Working the system, Making it work for me

For those of you just plugging in, I am going through the book Organizing Magic by Sandra Felton and have invited you to join me. We are just getting started so it is not too late to join in.

On day one of Organizing Magic Felton mentions the Messies Annonymous Flipper. This is a system to help you maintain your home. And, I happen to have this system. 

This includes a day by day plan to maintain your house through daily, weekly, and monthly chores. It also has an option to set up a rotating meal plan complete with shopping lists. It has a guide and instructional CD to help you set up your system.

Setting up my Flipper system was a project. I listened to the CD several times and poured over the guide...and really it is not that complicated! I just had to really think about what chores needed to be done and how to clean my house. Did I want to do the room by room approach? What chores needed to be done daily? How often should we be washing curtains...something I hadn't really thought about. In the end I ate a lot of dark chocolate but managed to set up the system.

My Super Flipper in hiding. 

As you can see the Super Flipper comes with this very streamline photo album to hold all your chore cards. On one hand it is great because you can tuck it on a shelf and it isn't something that is going to add to the clutter in your home. However, I tucked it away a little too easily! And unfortunately my Super Flipper was yet another victim of the out of sight out of mind phenomenon.

When I started reading this book it reminded me of the system I already had in place. But, I had to do something to make it work better for me. My solution was to put my Flipper System front and center.

So, I went to the Goodwill and bought two table top photo albums for about $2 to $3 a piece. One of them has significantly more pages...In this album I put all the cards that make up my days of the week chores. The other album has the daily chores. These chores need to be done everyday, but they only have one card per week.

The next change I needed to make was to give myself a little reward when I finished my chores. When I complete my card and check off all my chores I can flip the photo album around. On the other side I have a cute picture, or a verse or quote for me to look at. It truly is a reward to not have my chores staring at me in the face.

Enjoying one of the cute pictures I get to see when my chores are done.

So far this has worked much better. It is also much easier for my husband to take a look at what I wasn't able to get done and he can help me check one or two off the list.

In the end... I believe the Super Flipper is something I Like A Latte!