SHE-Fly Organizational Card System

A few months ago I decided that I needed to get some sort of daily organizational system in place for myself because I don't always remember everything I want to do each day. I've done FlyLady in the past and I like the focus on the Zones each week but I'm not a fan of lists. Lists have to be rewritten when something doesn't get done. I know that FlyLady talks a lot about the S.H.E. (Sidetracked Home Executives) system on her site. I had that book at one time and actually started to get the index cards set-up for myself but I never followed through with it.

Over the years I have learned what works for me and what doesn't. I don't like lists but I do like the idea of having each individual list item broken down onto individual index cards (a la the SHE system). I like FlyLady's Zones but I've reworked them to fit my house layout. So I've taken what I like from both systems and worked them into one.

I followed the SHE instructions pretty much exactly as they are set up in the book but I added a section for Zones. I will only work on Zone items in the week that they show up on the calendar. For instance, this week is Zone 3. Zone 3 is the Kitchen on my rotation. I have taken FlyLady's Detailed Cleaning Lists and put each item on its own index card and filed them in my card box under their zones. When the week comes to focus on each zone, I take those cards out of the Zone section and file them under the dates that I'm going to work on them. I have two "cleaning days", Monday and Thursday.




Like I mentioned, I've tweaked my Zones to match my house layout, so my Zones don't match FlyLady's.

Here are my Zones:

• Zone 1: First few days of the month: Porch, Laundry Room, Truck, Garden
• Zone 2: First full week of the month: Living Room
• Zone 3: Second full week of the month: Kitchen
• Zone 4: Third full week of the month: Bedroom
• Zone 5: Last few days of the month: Bathroom

I may end up tweaking that again because Zone 1 is loaded and I could probably put one of those items in Zone 5.

Here is my Basic Week plan, this tells me what I should be focusing on each day.

• Monday: Moderate Cleaning Day (2-4 hours)
• Tuesday: Bill Pay/Quiet Day
• Wednesday: Free Day
• Thursday: Heavy Cleaning Day (4-6 hours)
• Friday: Grocery/Errand Day
• Saturday: Laundry Day
• Sunday: Free Day

Another tweak I made was to color-code my Monthly Tasks. The SHE system has Monthly on white index cards along with Seasonal and Yearly. But I wanted more of a variation. I didn't like having so many white cards with different times. So I now have Pink, Yellow, Blue and Orange cards in addition to the White cards.

I made my own color-coded cards by taking white index cards and using highlighters that I have and coloring a strip across the tops of the cards. White index cards are super cheap (like 50 cents for a 100 pack at Big Lots) and I already had those at home. I also made my own dividers by tracing some I already had onto different colored construction paper and then cutting them out. To make them all nicely printed, I used a stencil I have and added the details to the dividers. I used my word-processing software to type up the individual index cards and then printed them onto my cards.




I also put together the cute picture on the top of my box by finding a homemaker icon on the web and then adding the words with Picnik.




I'm planning to add other items to my index card system. I think recipes and study notes would be a good start. Index cards are great for so many things and easily organized to fit different lifestyles and interests. I'm going to need to invest in a larger index card box.

I am working on putting together a downloadable file of all of the work that I've put into making my card system so that anyone wanting to make one for themselves can do so without all of the extra work that I had to do. I still highly recommend getting the book, Sidetracked Home Executives(TM): From Pigpen to Paradise because it gives you the background to how and why the system was developed. I have an older edition of the book but I still enjoyed it a lot and it's all marked up with my own information and tweaks to their system to make it work for me.