Happy New Year, January's here, fly with the fledglings to get clutter clear

[ToffeeChristmascake]

Welcome to the January Fledgling Flying thread. A very big thank you to Ellie, our intrepid leader, for guiding us through the frantic Christmas month.

We are not strict followers of the Fat Fairy and take some of the babysteps - such as getting dressed to lace-up shoes - with a pinch of salt. We also strongly advise against signing up for the FlyLady emails.

From the first of the month, we will be following Flylady's tips on restoring order to our homes, using one of the following methods:

1. Babysteps
2. Babysteps + 15 mins daily decluttering
3. Babysteps + daily missions

Following the babysteps helps to establish daily routines and build a weekly plan.

This month's motto is: You can't clean clutter! See here for Flylady's advice on decluttering.

If you are overwhelmed by the mess in your home, start with just one thing: shine your sink.

And if you need to sort out the house after the New Year revelry is over, a crisis clean is what you need.

Back shortly with tomorrow's babystep .

(With apologies to Ellie for plagiarising some of last month's intro')

System addict, I agree about that Oliver James link. He comes across as a bit pompous to me.

Swan, are you having fun talking to yourself this morning?

OM I agree about the teenagers. mine have exams this week and I dont think I have managed to do anything right for them yet! In fact apparently, I "....know nofink!" To which I dared to say that I at least knew how to pronounce "nothing" !! You can imagine the response, I am sure.
Give me 5 toddlers any day!!!

Just finished a productive morning at work. Only half a mountain of paperwork to sort through now.
Came home, put curry in slow cooker and now am off to a meeting at the local hospital. Been asked to be on some consulting panel thingy, not sure what to expect, but I will see.....

Have a good afternoon everyone.

Special waves to my old bud, SC . hope today is less stressful for you.

Hello everyone, I've been reading all the posts and think I definately need to step up my game when I see how much everyone else gets done. I'm a bit preoccupied with the baby's nursery settling-in sessions which are everyday this week. Before that when she was at home with me I was getting loads done in the house. I'll have to have a personality transplant when I go back to work to enable me to be consistently and not just sporadically organised in the house.

Am thinking of putting my am & pm routines on the fridge in case I 'forget' to look inside a control journal - out of sight, out of mind.

I have managed to keep up the meal planning which is good. And the house is ok but not quite as perfectly tidy as I'd like

Congratulations to swan on your new niece and clever early card buying, I'd be so smug at my organisational skills if it were me!

feetheart - do you take out your frozen homemade cheese sauce and defrost it in the microwave for that night's macaroni? That's handy. Do you make double amounts of it when you're making it so one can be frozen?

Oh yes swan kids have been on hot dinners almost since they were weaned! Ds would love to 'be a packed lunch' which he seems to see as the far more glamorous and exciting option, but I just know that one week of healthy and varied boxed meals would inevitably be followed by the shame having to send him in with a Snickers bar for lunch after forgetting to do the ASDA order in good time ... The food prep in advance is for me

Swan / arabella - cheese sauce in freezer is useful but not usually due to good planning, I just can't get the quantities right when I make it so have leftovers to freeze I should have taken it out earlier to defrost on its own but I think its going to be a microwave job today!
You can tell DD Swan that, yes it is possible to have a baby at home (and I will go into details if she wants :o)

Update of list:

• WORK - done
• Get cheese sauce and gammon from freezer for macaroni cheese for dinner - done just now!
• Make Hedgerow Jelly from frozen foraged fruit - still cooking, hope its done by school pick-up time
• M&S order to get swimsuit for DD - in a minute
• Lakeland order without breaking bank - in a minute
• Catch up with chatty fellow Flyers - done, boy you lot can chat :o

Plan for rest of day:

• Bottle and label jelly
• Check, sign and return tax return that accountant has emailed to me
• Few bits on ebay (this will be on list most of this year I think in my big-push-to-declutter)
• Sort present list for upcoming birthday marathon in February
• DD and friend to Brownies

Still not many personal messages but lots of frantic waving :)

can i find my bed yet pretty please?

Hi everyone

Despite being tired, could not sleep last night. Overslept this morning - only just made it to school on time - and since then have been chasing my tail all day.

In the middle of converting and comparing litres and mililiters and centileters with dd and cooking sausages so just sweeping by with maths book in one hand and baking tray in another ...

Hope everyone has had a good day!! Still not caught up with thread ...

See you later!!

[hands Lair some spare match sticks for eyelids]

SC I too have been converting mm to cm and back again.
Done
bought some food
3 dcs homework supervised
ds1 to Athletics (well he went there and back by himself
3 lots of music practise insisted upon
dd made macaroni cheese with me - that went v. well although she keeps coming in kitchen and carrying off slices of crispy bacon to playroom p
sent card to brother, and dd drew another
sent thankyous

kitchen now laid to waste - have to clear up before supper

feeling absolutely exhausted and not looking forward to arrival of bad tempered husband (who hates it when builder is here)

Early night, can I face watching second part of that bad FLOOD programme which is like poor version of Spooks? Do not know how to record things unfortunately...

Feetheart your list is actually scaring me, hope bottling jelly makes up for everything
PA tut tut, I wasn't talking to myself, surely...wasn't anyone listening???? just gently wafting various people off to sleep of course...with my tedious ramblings, very medicinal..

My plans for an early night with my book were scuppered by the fact that the DDs have decided to keep me company in bed while DH is away. I could move them back to their own beds, but suspect they would be very disappointed when they woke up in the morning - and I really don't have time for DD2 to have a tantrum. DD2 is currently spreadeagled over my half of the bed so if the worst comes to the worst, I'll have to sleep in DS's bed (he's in DD1's bed; it's musical beds here tonight). However, it's freezing in his room thanks to the window being almost permanently open (it seems to help with his cough/dust allergy) so I'd have to be desperate; the temperature doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest but I tend to feel the cold.

Once again, things went downhill this afternoon. DS was out at a party and DD2 was invited to a friend's at the last minute, so DD1 was very grumpy at being left on her own and turned down all my suggestions of things we could do together (play a game, do a magazine, go and collect her pottery, etc.). In the end, I persuaded her to write one thank you letter in exchange for half an hour on the CBeebies website, but it was very hard going as I needed to spell out virtually every word (she struggles to spell even simple words like cat). Prised her away from CBeebies after about 40 minutes to do her piano practice, but it culminated in me losing my temper when she refused point blank to carry on after about five minutes. All in all, a frustrating afternoon for both of us - but I know she gets upset about the fact that the other two (esp. DD2) spend much more time with friends in the afternoons and I should have made allowances for that.

Off to reclaim some of my bed now; just need to download a few Radio 4 podcasts first.

Evening all,

Have scanned through the thread, am too tired to make much individual chat but a couple of things.

Oliver James article - although, could see some truth in it, he also rubs me up the wrong way, makes out working mums are bad etc, grr. I also think you can be organised within a very untidy house because that is me for the most part.

Question, as some of you were talking about converting measurements - if you are a confirmed imperial weights cook like me [old gimmer emoticon], do you grit your teeth when baking with the DCs and do it in very complicated grams, or take the easy route (4oz butter 4oz sugar 4 oz flour, 2 eggs, job done) and hope they will just learn? I learnt the two systems in parallel, never did imperial at school, never did metric for cooking at home and manage pretty well in either now for general cooking, but for baking I really have to do it in imperial. Maybe I just need to haul myself into the 21st century.

Well, managed a fair amount from my list today, have got an Ocado delivery sitting waiting to be put away so I can't stay on for too long.

Systems - re evening routines, I try and do as much as possible while the DCs are still up, empty lunchboxes as soon as we get home, make packed lunches whilst doing or clearing up tea (they each have 2 sandwich boxes, so I can make next day's lunch before washing that day's), put out clean clothes whilst getting DCs into pyjamas, sort out school bags as soon as they've done their reading, sort out that days' load of washing while they are still playing around upstairs etc. I really feel much better for managing it the night before and finding everything is in place in the morning.

Busy day for me today, but I see you lot have been chatting!

OM - good idea about me meeting the teacher weekly - thank you. Hope your sore throat doesn't turn into anything.

Lair - sorry you have had trouble sleeping again. Hope you had time for a nap later.

Push - well done at flying and doing paid work in spite of not getting enough sleep. Hope you had an early night tonight.

Linzer - at the musical beds. Sorry to hear you had a frustrating afternoon with DD1.

Ihate - still Queen of Lists !

Nettie - a close runner up. Hope you have your sparkle back now.

Feet - love the sound of Hedgerow Jelly! Am also very at your Lakeland order.

Swan - loads of congrats at your new baby neice. Banana and yogurt wouldn't keep either my 11-year old or my 5-year old full till 6pm. That would mean no proper food between noon and 6pm!

Systems - well done on sussing out the food stuff. Re: the eve routine - I try to do most or all of it before I put the children to bed. I agree that sometimes you just feel too exhausted to do it afterwards.
Agree about Jamie Oliver article - and don't worry, I don't take it as personal criticism. I know he's controversial and I didn't think the article said anything particularly illuminating either, but I just thought I'd stick it on here as it made me think of this thread. I agree about the endless struggle!

PA - please don't tell us teens are worse than toddlers! I didn't think it could get any worse. Glad you have been so productive at work today - you are getting back into the swing of it very quickly.

Arabella - putting the routines on your fridge sounds like an excellent idea. Glad your meal planning is working well. I love meal planning, even though I often swap things around during the week. It does mean I don't have to worry about meals during the week though - just look at my calendar to see what I'm cooking that night .

Still - another Flylady who hasn't slept! Sympathies at oversleeping this morning - it's a horrible way to start the day.

Ogre - I use Imperial too. Showing my age . Am very at your Ocado order. We swapped to Tesco to save money, but I still miss Ocado.

In contrast to yesterday, I did the bare minimum of Flying today. So my list looks like this:

Morning routine half-done
Washing - boys' bedclothes nope
Put rubbish out done
School run done
Doctor's appt with DS1 done
Take DS1 to school done
Wrap present done
Hotspots - 2 mins nope
Declutter - 15 mins nope
Out for lunch done
School run done
Dinner - chicken casserole cooked stuff from freezer instead - no time to cook casserole
Evening routine half-done - to finish now
Bed at decent hour intending to do shortly

Simply didn't have time to do any housework today. Took DS2 to school, then rushed down to drs with DS1. Very good meeting with doctor, who is referring us back to CAMHS , but has also given us phone number of private psychologist, who I'll ring tomorrow. Back home, where I spent some time letting DS relax with a snack and a Simpson's comic before walking him back up to school. Then had a long, leisurely, lovely pub lunch with a friend, before the school run. Too busy with DC after that to do even 5 minutes of housework / decluttering. Sometimes you can't even manage that much, no matter what Flylady says.

Back in a minute with the babysteps, etc.

Today's babystep is to add an inspirational page to your control journal. Not one that I've ever done, I must admit.

Tomorrow's mission is here.

Wednesday is the day to clean your fridge and do your shopping list. More ideas for Wednesday are in the weekly routines here.

Hope you all manage to get a good night's sleep tonight (even in your overcrowded bed, Linzer ).

Morning my lovelies

Still massively behind with everything and no Flying yesterday as was out the house all day. However much better/earlier/less ranting more organised start today.

To do:
morning routine inc wm on, dw on, s&s, done
hunt the washing on upper floors and take downstaors
SORT more washing
DO more washing (sock and pant crisis looming)
tidy master bedroom (sock and underwear drawer)
sort out my shoes
sort out dd's shoes
finish putting away Christmas decorations
thank you letters
letters to godchildren
school run (half day today)
lunch
haircut
paid work

Toffee Thanks for links and fab round-up. So glad your meeting with gp was productive.

Ogre Although I don't have that dilemma really as all metric over here - so def use metric when cooking with dd - sometimes if cooking on my own I do revert back to pounds and ozs though. Good to have weighing scale that shows both and have stuck conversion tables on side of fridge.

Linzer our lives sound very similar (minus a few dc on my part!) DD always moves in to my room when dh is away (which is half the week usually) and yesterday she and I were engaged in a 40 min battle discussion over writing a 5-min thank you letter.
When you have a minute, please may I ask for further and better particulars re Radio 4 podcasts? How do you acess them when not in UK? I have an ipod Shuffle - is that what I need? Please use Noddy language as I'm useless at this sort of thing!! Radio 4 podcasts would be wonderful as I wouldn't have to drag our heavy Internet radio up and down stairs and from room to room. Hope you had a better sleep last night btw!

Auntie Swan congrats on your new niece!

Must get cracking!!

Mahoosive waves to all (including a special wave back to PA - hope you are still taking it slightly steady!!) You too Pushme!!

Oh and Nettie hope you have retrieved your shine!!

Morning all! Sorry for going AWOL again but haven't had time to breather over the last week. Am off school today as DD has D&V so am hoping to get caught back up with you lovely ladies. Flying is just about keeping on track and am hoping to also get caught up with that today along with some school work as DD is laying on the sofa watching tv.

Back later.

Big waves to everyone!

Morning all,

I'm having an early coffee break today as I have to be at school in 20 minutes to teach English to DD2's class (for the first time so am slightly nervous), so am only halfway through my morning routine.

List:
Coffee remaking as forgot to put coffee in the machine first time
Morning routine doing
15 min decluttering in kitchen half done
Mission
Finish letter
Post thank you letters x2
Pay annual pension contribution
English lesson
Afternoon routine
Write/Get DC to write thank you letters x5
DS to friend's
DD2 to ballet
Evening routine
Early night

Didn't manage my early night last night, but one advantage (probably the only one) of going to bed so late was that I was too tired to be disturbed by the DDs' tossing and turning so had quite a good night's sleep!

ellie Hope your DD is better soon.

SC I don't know how I'd cope without Radio 4 podcasts! I'm not technically minded at all so if I can manage to download them, anyone can. I use a very basic MP3 player, but an iPod would be fine too.

Instructions:

1. Plug your iPod into the computer.
2. Go to the Radio 4 podcast website.
3. Find a programme that you want to listen to (click on Podcast or the name of the programme).
4. Underneath the programme details, you'll see a green bar (Download xx MB, right click & "save target as").
5. Right click on the green bar, click on 'Save target as', find your iPod (click on 'My computer' in the left navigation bar if necessary; my MP3 player comes up as 'Removable storage device'), click on it and then click 'Save'.

Hope that helps, and happy listening.

Toffee Flylady's mantra of "you can do anything for 15 minutes" is just unworkable when all three DC are at home. Five minutes is just about feasible if they all want to watch TV at the same time (but then there are usually arguments because they all want to watch different programmes), but any longer is pushing it. Still, you had such a productive day on Monday that I think you're allowed a day off flying (and it's not as if you didn't have other things to do).

Must go and make a start on lunch in my remaining few minutes. A friend of DD2's will be here, who would like pasta and tomato sauce - fine by me, but DD2 complained that that's what we always have when they have friends over!

Wow Linzer thank you!! That is fantastic!! (And simply for my numbskull brain too!!) I didn't even know they existed ... I can see this will revolutionise my life and make cleaning a lot less boring!! Good luck with your teaching today!!

Yo Ellie hope your dd is better soon - there is a lot of it about!

Arabella meant to say - don't worry about other people's lists - I never finish mine they are not always finished every time . Stick to Flylady mantra of realistic, non-perfectionist, 15 min bursts ...

oops Linzer sorry - that should have read 'simple' not 'simply' - rushing as usual

and thank you again for taking the time to write out the instructions so clearly - tis brilliant the podcasts are accessible over here!!

Morning all...
Still feeling grotty and am in bed still. I did get up to take DC to station etc but got back in as soon as I could.
Meant to say yesterday Congrats Swanon being a new auntie...lovely....
Going to try to do flying stuff today but may just have to put one foot in front of the other iyswim!

Mustn't forget staff meeting at 3.30!!!

See you all later...

I agree with everyone..musical beds, imperial, 40 min struggles to write thankyous..

despite this, feeling fine though tired this morning..
have swept front path
yesterday back path
rubbish out
recyling half out

{christmas tree is still on path though

kitchen tidyish
all beds stripped and changed yesterday

needto
dw
buy fish for ds2 supper making tonight - Chinese baked fish! Macaroni cheese making was a tremendous success, even dh had to eat it as dd had made it!
go to tile shop
ring bank check if I have any money left
pay in cheque
laundry now takes up half the kitchen 5 sets of sheets aargh - may have to go to laundrette this time

lunch with friend at her house

had brainwave about changing round furniture and giving dd a wardrobe so I can actually hang up her clothes or maybe even she can...

good -have some money after all, despite my card being refused yesterday must have been a blip...

As long as money in and money out are equal I tend not to do any financial planning, but I can see this is something I need to tackle this year as I am really not sure where or how the money is going just that I am in credit (for which I am eternally grateful)

I think I need a big book in which to write Money In and Money Out and divide it into columns for different aspects of household, so I have a bit more of an overview of what our fixed costs are, rather than the variables.

swan - would love Chinese fish recipe please. DD is a fish fiend and enjoys cooking, if you can eat it with chopsticks it could be a real winner :)

Not sure who was impressed/scared by my list yesterday but I wouldn't be, I only got the essentials done in the end - jelly finished (it was on the go as I wrote) and DD to Brownies.
I like the idea of trying to follow Flylady slavishly for a week to see what happens - I really need a kick to get me going at the moment. Anyone else up for the challenge?

I'm in the converting dilemma too. I only learnt the old way (another old gimmer here :)) but do use metric for some more recent recipes. DD wants to cook more and we are going to put together a recipe book of her favourite things (A5 ringbinder probably) I'm going to have to convert my stuff that she now wants to cook aren't I? Just not sure I can think in metric all the time though.

List for today:

• Morning routine - done
• Return Vax machine to friend - done
• Order book for 'Book Club' - excuse for friends to meet, chat and eat curry :o
• Update Control Journal and see what I should be doing
• Stuff for School Assoc - tea towels, minutes, yearly plan, etc!
• Work - Bank rec I think
• Hoover downstairs
• 15mins declutter in kitchen

Lets see how much of that I can get done before lunch

Quick post in from work.

Ellie I hope DD is feeling better soon.

Lair I have just invested in a set of metric weights for my kitchen scales so that I can be bi- lingual . I was fed up of trying to do maths every time the school sent home ingredient lists! Its wonderful, now I can do both. I dont think I will ever truly convert to metric for cooking, but its a start to me getting into the 21st century!!

Flip, Boss on way, so must look as if I am doing sage work. Mountains still to do here and my brain has turned to cotton wool today!

Be back later

Have a good day everyone!