If tidying your home is your New Year's resolution, Flying with us could be the solution

[ToffeeWhirl]

Welcome to the January Fledgling Flyers' thread. A very big thank you to BlueEyeshadow and IceColdBitch for guiding us through the busy Christmas month.

Are you living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome)? We know the feeling. We follow Flylady's routines, which aim to help you take control of your home, tidying and decluttering and setting up daily and weekly routines that keep your home looking presentable. We also chat quite a lot and swap tips on coping with housework and mess.

From the first of the month, we will be following Flylady's tips on restoring order to our homes. There are three methods, depending on whether you are new to the system or have been following it for a while:

1. Babysteps
2. Babysteps + 15 mins daily decluttering in current zone
3. Babysteps + daily missions

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

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

Oh, and don't - really, really ^don't^ - sign up to Flylady's emails.

The first babystep will be posted on 1st January 2012.

Happy New Year.

TO ALL NEWBIES

I am from the Babysteps leaving footprints in the winter snow thread

I am just posting to try and help you all out!

We are starting the Baby steps from scratch this month so if anyone needs help with links advice as to what they should be doing you are welcome to ask us on that thread too.
(Although we don't want everyone to move to that thread!)
(That is your choice!)
We are a much smaller thread there is only a few of us at the mo!
We are on Baby step 2 today so are doing same as FLYERS but only babysteps.

Hope you don't mind me posting this.

Just wanted to help!

Thank you both.
I will look at the other thread and try and enable new.

justgetting thanks . Hopefully 2012 will be a better year for us all.

List for today:

Up and dress - done
Wash - done
Swish and swipe bathroom - done
Swish and swipe downstairs bathroom
Load and put on dw - done
Empty dw
Hoover - done
Dust
Wipe floors (quickly)
Make my bed - done
Fold and put away dry washing - done
Put 2 loads of washing on - first done
Hang 2 loads
Clean fridge
Go to shop - done

Count me in, i need to get on top of everything

Hi all.
Mint, I use a basic J cloth which is only for my bath and sink. I use a squirt of cream cleaner and just wipe it over and rinse, then the cloth lives behind the water pipe on the wall (just out of sight) I use that cloth all week, then give it a good rinse saturday morning before I use it to wash the cat's litter tray, then I throw it away.
Nermbership, do not panic, the flylady sight can be a bit overwhelming and confusing. All you need to do today is shine your sink (that was yesterday's babystep and you will do it everyday foreve) and get dressed. That's it. No more. Unless you want to set a timer and do 15 mins de-clutter, but do it along to a timer and when the timer dounds, stop. I don't do anything now without a timer! Love it.
Hth

prof i work full time as a teacher and therefore some evening/weekend work as well. It is entirely doable but you have to figure out which bits to adapt/leave out. I always make sure i do my morning and evening routines ( about 20 mins each), my homeblessing i do on saturday not Monday and i use the concept of 15 min bursts a lot. The missions i do as and when i can but they do only take a short time. It is a question of adapting to suit and also being realistic and knowing you may never get it all done. I have found even just cherry picking bits has made a huge differencs to my house.

Just wanted to add. I know they might not be quite as good an an ecloth but Aldi sell really good microfibre cloths. In packed of 2 iirc and very cheap

E-cloth link for those who asked.

I love the general purpose and glass and polishing cloths, and the deep clean mop .

Right, that's me. Everything finished except the last of the washing. House looking lovely. One of my sisters and her girls are popping round too to play some games. Should be fun.

Up and dress - done
Wash - done
Swish and swipe bathroom - done
Swish and swipe downstairs bathroom - done
Load and put on dw - done
Empty dw
Hoover - done
Dust - done
Wipe floors (quickly) - done
Make my bed - done
Fold and put away dry washing - done
Put 2 loads of washing on - first done
Hang 2 loads
Clean fridge - done
Go to shop - done

general purpose e-cloths are about £1 for 2 at Aldi & Lidl (& also quite cheap at the ordinary supermarkets) - they are really good quality

they have polishing cloths too, can't remember how much those are

toffee it's a good thing to have another week off! Pjs and couch lounging!!

Done:
Up and dressed to my slippers shoes
Breakfast dishes done & away
Swish & swipe
Washing on
Beds made
Bath cleaned
15 minutes in hall/entryway
figure out what to have for dinner
Changed light shades in hall
Cleared out DDs shoe box she is the Emelda Marcos of Central Scotland

To do:
Hoover downstairs
do rough meal plan for rest of week and next week
start the online tesco order

All this talk about swishing and swiping has motivated me to shine all my sinks! And they make me all smiley When DH just went to brush his teeth I yelled "don't you spit in my shiny sink!!"

Glad lots of others are finding the HomeRoutines App useful. I love the button that gives you an instant 15 mins on a timer and the brilliant fanfare when the time is up! It a good ta-DA

Hi all.

Woke up to a distinctly non shiny sink (full of dishes) so not a good start. Still order is now restored. Had a touch of cabin fever so popped into town with DD (Xmas money now spent in claires accessories).

DC bedroom is shocking. DS has opened both lego sets (Harry potter and Dr Who) and has muddled it all up . Off to help him sort it out.

Laundry mountain started and hopefully almost done.

DH has taken DS out for a bit (I was supposed to go too, but have a sore toe).

Other than that, having a day of CBA

Morning all from across the pond.

So far achieved :
Cup of tea - nothing happens before this
Fed the dogs
Opened and sorted last week's mail, paid bills therein
Unloaded dishwasher and put away stuff on draining rack.

Quite pleased with myself so far, previously would have been stuck at number one with today's paper on the iPad.

To do:
Tackle entrance hall - mountain of shoes, bags, coats & jumpers
Get DCs out of bed, breakfast and practice papers for school entrance exams :(
Walk dogs
Menu plan - or at least figure out what's for tea before 5 o'clock
Shopping - for all its convenience lifestyle, can you believe that v few US supermarkets do home delivery - I miss Tesco online.

If I get through all that lot I shall reward myself by going to the cinema tonight to see War Horse with a big box of tissues.

Shine on ladies.
x

Oh yes, probably should get dressed before I take the dogs for a walk

So I got up and dressed this morning and got dressed and put my shoes on. Felt strange wearing shoes in the house so I took them off. But today I have
-spent 15 mins decluttering/cleaning the shoe rack
-got dp to spend 15 mins to do the same with the coat hooks.
-washed up

Still taking things slowly as I know if I do too much I'll get bored halfway through doing something and end up making things messier than when I started.

shined my sink and got dressed to shoes socks [smug emoticon]
I also told my husbund I was trying to 'fly' and started to try and explain ... he now thinks I am losing the plot!!! On the plus side, he has helped do load around the house today, so maybe I should rant about flying more often!!!
I just hope I can maintain this level of enthusiasm!!! Still trying to get to grips with the flylady website, but will be happy if I get my baby steps done, anything else is a bonus in my eyes!

I have been "cleaning my sink" now for a few days and have quite liked having the dinner dishes/pots left drying and the kitchen surfaces cleared before bed!

Today I have done:

• Washing load on and hung to dry
• Sorted recycling
• Been to supermarket - bought some new ecloths, disposable toliet wipes and a couple of plastic tubs for the xmas decs
• Taken down tree and packed it and decs away

DH is away for work tomorrow so I'll need to check he has enough shirts etc ironed to take with him.

Day 2 babysteps achieved here... sink has had an extra spray of window cleaner after lunch for some extra sparkle, I think that's the idea?!
I have had a look at day 3 and not too sure what she means - going to a tree house or something on the website? Is there a specific task to complete?
May just me being thick but am a bit unsure..
Good advice about cloths - these ideas really do help me - I would never have thought to wash cloths every day, but despair over the smell!

poela day 3 in FlyLady is a condensing day where you just do the shiner sink and full dress - so you establish a habit/routine.

The actual website also says go to their website and read emails and testimonials... I generally skip that bit

Should have started this years ago. Although it has helped hugely having DH off work and able to child mind while I get on, as welll as a reduction in the amount of mail we get at this time of year. I have had a few quite important wake up calls as to the importance of getting the house clean and tidy and keeping it that way. One being the D&V bug my toddler had before Christmas which while it almost certainly came from nursery it made me very aware of how important it is to have a clean house.

Another being the need to prove to DH and my family (and myself) that I can manage a phd, house and toddler before we ttc another.

Anyhoo. Today.

Up and dressed
Breakfast
Dishes cleared away (DH already did the dw)
Toddler dressed
Christmas decs put away
Tree recycled at the city dump (DH)
Washing put away
Hoovered downstairs (DH mostly)
Lunch, dishes cleared away, dw on
Tree taken to dump by DH as I went on a mission to finish my study
dw unloaded
Batch of toddler meals put in oven including cottage pies and rice puddings
Did a clean of the en suite, bit more than a swish n swipe but it won't wait till the deep clean in week 3
Made a good to do list for the week ahead
Wrote some letters and even had stamps
Parcelled up the amazon Christmas returns and some birthday presents
Fed toddler, cleared away
Hoovered kitchen - see above
Did an amazon order

still to do
put new cushion covers on cushions
Write menu for week ahead and shopping list
Give toddler bath
Write some work emails and a few lesson plans

Then baileys, bath and bed!

how do i read ToffeeWhirl first post of each day. i have the new mn set up, however cant work it out!

I think she just posts on this thread GT .

I have: restored order to the lego.
Helped Ds build some Hogwarts.
Tidied up kitchen
packed bags for school/work tomorrow
packed up decorations and tree and stowed in loft .

Babysteps here for another new user