Spoonie, that's hilarious, I just read this entire thread, I had never heard of Fly-lady before, but what a great idea! I may run through it just for fun even though I now live in a pretty spotless organized environment.
My home was a never ending disaster zone while the kids were little and I just kept repeating the mantra "cleaning the house while the kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk while its still snowing". I have so many precious photos of my girls when they were little that I can never share due to the horrendous conditions in the background!
I did always keep my bedroom and the living room picked up and vacuumed for my sanity zones but I never thought of the positive psychological effects on the whole family of overall cleanliness and order in the home.
When I moved to a smaller place, I never could unpack most of my boxes and then I got remarried to a neat freak who already had a nicely furnished and immaculate home, so more of my stuff went into boxes. There definitely is something so harmonious and peaceful about a clean home, we now call it our tranquility base. I can't imagine how we got along in such chaos before!
For over 5 years, I have had roughly 30 moving boxes in storage in a garage and the thoughts of going through them just made me cringe but I "just knew" there were precious and valuable things in those boxes so I couldn't bear to part with them. This year, I finally decided it had to be done, and I am proud to say I have taken 2 pick up truck loads to the goodwill and a ginormous load to the dump. I also found space in our tranquility base for a few things that I really love. I still have a little ways to go, but it feels so good to finally unload and let go. I just have to pick non-sentimental days to work on it or I'll spend a whole day in memory lane and end up sitting in huge pile of mementos that have to be repacked(!).
