June know it's the fledgling flyers?

[Stillchuckingit]

A warm welcome to the June Fledgling Flyers' thread.

If the state of your house is getting you down, this is the thread where we follow the step-by-step Flylady housekeeping system (in our own, unique, relaxed style ) with lots of chat and support along the way and where lace-up shoes are definitely optional.

A huge thank you to Linzer for keeping us all on track so splendidly during May and thank you to DroitwichMummy for the thread title.

As usual, we will be following the Flylady three-pronged approach:

1. Baby-steps (a daily step to establish routines)
2. Then baby-steps + 15 mins daily decluttering
3. (And once decluttered) babysteps + daily missions

If you are feeling overwhelmed by clutter and mess, you can make a difference, one step at a time.

For more information, have a look here. You don't need to sign up to Flylady e-mails (we advise you not to do so in fact - you will be overwhelmed - all the information you need can be gleaned from this thread).

All long-standing members, intermittent returnees, lurkers and newcomers welcome!!

I'm melting, I'm melting! Far too hot for anything, let alone flying! Will have salad and random stuff out of the fridge for tea as I can't face cooking. Tomorrow is forecast to be 22C. Much nicer!

Oh dear, too much to catch up on here already and I've only missed one day. Briefly -

Linzer - congratulations on your race! I think that's amazing. You only started running regularly a few weeks ago, didn't you? You should be feeling very proud of yourself.

WhoKnows - Will PM you re dyslexia screening. I fear otherwise I may turn this thread into a SN board .

Swan - am very with your DH for reducing you to tears. I hope he apologised. Actually, mine did the same to me yesterday. I know it is because he's finding it hard to cope with the diagnosis and various other stressful things (work, his mum's move, etc), but none of that is my fault. DS1 was so concerned about me that he made DH come and say sorry . "Hurray, now you won't get divorced!" he said, once we'd made up.

Fell asleep at 9 last night and woke up at 2am, so ended up clearing up the kitchen in the early hours. I spent ages yesterday doing washing etc so that I had made some progress with the housework by today. This morning, I waved DS2 off on his school trip , then met up with the SENCO at school to discuss DS1 and getting a statement for him (which will have to be done through secondary school now, as we're too late for this academic year).

Have done some Maths with DS1 this morning and now I'm going to tackle the house. Must do my weekly overhaul and routines. I have been falling behind with it all.

Will report back with a Ta Da! list later.

Sorry for not sending anymore personal messages - I will never get anything done in the house if I write anymore.

Oh my, lots to catch up on!

I've done everything on the list now apart from

Hoover (Dyson?) downstairs
Mop bathroom and kitchen

I might leave those things until after the baby has gone to bed after his dinner, as I'll need to clean the floor after his dinner anyway.

Toffee, remember you are never behind with Flylady!

Right, I think the only option is outside in the paddling pool. So hot & sticky!

hello all,

Am slowly integrating myself in this system so just free styling this week but so far today, aside from sweating madly and mopping my brow rather too much I have -

-made bread in the bread maker
-vacumed sitting room

• spent rather too long deciding on just the right place for the photo frames to go on the side board in out 'new' sitting room
• cleaned kitchen floor
• vacumed hall
• been to baby massage class
• found dh at work to drop of his sun hat and a bottle of ice cold drink (he works outside and forgot a sun hat )
• entertained etc dd

Still need to make packed lunch for dh for tomorrow and try and clear the dining room a bit but depends on how dd is - she's going a bit mental in the heat

whoknows in a way it's enlightening you have good enough teachers for your lo that they might have picked up on something early

swan dh and i argue discuss matters in the way when I drive and he map reads - he just doesn't tell me when to turn off until it's too late and no idea which lane I should ever be in . We got a sat nav to overcome this issue but it's not foolproof - a couple of months ago we were driving somewhere and I kept saying it felt like we were going the wrong way and dh scoffed we couldn't be as we were following the know it all of sat nav - half an hour later we discovered he had programmed in the wrong location and we were going completely the wrong way - he should have leaarnt by now I am always right

SC you do make me laugh yes there are lots of D words aren't there...no Toffee was right, alas... And unfortunately dd has been reading so much Jacqueline Wilson lately that the children are rather at home with the idea...
not that we are getting divorced, I hasten to add [ahem]

on a less flippant note, I have been to Dr, burst into tears again poor dcs, they must think I'm crackers. Ds2 has been absolutely charming this morning, and helped me look after his little cousin in local park, amusing her with a pair of socks and singing and dancing Quest for purple teeshirts less successful, we found some with portion of purple in Peacocks, but then I had left my cc at home - drat..but ds2 completely unphased by this

Oh dear, just getting cool again, and Pick Up looms..
Ta da
Washing on line
house rescued, bins out, veg box rescued
dw emptied
dirty cups rounded up
old newspapers/waste paper decluttered
clothes put back in relevant rooms

ironing pile STILLTHERE

next we have ballet, singing, football, Scout Meeting
supper is who knows? - leftovers...j

Ta da! list:

Unloaded d/w
Reloaded d/w
Put away dishes on drainer
Emailed people about DS
Did 2 loads of washing
Put washing out to dry
Did some maths work with DS
Made proper lunch for us

This 'ta da!' list idea is a good one. I thought I hadn't done anything, but I have - just not as much as I intended.

Have collected a very weary DS from school. He said the school trip was "his best day and his worst" (budding Dickens?). When I asked, concerned, why it was his worst he said they weren't allowed to play in the trees that would have made brilliant dens. Other than that, his day went well!

Received a letter from DS1's secondary school today, telling me that they would be placing him in 'Band E' ('E for Extra Special' ). This is definitely the best group for him - half the size of a normal class, teachers come to the class rather than the other way round, modified curriculum etc - but I just wish they hadn't given it such a lousy name. There is bound to be a stigma attached to it amongst the pupils, isn't there? And DS will be mortified once he finds out .

Hope you are surviving the heat. Has just thundered here. Busy weekend with mum staying and sis over for a bbq. Dd suposed to be at friends for tea but refused to go ! Have changed beds and rebooted laundry. Catch up tomorrow.

reastie maps
kind to drop off sunhat

toffee imagines teachers searching high and lo for babes in the wood!

dd has just said that cheese is makign her feel sick, only chocolate can restore her to health
we have done
ballet
singing
refusal to do football
picked up purple sports shirts
bought some grocery essentials

dealt with ds2 tantrum - put him in a restful bath where is he is now!
oh got to go

Ooh hello

Am I allowed to join along? Have been getting those fly lady emails (the round up one tho not the ones that come every hour!) for a while now & am starting to do a bit more than just press delete!

In this ridiculous heat (unless u have a swimming pool) ive managed to
-make the bed
-swish & swipe bathroom
-deal with small mountain of clothes in out bedroom.
-unload & reload dishwasher
-wash,dry & iron one load.
-wash & dry dd's clothes (luckily they are smaller than the iron)
-make lunch for DD
-chuck out 7 pairs of shoes, a ton of carrier bags & lots of little bits of toot accumulating in the dining room.

Off to aqua fit shortly for the first time- I felt this was the weather for it!

Hi all.

Glad trip went well toffee.

Welcome Lizard - very impressive list, there!

Crap weekend here and I am absolutely knackered!! DH was on call all weekend. Called out Friday night. He reassured me that the alarms so rarely go off, nothing to worry about, ........... Bloody thing goes off again at 2.48am Sunday Morning. Another night with a couple of hours sleep. Sunday night dh says, it has never gone off 2 nights in a row, so we will be fine tonight, it was a fluke! Fluke my ! 12.30 this morning and I was once again rudely awoken by the pager bleeping. It has such a piercing beep that every cell in my body screeches and rattles and then sleep is a million miles away for hours.
Then today I have been interviewing all day. The last poor guy did not have a chance because I was so zombified!!
I am waaaaaaaay past this disturbed night malarky.

Anyway, not done a thing around the house and the only thing going to be achieved tonight will be sleep. DH will be home at 9. If he has got that bleeding pager anywhere on his person he will be sleeping in the car!!

Pathetic wave to everyone. Will return when I have regained my energy.

Evening lovely fledglings. Bit of a sweltering one isn't it? Definitely hammock weather.

A warm welcome to Lizardqueenie. Course you are allowed to join!! Sounds as though you have already got off to a very good start, heat notwithstanding.

I've had a bit of a full-on day, people in house all morning (trying to nail bits back on) and then cycling in the cardiologist's office (with electrodes) this afternoon!! Results pretty good all in all. Phhheeewwww!!! Was a bit worried there for a while. A few question marks still to be investigated, such as high white blood cell count (some tests haven't come back yet) and I'm still on beta blockers but doc only wants me to come back in a year's time so I am taking that as good news!! Heart, veins and arteries all basically sound.

Feel much better with lots more energy and unfortunately dh was there to witness doc saying "you can return to work/full activities/carry heavy shopping/run up and down stairs" and proceeded to take full advantage by giving me a pile of work 2 mins after my return including a little article to proof-read on EU duel-use export control regulations (oh joy!!) I then proceeded to lug back shopping from the supermarket in 32°c heat, do 4 loads of washing, go out again on more errands, cook a lentil dhal for supper and telephone 100 (well it seemed like it)concerned family members with the good news!!

One wierd thing, having been given the virtual "all clear" by the specialist, I rushed out in to the garden to harvest my blackcurrants for jam-making tomorrow and not one - not one - was left on the bush I don't understand it at all (it was burgeoning with fruit four days ago!!). We do have a resident (corpulent) squirrel and lots of wood-pigeons and a jay, but surely they would have left a few fruit on the ground and there is not one ... not one ...I thought dh was having me on at first and had hidden them somewhere- but apparently not. It's really quite sinister ...

Anyway, enough of my rantings, how did you all get on?

Lots of talk about beating respective husbands over the head with maps and tent pegs today (or wanting to anyway!!)

Swan has been playing spin-the-bottle in her neighbour's garden, presumably with her neighbour's permission and has skilfully resolved a purple sports shirt crisis. (Hope the doc was sympathetic x) Ah at your ds2 entertaining his cousin with socks...

Scatty has been entertaining her family and re-booting her laundry

Toffee has been cleaning by moonlight, wrestling with bureaucracy and has welcomed her ds back from a fun school trip!! Hurray!! (So glad he enjoyed it - apart from the lack of den-making of course )

Reastie has been "free-styling" in rather too effective a manner if you ask me and accomplished an impressive amount considering she is flying with a baby!! (Just wait until she puts her mind to it !!) Hope you can catch up on sleep tonight.

Bartlett - another fledgling flying with a baby - has been rollicking through her list and cooling down in her paddling pool

Blue has been melting and eating salad

Feetheart has been flying high, delivering buns and shopping to her dcs' surrogate granny and perhaps has been encouraging her ds to sleep the right way up tonight!!

CHB has been taking a cold shower. No comment.

Whoknows endured a stressful, noisy, morning and has been worrying about her dd Hope test goes ok x

Linzer has done a creditable impression of Paula Ratcliffe! Way to go Linzer!!

Back in a mo to post steps ...

x-posts

PA has been enduring torture- by-middle-of-the-night alarm-calls and, er, encouraging her dh to sleep in the car

Hope you can catch up on some shut-eye tonight PA

Your baby-step for tomorrow, Tuesday 28th June, is here and eminently sensible

Tomorrow and up to and including June 30, we will be in Zone 5, the living room here

And your mission (5-min sofa dive!) will appear here once the Flylady site has updated itself.

But sneak peak at the week ahead is here Again, Flylady site may need to update itself.

Tuesday is a "free day" so water plants, do steps and routines and just spend 15 mins in current zone.

It's after 10 pm here and I'm going to try and get an early night if sweltering bedroom will allow!! See you in the morning ...

***

oh please can I join in,managed to pull off the school/village fete sucessfully yeaterday & am left today (after clearing up huge mess in playground) with aftermath in my house,really bad & routine gone amiss somewhere.DC & DH all rubbish at clearing up after themselves (though he thinks he is really fab,washing out of machine & onto line as it comes sort of thing).
Need desperately some motivation to re-take control of the house & my sanity (dog has placed her fur strategically everywhere) & need to achieve something before returning to work at the weekend before DH has yet another fit at how much time PTA takes up & when I intend on doing something here !!! :o

Hi to Lizard and THACA.

I didn't feel like I'd done anything today, but ta-da list reveals:
Washing done and on line
Grocery shopping and putting away
Not killing boys despite extreme heat and provocation
Buying, inflating and filling a paddling pool
Artistically arranging salad on plates
Loading dishwasher
Sweeping floor
Rounding up the most obvious clutter in the sitting room
Packing parcels to post tomorrow
Laundry sorting
Packing snack box for tomorrow

So maybe not so bad after all!

Most annoyingly, we had a powercut right in the middle of the Murray match. Grr. Too many people plugging in electric fans all at once, or summat.

Glad you had good news from the dr SC. Waves feebly to everyone else and staggers off for a cooling shower.

Great news, SC! I'm so glad you've been given the all clear. Not so great that DH thinks you can resume normal duties though . I am intrigued by 'The Mystery of the Missing Berries'... .

PA - hope you get some sleep tonight. Sounds like a terrible couple of nights.

Blue - am with you on the 'ta da' list. Much more encouraging than a 'to do' list when I am feeling behind (even though I know we are never supposed to be behind with Flylady).

THACA and Lizard - welcome to the thread .

Waves to Scatty and Swan and all other Flyladies.

My up-to-date 'ta da' list includes:

Hoovering main rooms, hall and landing
Cleaning the windows and mirrors
Putting weekend papers out into recycling boxes
Remembering to put the rubbish out
Finding the source of the fruitfly plague outside behind a soggy dustbin bag and exterminating them with boiling water [yuck emoticon]
Catching and killing the fruitflies indoors (am getting good at this)
Making seafood pie for dinner
Reloading d/w
Finding lost cheque book (turned up in kitchen hotspot - I had looked there at least three times and it was there all along, amongst the clutter )
Bringing washing in (bone dry from being outside for an hour or so)
Bathing both boys and putting them both to bed
Managing not to fall asleep by drinking coffee at 8pm

I'm about to iron some school shirts for DS2, then do an online Tesco order. Like Blue, I didn't think I'd achieved much today, but it looks good when I see it typed up. Better to focus on what I've done rather than what there is still to do, I think.

Goodnight Fledglings.

oh poor PA yes great thing about teens is that you don't have to put them to bed either Dh said he spent till 9.30 putting ours to bed...[sigh]
and Whoknows that's very kind of you to put up with neighbour's skip, mucho gratitude is clearly due from them (still, it is useful to have a skip around the place hope icecream was very delicious (can we have recipe if it's with eggs?)
SC so glad you are allowed to be as active as you want to be (and don't do more than you feel able - whatever dr says - he probably doesn't know how hard you work, or how busy you are...my experience of doctors is that they are rather optimistic and cheery
hello to Lizard and Thaca very energising to see newbies lists
Thaca - I know that feeling when volunteering somehow clashes with husbands, mine was not in a good mood when I came back this eve.

Just been to Scout AGM, as usual not many parents there...(as distinct from the committee, helpers, leaders) about 5? dismal turnout really. But it was very nice to go, talk to Leaders, and generally think about volunteering commitments. I think I've become a bit bogged down with all the things I can't do in Scouts (drive, dodgeball, IT, put up tents, organise) and forgotten that all I need to be is enthusiastic about the things I CAN do.

Realised I dread a good many things on a daily basis, and have to turn this around....[ho hum] Starting with cooking dinner....

done
packed lunch for ds1 tomorrow
put another wash in
mentally located the school shirts for ds1 (in a heap in study) (Toffee I never iron the school clothes
tried to get Dh to agree to strategy to deal with ds2 tantrums, but no use as Dh was too tired and fed up with cold brewing... - actually we do have a strategy which is put him in his room very calmly without recrimination, but it is just remembering to employ it when he does something particularily irritating like hitting us or delibarately covering bathroom floor with water...

Feeling POSITIVE, good night all!

Toffee hoovering is very strenous, as is mirror polishing, and fish pie making requires considerable skill - shocked that you should think it not much, as well as dealing with sons, husbands and online orders...in this heat too.

blue I think your tada list would have knocked me out too. I love the artistic salad, my DH would appreciate that so much, he always tells me he "eats with his eyes"...Bet boys will much appreciate paddling pool over next few weeks too..

I remember reading in some toddler pastime book about how this woman filled her paddling pool with cold spaghetti and let toddlers play with it, hours of fun apparently at very little cost..

strenuous

Morning. its too hot here again. but unlike most it would seem i slept fine last night. A whole 11hrs worth. My head is now thumping from dehydration so thought i would take the time to say this:

Remember to drink lots of water

Stick it on your to do lists if needed, just avoid dehydration in this heat it will slow you down.

Running late will try to be back later.

I despair of ever finding time to declutter. I've just put the third load of washing on (out of four - DS wet the bed again, including the pillow and duvet), keep being interrupted by phone calls (mainly related to DD's birthday party) and need to finish planning two English lessons for tomorrow as well as dry my hair. I haven't even emptied the dishwasher or cleared away the breakfast things yet and the house is, yet again, a mess. Once I've tidied up, finished preparing the lessons and hung up/ironed/put away the washing, it will no doubt be time to pick up DD2 and her friend.

Both girls brought home extremely heavy bags of school and exercise books, arts and craft supplies, etc. yesterday. I now need to find a home for everything, but the drawers of school books are already full to bursting. School helpfully finishes earlier and earlier every day this week, although for once they'll be at school for longer than about ten minutes on the last day as there's a church service before they pick up their reports/certificates.

Coffee is a must this morning, as DH had to get up at 4.30 am to catch a flight and as usual I couldn't get back to sleep afterwards.

We finally have sunshine here too, just in time for the kindergarten Sommerfest this afternoon. Unfortunately rain is forecast for Friday afternoon, when DD2 is having her birthday party.

coldhearted I'm on my 6th (yes 6th!) massive glass of water for the morning . I get so thirsty with bfing I can never get enough . I feel so of your 11 hrs sleep.

2 newbies - I'm no longer the new girl

swan paddling pool of spaghetti ?

sc I don't know the past to your tests but sounds good you've got the all clear

Lots and lots to do today as bit slow yesterday in the heat but this morning mainly taken up with a baby class - apparently this week its a teddy bears picnic

CHB I'm sure I read that something like 60% of headaches can be got rid of if you drink enough water. Going by the amount I drink, I should have a permanent headache (I've added "drink water" to my am, pm and evening routines, but still struggle with putting it into practice).

reastie Bfing does make you thirsty, doesn't it? That was probably about the only time I drank more than half a glass of water a day. Enjoy the teddy bears' picnic.

Forgot to say welcome to lizard and THACA. Waves to everyone else.

re: thirst - it's quite easy to drink lots of tea and coffee and not notice you ar enot drinking any water at all...I too must drink more of the pure stuff.

Linzer you made me smile (sympathetically, of course) with your "school helpfully finishes earlier and earlier each day". I remember when dcs were at nursery for 3 hours of a morning, and how fast the time went. You've reminded me not to panic, as yet again, there appear to be too many things I need to do before Pick Up...as Dh pointed out there is plenty of time if I just stopped panicking

namely
go to shop and buy another purple teeshirt ( this is driving me crazy, I am going to ask for him to be transfered to another school house red, orange, blue, yellow, green, just not blooming PURPLE) another tantrum this morning over the faint yellow stripe...
tidy dd's room for friend to stay over night in (as playroom still smells strangely of wet goat/sheep after carpet cleaning
GO INTO SCHOOL and do some helping
talk to SN lady at school on phone re: Ds2 getting mega-upset about sports jibes
put away laundry mountain
another cool shower (now)

and I wanted to go to Sewing Class but I see that is not going to happen