I know: I don’t say anything for days and then I will just not shut up. And I know that I have had way too much coffee this morning, so take this with a grain of creamer, but I have kicked FlyLady out of my life, forever.

You know who she is. This is her website.

Don’t get me wrong: I love her concept. Do a little bit every day, instead of letting everything get to crisis point. That’s excellent advice for everything, not just keeping your house clean, and I intend to keep following that advice.

But I have absolutely had enough of her prattling on about how I have to quit getting on my family to help me maintain our home. According to her, I need to shut up and work a better-than-full-time job being the main support of my family AND clean all the freaking toilets (her metaphor for ‘doing it all’), viewing the constant application of Scrubbing Bubbles as an act of love.

She promises me that, if I quit ‘whining’ about what people aren’t doing, they will spontaneously start pitching in.

Guess what, honey? I’ve tried that. For months. To no avail. When I did that, when I followed you religiously and drank the kool-aid and really, really viewed your concept as a way to fit yet another full time job into my already-crowded life, the rest of the crew did nothing. And why should they? We had hired a maid! ME. And guess what? That year-long experiment just made me angrier, because the fam couldn’t pony up a little bit of ‘act of love’ for me. They just let me do it all, and then got grumpy at me when the clean underwear pipeline dried up.

The fact that I get up every morning, do the chores I can, start dinner, and then haul myself across town to a job that I luckily enjoy but not always love, and then haul myself home to do yet another round of chores is, in my opinion, a big act of love.

Oh, and another act of love? Not turning my children loose on the world not knowing that little fairy elves aren’t going to pick up after them. That’s an act of love for you, too, so you won’t have to pick up their messes too.

Gah.