Dear FlyLady,

I have used your system for a few years now, and it is the only one that seems to work.  The house is not spotless all the time, but it is good enough.

I had fallen off the bandwagon, and started back up again last week.  In trying to adjust to the daily and weekly routines, I decided I didn’t need to be perfect and could forgo the kitchen cleaning.  Usually, I cook and my husband or kids do the dishes.  But in addition to the sink being dirty, I also let other stuff lie around in the kitchen (like mail, anything else that didn’t have a place it went to immediately etc).  I thought that if the rest of the house was coming up to par, it didn’t matter if the kitchen and the sink were spotless or not.

I can’t bear it.  Today, I understand why shining the sink and cleaning the kitchen is so important.  Because it doesn’t matter if the rest of the house is clean.  If my kitchen isn’t clean, it doesn’t feel like I made progress anywhere else.  I still feel the pressure of ‘what if someone walks into this mess, like my parents’?  It is also the place where we, as a family, spend most of our time and we’re doing it in a messy environment.  So I’m going to stop being the martyr and focus on the kitchen first.

Love,

S in Virginia