Dear Friends,

If you are new to FlyLady, you probably wonder why our first habit to practice is shining the kitchen sink. I want to share my personal experience with this one.

Shining your kitchen sink makes you feel good about how your kitchen looks. In the mornings, I smile when I see my shiny sink. There have been times when I was not greeted with a shiny sink, and I did not feel great about the start of my day.

When I first started shining my sink, I wondered how it was supposed to influence me to take care of the rest of my home, but you know what? It really does.

Once you are maintaining the kitchen sink on a daily basis, you start to do more decluttering on the kitchen counters. Then, you start picking up more around the house. You start wanting to do those Home Blessings because you are feeling great about your house.

Is it all roses and sunshine? No. There are days when it is hard to shine the sink due to illness or an emergency. You do need to teach your family how to keep the sink clean and shiny, so when you are sick, they carry on with this habit for you.

Several years ago, I had surgery. I did not think about telling my family how important my shiny sink was to the start of my day. I had been shining it right before bed for a long time, so it did not occur to me that something would sideline me for a couple of weeks. The first morning after my surgery, I was greeted with a sink of dirty dishes.

I realized I needed to share my Before Bed Routine of shining my sink with my family. Because I had my tonsils removed, I could not talk, so I had to write it out. They took care of the sink for me each night after that. Once I recovered, I picked back up on my routine at night.

During the day, we all work together to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher as they are dirtied. We run the dishwasher twice a day for the most part. We clean and rinse dishes while we cook. For a large family, keeping the sink shiny has not been a burden because we work together throughout the day.

At night, I leave the sink clean and shiny right before I go to bed, but you remember that I have three teenage boys. There are occasionally a few dishes in the sink when I get up in the morning if they had a midnight snack. Typically, I turn the dishwasher on, and it has clean dishes in it overnight. So I don’t let that fret me. A few dirty dishes is not a big deal if they eat during the night.

How are you doing with your shiny sink? If you are not doing it daily, start today. This can be day 1. It will make a difference in how you start your morning.

Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.

My menu plan for Tuesday is hot dogs.