Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Yellow Joy - It's Not Just for Dishes Anymore

I'm one of "those people" who normally keeps her house pretty clean. I usually enjoy doing my housework because thanks to FLYlady.com and the awesome housecleaning and management tips available on that site, I can (9 times out of 10) have my house TOTALLY ready for company in 15 minutes or less. We're talking toilets scrubbed, mirrors cleaned and all. If family or friends show up at my house unexpectedly, I don't have a bit of a problem letting them in for a visit because I'm usually on top of my house cleaning routine.

BUT

Last week, I had one of those days. You know, one of those days when you wake up and you realize that you haven't touched your house for about a week because things got busy and crazy and you had no time to clean. One of those days when you fix supper and you go to set the table and since almost every dish in your house is dirty and you just don't have the energy to wash anything, you start debating on whether or not you can get away with serving the beautiful healthy gourmet meal you just whipped up Hamburger Helper on the lids to your pots and pans. You wonder if you can convince your family eat with those tiny little three-pronged shrimp forks that are always lurking in the shadows of your silverware drawer.


Ah, those days. Those days make me want to pull my hair out and surrender to the dust bunnies and the creepy-looking goo that's congealed on my kitchen counters. Those days make me want to whine, whine, whine. They make me wanna crawl up under the covers and hire someone to come and scrub my house from top to bottom. They make me wanna cry.

Last week when I woke up to the disgusting out-of-control mess that was sure to send me into one of those days  (after I got past the wanting to cry part of things) I reminded myself that (just like FLYlady says) I can do ANYTHING for 15 minutes. If I could focus for just 15 minutes on one part of the ick, I could get things back in check pretty quickly. I've done this before. I know it works. So I shuffled over to the kitchen to set my timer, turned on some upbeat music, and reluctantly focused on the pile of dishes all over my stove and my counter. I was not in the best of moods. I was thoroughly aggravated because I had let things get so piled up. (Here comes another "BUT"!)
 
BUT

Here's what I spotted when I got ready to run the dish water:

 Yellow Joy!
(If you don't know why yellow Joy is such a big deal to me, click here for an explanation.)


The funniest thing about this yellow Joy dishwashing liquid is that it's not my usual brand. My husband picked it up the last time he ran to the store for me. He says it was the cheapest thing on the shelf. I like to think what really happened is that he saw the yellow Joy and chose it because it made him think of his beautiful wife since she's all the time talkin' about yellow joy. 

Needless to say, there was a very quick shift in my thinking and my attitude and I got those dishes done pretty quickly.

I then moved on to running my YELLOW sweeper. Yup. YELLOW! (I don't know why, as much time as I spend running the sweeper after my kiddos and singing the praises of yellow, it had never dawned on me until last week that - YAY - my sweeper is yellow!)

 

While I was running the sweeper I noticed that the bookshelf was pretty dusty so I grabbed my yellow dust rag and tackled the bookshelf too.





By the time I finished cleaning I had shifted from thinking about all of the energy it was going to take to get this place in order to thoughts of what a JOY it is to actually have all of these chores to do. The dirt and grime are evidence of the full lives being lived in our home. The mess is proof that we have enough. It's proof that my God supplies all my needs. What a blessing!

I'm pretty sure that yellow Joy is going to be my dishwashing liquid of choice from now on. I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna hold on to my yellow sweeper until it falls apart. And although I have several perfectly good dust rags to choose from, I'm pretty sure the yellow rag will be my duster of choice until it's no longer able to do its job.

I'm definitely living in a Yellow Joy Machine! Are you?

1 comment:

Tracie Nall said...

Your Yellow Joy goes great with my Yellow dish gloves! We are definitely dishes compatible. =)

I love that your husband picked up Yellow JOY!! That rocks my face off! I think he might be adopting the way of the machine!

Related Posts with Thumbnails