Well Mama22Gs - I've been in your shoes.

You have 2 choices (3 really)

1) 'Stash and Dash Stlye' Get everything you don't know what to do with and dump it into banker's boxes and stack them in a closet where you can forget about them forever.

2) 'Flylady Style' Take this as a great oppotunity to become a Master Crisis Cleaner. see http://flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_CrisisCleaning.asp

Or
3) Do as much of option #2 as possible, and revert back to option #1 for the rest! That's where I started, anyway.

This Saturday I went after all my paper clutter as though I were crisis cleaning (go back and read my posts if you don't believe me. Look at the timestamps. I was taking breaks and they didn't turn into marathons)- I even unearthed a banker's box of papers, etc. from my last Major Stash and Dash experience.

I now have a stack of 'papers I don't know what to do with' that is less than a half inch think on a shelf near my computer.

Wow - that's condensed from 6 seperate piles. It did take all day, but with breaks for my yoga class, mid-day walk with BFF, and ice cream for dinner with DH.

How could I have 6 piles of paper while following Flylady? Well, I did have a clean sink and clean house, but having a study all to myself it was so easy to stash and dash and I never got into a routine of hotspot rescue in there. When I proposed that we do the first 31 days of beginner babysteps, I knew that there would be some things that I was already doing - like making the bed and other things that I didn't really pay attention to the first time around - and I was looking forward to finding those missing pieces.

I think the idea of Flylady is that you never have to spend a whole day cleaning, but if you do find yourself having to move, or with guests on their way, or like me, just wanting to catch up from backsliding - it's still possible to surface clean and be good to yourself at the same time.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Coaching available, at SchoolSuccessSolutions.com