Dear FlyLady,

I started with FlyLady in 11/02, but the one thing I never got was shining the sink. Really.

I think it was the “shining” part that stalled me out. But before Christmas there was an e-mail about taking BabySteps to keep it empty, so I made that my January resolution.

I asked everyone in the family to help me keep the sink empty. I have little kids, and they can’t always get the dishwasher open, so I let them put their dishes in the sink. But once an hour I check the sink and put any dishes in the dishwasher. After dinner everyone has to stay in the kitchen and help me get picked up.

Now, in the past year we had our 3rd baby and moved to a house twice the size of our old house. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with both, so there are a lot of things I need to get back under control, hot spots, swish ‘n’ swipe, home blessing, etc.

But instead of re-implementing all of these, I said I wouldn’t do anything but the sink. My husband, God bless him, rolled his eyes and said, “we’ll see how long this lasts.”

Here’s the part I don’t understand. I’m just focusing on the sink, but my whole house is getting under control.

All the counters are clean. We’re also saving money on paper plates, which I really don’t understand. We started using real plates to fill up the dishwasher so we could run it every night. I’m not cooking less, and I don’t think I’m running the dishwasher that much more. But we always have clean dishes and space in the dishwasher!

Today when I went to check on the sink and found it empty. So I filled it with bleach water and washed the garbage can. Yesterday it was clean, so I spent some time working on the linen closet. The day before it was clean, so I baked a batch of cookies for the kids’ after school snack.

Anyway, I thought there might be other people like me who were freaked out by the “shine the sink” thing. Mine didn’t start shiny, just empty. It took me years to figure it out, but I finally got there!

A FlyBaby

FlyLady Rebecca here: Do you have a Shiny Sink Story? Let us know, and send an email with MY SHINY SINK STORY in the subject line to flylady@flylady.net!

We have everything you need to keep your home shining! Sometimes we need a little motivation. Our efficient tools give us a jump start! They make a tough job fun. If you make it fun; it will get done!