Keeping House with Flylady's Zones

For those of you who don't know the 'Flylady Zones', I am going to explain it in my own words for you today.  I have lots of friends and family that I have referred to Flylady over the years, but many of them have come back to me more confused than enlightened.

I will admit that the website is somewhat difficult to follow, and the best place to start is with reading her book 'Sink Reflections'.  It is a great read, and once you read it, it puts all of the pieces of the puzzle together.  It is available as a hard copy or an audio book - I love audio books!  They are great to listen to while you are cleaning or driving or straightening your hair ;)  I find them really inspiring, and a great use of time, as I struggle to find time to read generally.

So, Flylady breaks the house into five 'Zones'.  She then breaks each month into weeks, so that approximately 1 week is spent in each zone (some zones are smaller than others and hence have less time allocated to them).  By focussing on one zone for a week, the idea is that you will do detailed cleaning, organising and decluttering in one area of your house, and not feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the entire house - it is just one or two rooms at a time. This makes sense to me!  If we break things down into manageable chunks, we are much more likely to succeed :)


Each week this month, I will post about the focus Zone.  I will provide ideas for how to organise/ clean/declutter in that area.  If you join Flylady's emailing list, you get daily emails reminding you of what jobs need to be done, along with challenges for the current zone.  It is a great reminder to stay on track!

I allocate 15 minutes a day for Zone work.  That is all!  It is so simple and achievable - anyone can do it!

The five zones are:






You can download Flylady's list of jobs to do in each zone here. I have created my own zones and lists to suit my house.  But don't let perfectionism stand in your way to getting started - just print her lists for now, and highlight the items as you do them.  Just write on the extra items that you do in your home, and cross off the ones that aren't applicable to you.  Then in a few months, you will have established some habits in each zone and you can then create your own personalised cleaning list.

Don't get overwhelmed by the length of the lists.  Remember, I only do 15 minutes a day (if that)!  You don't need to do all of these things every month...  Before I started this system, I was lucky to do these things once a year!  The beauty of organising your cleaning into these zones, is that you don't then have a massive spring clean once a year.  No more dedicating Saturdays and holidays to cleaning!  Now, surely that is appealing to everyone ;)

Remember that the Home Routines app for your iPhone is linked to the Zones, and you can create your lists on this too!  Another great tool to help you get started :)  You can read my post on it here.

I will post the dates for the Zones as soon as Flylady has them on her website.  Then you can add them to your calendar and start to think about when in your day you can allocate 15 minutes to the task.

If you would like to see my posts on how I work in and/or organise the Zones, select the tabs to the right (Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, Zone 4, Zone 5).

• Zone 1: The Entrance, Front Porch and Dining Room
• Zone 2: The Kitchen
• Zone 3: The Bathroom and One Extra Room
• Zone 4: The Master Bedroom
• Zone 5: The Living Room