Nittineedles mentioned Flylady.net a long while back, and I took a look at this site back then -- and realized I already had owned or read part of this woman's housecleaning/organizing book, years ago. She's so well known now it's crazy. And it's easy to see the reason for her success if you read the site. She's very, very good at getting people to pick themselves up and begin good habits, and she's nice about it -- so people can lose their guilt about failing to run a clean & organized household/business, or never having known how one does that kind of thing.

The site owner is Marla Cilley. She works with all sorts of people trying to reestablish order in the midst of chaos, has addressed even the problem of too much email. Sometimes, she will instruct all her site members to go into their email and throw away every single old email from her. This is an excellent bit of housekeeping and easy to overlook.

Right now I have to start emptying out some rooms I rent for storage in a building that's being sold. I've ignored it for long periods of time, and before this hadn't looked there for months. It could have been flooded or caved in and I wouldn't have known. And then I realized I didn't really care if something had happened to it.

The only things there I want are some wooden shelving and boxes of vintage computer scrap. Otherwise it's a lot of plastic uninteresting old technical crap, papers that don't matter, and fiberboard Ikea furniture I have no intention of putting together. Dust everywhere and that dirty yuckiness that settles over anything neglected. What garbage we tend to keep.

Just beginning to deal with it has spurred me to start clearing out old boxes at home, and clean a lot more. I don't follow the Flylady system, but maybe I will start in earnest. I just didn't like the 2nd rule you have to follow: Get dressed in the morning right away, including wearing shoes.

I wear slippers at home, and that's against the rules.