EACH DAY IN THIS ZONE!  Don’t worry about the Detail Zone Cleaning!  You are not READY for it!  Clutter has got to go out the door in each zone FIRST before you are READY for Zone Detail Cleaning.

This is where I got my aha moment.  Most of my members of Marilyn’s Way are at various levels of learning their own way to FLY using Flylady lessons.  Some of us have not bought the book and I recommend that you do.  It is clearly written in there.  You have to look for it.

You cannot Detail Clean until you Declutter!!  All you are doing is moving things from one location to another.  Maybe they will go into another room.  When that Zone comes up during the month, there it is.  Where do you put it?  In another room or zone again.  You continue to repeat this process and after three months you can’t see any difference in your home so you give up for awhile.  Maybe trying it again after you have tried another system.  If you still have clutter in your zones, deal with it by a simple system called “Throw Away” “Give Away” or “Put Away.”

When I found Flylady, I was wall to wall filled with clutter.  It was in my cabinets, my drawers, and boxes.  Why did it take so long to declutter?  There are various reasons.  Health issues, circumstances changed, a life event happens, and another reason and another.  

Whenever Kelly’s Weekly Missions came out for the week, I would do the first day maybe and not do the rest.  Why?  Because I became frustrated with the fact that I would have to move my clutter in order to do the mission.  It actually made me nauseous. By Tuesday or Wednesday I would give up and tell myself I would start on next week’s Zone Work which lasted for a day or two and I would give up.  Not because I was lazy.  It was because I had not grasped the concept that I must DECLUTTER FIRST in each Zone before I do the Zone Detailed Work!

I hope it doesn’t take as long as it did for me to understand this.  Sometimes we get too caught up in our lists or all the reasons we just don’t have the energy to do the dinner dishes because all we see is all the clutter in our homes and YES it sucks the energy right out of you!

What Do You Do In The Meantime?
You focus on the basic habits that will get you in motion.  Where can these habits be found?  In the Monthly Habits!  That is what I finally did in 2011.  I focused on very basic daily habits by focusing on the weekly habits for specific days and the monthly habits for the year.  I didn’t worry about the detailed cleaning in each Zone because I didn’t have each Zone decluttered.  As time went on, certain zones got decluttered faster.  Those are the Zones I began to begin my Detail Zone Cleaning!  Now if I am not following the rule if something new comes in, something old must go out in a particular zone, I stop the Detail Zone Cleaning and start the Declutter Zone Cleaning.

To think it took a visit from Flylady for me to understand this.  So if you want to know what I learned most from my visit?  This is it!  When others are Detail Zone Cleaning and you are just not there yet, DECLUTTER in the weekly zone each month until the clutter is gone so you can begin to do Detail Zone Cleaning!
Keep FLYing!
Marilyn