[zetta]

I tried Flylady, and discovered that no matter how I organized it, between all the tasks there were about 5-6 hours of housework that needed to be done each week (not counting shopping and cooking) -- and this was before kids! (Being an engineer, I actually timed how long it took me to do each task, from emptying the dishwasher to vacumming the living room to folding a load of laundry. My standards aren't obsessive -- I can live with the toilets being cleaned biweekly.) I could either break it up and do an hour every night after work, or spend half a day every weekend -- no wonder I had no time to relax! So finally I threw in the towel and hired a biweekly housecleaner. What do you know -- it takes her either 5 hours alone, or 2.5 hours with a partner to clean the house and fold 3-4 loads of laundry. It's worth every penny, especially now that I have a child and am working part time.

That said, I do think her strategies for decluttering are very good. But if your clutter situation is under control, there's a certain irreducible minimum of housekeeping that needs to be done to maintain a home, and her system couldn't reduce that time for me.