Sink Reflections: FlyLady's BabyStep Guide to Overcoming CHAOS
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Clean up your act!
REVIEW BY LYNN GREEN Are you suffering from CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome)? Has your kitchen table disappeared under a mountain of clutter? Did you spend most of the morning searching for an overdue phone bill that simply must be paid today?
Cilley is the chief housekeeper-in-residence at a popular Web site, www.flylady.net, and earlier this year she self-published a book for the overwhelmed, overextended and overdrawn: Sink Reflections: FlyLady's BabyStep Guide to Overcoming CHAOS. The first printing of the book sold out so quickly that it was snapped up by Bantam Books, which is publishing a trade paperback edition this month. Cilley's approach is light-hearted, supportive and sometimes even fun, as the 130,000 subscribers to her Web site have learned. Her "commandments" range from the 27-Fling Boogie (in which you run through your house at a dizzying pace and grab 27 items to throw away) to the Hot Spot Fire Drill (a twice-a-day cleanup of an area that attracts clutter). After reforming her own disorganized ways a few years ago ("my home was full of clutter, my sink was overrun with dirty dishes and I looked like a truck had just run over me") Cilley set up a small e-mail group to counsel others. The group evolved into her popular Web site, which she runs with a crew of five from her home in the North Carolina mountains. BookPage recently asked the FlyLady for some help in crawling out from under our own mountain of stuff.
BookPage: Help! My house/life is in total CHAOS. How do I take that daunting first step toward fixing it?
You write that the FlyLady program really isn't about cleaning. What is the heart of your message to the messy?
Who are the typical subscribers to your Web site?
Does your own house ever lapse into CHAOS?
What's the hardest thing you've ever parted with in a 27-Fling Boogie?
What's the household chore you dread the most, and how do you convince yourself to do it anyway?
The holidays are approaching, and I can't find my dining room table under all the clutter. How can I uncover it in time for Thanksgiving?
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Support your 
If so, you're certainly not alone. As Marla Cilley has discovered, there are tens of thousands—possibly millions—of us who simply can't keep our houses neat and tidy. Cilley decided to come to the rescue by stepping into a phone booth and emerging as The FlyLady, a superwoman of household organization who rescues the messiest from their dusty, dirty, clutter-laden homes.