Dear Friends,

How does your kitchen sink look right now? Do you shine it daily?

One of the first habits we practice with The FlyLady is shining the kitchen sink. I have talked to a few of you lately who have been slacking off on this important habit.

Why is it important to shine your sink daily?

When you get up in the morning and are greeted with an empty, clean sink, it starts your day off on a happy note. On the flip side, if you get up to a sink full of dirty dishes, you feel like you are behind on your day as soon as you get up.

Most homeschool families eat more than one meal a day at home. We eat all three meals at home 90% of the time. We have fine-tuned our system.

If you dirty the dishes, you need to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. If the dishwasher is full, you need to put detergent in and start it. Everyone in the house with the exception of the 11-year-old knows how to run the dishwasher. Our dishwasher is run twice a day.

During the day, it is rare that the sinks have dirty dishes in them. If someone gets up in the middle of the night to have a snack, they will typically rinse their dishes and leave them in the sink. That does not bother me since it is usually a couple of items. They are being considerate and trying not to make a lot of noise in the kitchen at night. If you have teenagers, you probably have middle of the night snackers in your house, too.

If you struggle with the dishes, you need to be the one to start the consistency of shining your sink each evening as a part of your Before Bed Routine. You start this routine right after dinner by shining your sink. Give each person in the family a different task for kitchen clean up.

Some ideas are:

One person clears the food from the table and puts it in the fridge.

One person takes dirty dishes to the sink. (Or each person can take his/her dishes to the sink.)

One person does the dishes.

One person sweeps.

One person takes out the trash.

One person shines the sink after the dishes are done.

You can assign or more tasks depending on your family size. We currently have five people at home, so we divide it up accordingly.

Afterwards, have each person lay out their clothes for the next day and put things at the Launch Pad for the next morning.

If you do this right after dinner each night, you will have half of your Before Bed Routine done. Then you can relax for a bit.

Tell me how you are doing with shining your sink daily.

Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.

My menu plan for Tuesday is sub sandwiches for the guys. Soup night at a meeting for me.