I've been browsing the FLYLady website, and following a few of her tips (although I must regretfully report that there are two dirty plates and three dirty forks in my kitchen sink).  This morning I clicked around her site over morning coffee, and found something which gave me pause.

This is a personal organizer, which is being sold by FLYlady's business partner, Peggy and Pam, who are founders of the Sidetracked Home Executives (SHEs).  The personal organizer is designed to be used for overwhelmed women - stay at home moms - to help them clean and organize their homes and their lives.

I'm more familiar with personal organizers from the business side of life.  Where you use your organizer to track your meetings, contact information, and work deadlines.  The SHEs have also adopted a lot of the methods from David Allan's watershed book, "Getting Things Done."  Except instead of using these tools to get ahead in life or business, they're using them to clean their houses better.

Don't worry, I won't be trashing or mocking stay at home moms.  One of my best friends is a stay at home mom, let's call her Dana.  Dana has a PhD in mathematics, but opted to stay home to raise her son.  Dana's home is embarrassingly immaculate - embarrassing to you and I, not to her.  She makes her own yogurt, cooks every meal, tutors math to school children, and does all of the family's financial work to boot.

But first of all, I have to wonder, is cleaning really that important?  Important enough that it deserves a whole entire personal organizer to track and organize?  I sat there sipping my coffee, thinking about the phrase "opportunity cost."

"Opportunity cost" is a term from microeconomics.  Let's say I have a client phone call scheduled for 1PM, and it's five minutes till.  I have time to either eat an apple or take out the garbage, but not both.   I decide to eat the apple.  In this situation, the opportunity cost of eating the apple is taking out the garbage.  

Every time you do something, there are millions of things that you could be doing at that moment, but choose not to.  The opportunity cost for going to bed early is watching the late night news.  The opportunity cost for having a burger for lunch is having a salad for lunch.  And so forth.

The SHEs have seemingly devoted their lives to keeping a clean and tidy house.  What is the opportunity cost for this?  If a woman uses a pocket organizer to coordinate her cleaning, what else could she be doing with that organizer that she is not?  Is it better to mop the kitchen floors, or sign up for an eBay account so that you can become a seller?  Is it better to spend two hours prepping and cooking family dinner, or take an evening class towards a college degree?  

I honestly don't know the answers to these questions, nor would I presume to know the answers for anyone else.  Everyone has to answer these questions for themselves.  But I tell you what, I had no idea how much time and energy it takes to keep a house tidy when you have kids, and maybe that's the final lesson.  Keeping a clean house is "women's work," and if people have trivialized it in the past, well then if we decide to value it, we should treat it like a damn job - because obviously it is.