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.

Makingchanges will pm you too when I can get on the computer

Must get off here and go to bed!

ok, how does this actually work? i have just looked at the website and there is talk about making a journal type thing. i dont have time to do that ???!!!

ToffeeWhirl do u basically just tell us on this thread what we are meant to be doing? do i sound a little it may have something to do with the i just drank.... ok its actually vodka not wine :S

I think where we go wrong in this house is in 3 or 4 crucial areas. 1. DH is convinced that the DW needs to run only once a day. This is true during the week but not true at the weekend. Hence the week starts with a backlog which never ever gets caught up. 2. DH is obsessed with putting laundry on (ie starting the washing cycle) but rubbish at either givin me and the kids the entire pile of clean stuff to sort(my preferred option) or sorting it and giving it back. We often have a massive pile of clean (except by now the cats have slept on it) clothing in the Room I Will Not Enter and no knickers in anyone's room. This is Bad. 3. The kids are rubbish at putting stuff away, we are rubbish at making them. 4. Hence by the time a room is 'tidy' DH is fed up therefore does not 'clean'.

Thinking about it in a structured way, for the purposes of this thread, has already helped a bit. We have just done the DW before coming up to bed. This is a first.

I used to be a flyer (not on MN) but fell off the FLYwagon a few years ago. I am now a clutter magnet again so may try and join in. How does it work on here though? Does one just check on the thread every day?

thetagismamum snap on the washing - will was loads and dry and fold but struggle to put away and then it builds and builds - couch in our bedroom is always full to brim with clean clothes which then takes literally hours to sort (am not exaggerating ) we're not idiots - we know it should be put away as we go along which would sort this out (simple, no?) but really need to establish a rotine in doing so.

Proud of myself - know we haven't officially started yet but I got off my bum earlier (when I usually wouldn't have bothered) and spent about 20 mins blitzing the kitchen- tidying away the crap, loaded and turned on dishwasher, alternated a wash (but no didn't put away the clean stuff), washed down the surfaces, swept middle of floor, shined sink. So am getting up to a tidy(ish) kitchen in the morn (yay me!)

I am joining in.

I tidied the house (a bit) before we went away over Xmas - but now we are home - with new gifts to find places for them to live - I know that I shall need some help sorting out areas that I have been neglecting - especially the cleaning aspect of housework.

We have a garage load of toot that I have to deal with so will need to find time to crack on with that job too

dizzy I have just mentally expunged our garage from any place in my life. DH will never ever clear it. It doesn't exist, now, as far as I'm concerned. What zi am not prepared to give up on though is The Room I Will Not Enter, mainly because that's the room with most of my books in.

For all the newbies asking how this works:

Toffee will be posting a link each day for us to do. If you are just starting out you might like to just do the babysteps, which is just one thing to start doing each day and you build it up through the month so that by the end of the month you should have a good routine to keep things tidy.
Another stage is the decluttering, which might be needed if you have loads of "stuff" that needs to be sorted like me! This just takes 15 minutes a day.
There is also a more in depth "mission" that you can do each day, which tackles a room at a time and gets the house sorted more.

Hope that helps. There are a few of us oldies around who have been doing this for ages, so feel free to ask anything you want.

Huge welcome to everyone! There's lots of new names here!! We won't actually be posting the links until January 1st, so relax and enjoy the end of 2012 and be ready to roll up those sleeves on Monday!

Doh!! End of 2011, obviously!!

I'm back.

But, I have begun The Great Tidy of 2012. I put a pic on my profile and everything. And I got a dumpster. And I am determined to do it this time.

I think I'll need your support.

I'm coming back as well. Another old flyer who fell off the wagon, but I remember it was better when I had routines. I'm dyspraxic as well and it does make it harder to be organized and remember where you've put things!

This thread is working already, and it hadn't even started properly yet ! I've already reorganised two cupboards which had clearly been filled by an idiot me. And DH shined the sink!

Marking place for another month which will begin with wild enthusiasm and end with wild failure. Not fatalistic, realistic.

Waves to all oldies and big welcomes to all newbies.

Shone ?

Marking my space - fall noff the wagon regularly tho - be warned

Good morning - I'm recognising more names as people sign up.

I've had a little look at how you are doing things on theDec thread, and it all looks good. When I was doing it regularly ( a very long time ago) we had to start new threads weekly, or even daily at some points to avoid the huge long clutter filled thread of chat that thiss one looks like becoming. Sorry, but the chat andlists are what help me - that is why these threads are so much better than the avtualy FLY website or emails.

I do still getthe emails, but from a secular uk timed version of FLY. I like them , but they do the rooms and missions in a different order so I may finally get round to cancelling them and just use this instead....

morning all
5 pages already....and it isn't even Jan yet
waves to jas and tiger and other old FLYers that may remember me(have been on and off threads for about 3 years!)
big welcome to all new budding FLYers....
hands something strong to toffee for courage! Will try and help out if I can with mini round ups time permitting....
well, I am currently at my parents....so no FLYing (hooray!) but enough stress in trying to keep control of 6 over excited, over tired DC and stop them annoying elderly parents too much
Off home later....am planning to get back into serious FLYing from next Tues when DH goes back to work. Other dc not back at school till Thurday so I have a few days at home to blitz Christmas chaos and return some sort of order to house!
Will be back in Jan!(might just need to hide on less scarey Dec thread for a while longer!)

I've unsubscribed from three different versions of FLYlady emails, and deleted over 1000 of them!
I've kept the christmas countdown ones for next year. They are only once a week, and were really quite helpful

We have had people say sometimes that they can't cope with the long cluttered thread, I find that so long as I check in and read it most days, even if I don't post, it keeps me on track with the chat and hopefully the Flying. I also keep links to the Mission and Babysteps pages of Flylady bookmarked on my computer so that I can check quickly if I lose track on the thread a bit. I don't get the Flylady emails. The chat is what keeps this particular thread going IMO.

possibly if thread stays very big may be worth considering splitting it into weekly threads? I seem to recall at one stage we even did daily threads when evryone spent way more time chatting than FLYing!!!!

Absolutely - the chat and support is the thing that makes these threads work.

Marking my place!

I'm in. Looking forward to getting organised in 2012.

I think I need you. My house is a disaster zone and bursting at the seams!

I'm not to sure what / who this flylady is, but I know I'd like to join in