K is for Kitchen

"As the kitchen goes, so does the rest of the house," says Flylady, and it's easy to see the truth of this. Unless you're incredibly messy, most rooms can be left for days before they start to look uncared-for, but just try not cleaning up the kitchen for even one day! It rapidly becomes an absolute shitfest. Therefore, it is part of my daily routine to attend to the kitchen. Today I do a little extra; I clean the splashbacks and empty the rubbish. The splashbacks didn't need cleaning, but that's the point of the Flylady way - you do it whether it is needed or not, and then it never needs it.

I can't say enough about the Flylady system. It saved my life, and I'm not exaggerating. It got me through clinical depression and out the other side, and the techniques also got me through law school. These days, I have adapted the principles to suit my own life, as I found the rigidity of doing certain things on certain days too awkward; it is all set up in my Outlook as tasks, and if I don't do something on its due date, it stays in the queue until I do take care of it. I find this works really well for me. You can find the Flylady system here:FLYLADY.

With the kitchen taken care of, the rest of the house just gets a quick once-over with the feather duster, and I will also empty the tumble dryer and washing machine. They are both running already, so I decide to carry on and come back to that later. I have a doctor's appointment this morning, so I don't want to get too engrossed, and I decide to revisit the King's Ransom reviews (as K is also for King's Ransom). I sent out more than forty advance review copies, and most of the people to whom I sent one have not yet posted a review.

Get it at http://amzn.to/2b7cBuF

I send a few messages gently reminding people, and then it is time to leave for the doctor. By the time I get home it's lunchtime, so after a quick bite of lunch I get straight to work on the client job. I carry on working, with occasional OHS breaks to finish the housework and continue with my reminder messages, until five, and call it a day. All reviewers reminded, housework done, and progress made on client's work.

One thing I take away from the way this day has gone is the terrible impact that interruptions have on a writer's life. That one doctor's appointment at 11:30, which only necessitated me leaving the house for an hour and a half, cut my day right down the middle and somehow hours of working time seemed to leak out of the cut. The conclusion I draw from it is that it is better to schedule all of this sort of crap for one day; you will lose the entire day, but you'll have all your other days intact.