Part 2 of: If tidying your house is your New Year's resolution, Flying with us could be the solution

[ToffeeWhirl]

Welcome to Part 2 of the January Fledgling Flyers' thread. There are a lot of newly dedicated Flyers on Part 1 of the thread - I hope they all find their way over here to Part 2. We are following Flylady's system to get our houses in order, whilst ignoring her twee language.

Flylady's routines 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. On this thread, we motivate each other, chat quite a lot and swap tips on coping with housework and mess.

There are three methods of following Flylady's system, 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: your sink. It seems crazy when the mess is piling up everywhere else, but it works.

what do you think of my lurvely coat organisation project

I need this thread. I seriously struggle and you seem to understand and it inspires me to read it. I'm fairly new to MNet and have learnt a lot already. Will be logging in to this regularly now.

QueenMaeve - those photos are fabulous over the coat hooks. What a wonderful idea. But why don't you have too many coats piled up on top of each other like I have?

Busyoldfool - welcome to the thread. Hope we can help.

BlackCat - housework is so much effort when you're feeling down. Maybe just focus on the major stuff for the moment. Or take on one small project, like decluttering the coats in the hall (inspired by above link from Queen) - that will give you a boost (I should follow my own advice

27 January - babystep 27 - just for thewaffler, today's babystep is to plan what's for dinner tonight.

Today is Friday - declutter your purse and car day. It is also date night.

Today's mission is to declutter your bedside table.

libbyssister thank you for the Korma tip, and toffee thankyou for my motivational step, I'll investigate menuformums - I know I need to plan and ideally would like to also get to stage of having 12 things on rotation, but atm have no idea what these meals can be, how did I get to the age of 34 without knowing how to cook!

We had chips from the chip shop yesterday, yummy - dh only works half days on Fridays, so will probably cook tea tonight, but I'm determined to have at least 3 meals planned for next week that will be shopped for this weekend - I'll let you know how I get on.

Morning all, I need to try and catch up in my kitchen (This is where I struggle the most in my house) today before I can focus on much else. I have lots of washing up to do. I Am hoping to get an early start on it before the school run although must get some breakfast first .

Breakfast done
Washing up x1 done
now having my 2nd of the day.

blackcat that is an early start! Hope you manage to get through what you wanted before school

morning black cat pm'd you
nice to see you up and ready for the attack!
anyone with tips how to stay on top what youve decluttered would be appreciated...i finding it hard to keep areas sorted clear

Hi zoo, Have to go now but will be back after the school run (hopefully).

Morning

Quickly checking in;

Today
school/work
lidl
laundry
S+S

BBL

Hello. Can I play too? Have been doing flylady for a while but am so sick of the emails I've been doing less and less
hopefully delurking here will keep me airborne!

Start positively
done
decluttered handbag and car (just back from garage so easy!)
3 children off to school with minimum of screaming (I was blowdrying dd's hair whilst she was eating cornflakes...not good
ds1 in good mood, ds2 in good mood, dd eager to show off her robot models
ds2 showered and dressed and made his own bed without delaying
hung laundry to dry

however there does seem to be a MESSY KITCHEN this morning so need to tackle that after a cup of

todo
unload, reload dw
breakfast table
books pick up from all over house
beds
put away clean laundry
find builder for loo-seats!!! he is down the road somewhere, just couldn't face tackling him yesterday
shops as missed Errand Day yest?
ring fellow catechist with info about lesson tomorrow
order birthday cards and wrapping paper for rest of year ASAP, as I'm caught short again without any giftwrap for tomorrow, and I wanted to have a stash but failed....(easy to buy it round corner of course, just don't want always to be rushing out at last moment, like today)

I Have:
made beds
breakfast
got dressed
1 x wash up
school/nursery run done

Just having a and some biscuits to gather my thoughts.

Won't be around all morning as I have other stuff to do but hope to be back around lunch time-ish.

thewaffler I really struggled with quick simple meals when I had small kids. Although I used to be very good cook, somehow I couldn't work out how to cook the sort of food suitable for children and adults, as my repertoire was mostly "fancy" stuff with aubergines, and pinenuts sundried tomatoes grilled fennel and that sort of lark. Useless as family food, or even for large nos of guests!
However, my rolling recipes are now
roast chicken (anyfuleknow)
cheesy potatoes aka gratin dauphinoise with not so much cream and no gruyere
fish cakes made with mashed potato and tinned salmon
tomato sauce on good dried pasta with any additional bits
pasta bake with cheese sauce (with tuna, smoked haddock or chicken, or even bits of sausage) served with green veg or salad
cottage pie (which is mince with veg, topped with mashed potato)
baked potatoes with toppings (grated cheese, tuna, baked beans, crispy bacon)
fried chicken breast with green veg and mashed potato
beef casserole with carrots and onion (slow cooked)
italian meatballs in tomato sauce (basically mince and a tin of tomatoes)
pasta carbonara (basically pasta with bacon and egg and bit of cream)
risotto with butternut squash/ mushroom/ or peas and bacon
pilaff with chicken pieces
sausages and baked potatoes (mine hate sausage casserole)

done
v frustrating phonecall wth mum who can't face up to fact that if she can't walk for 2 months after an ankle op, and needs her leg to be UP she needs to be on the ground floor of her house, and to make the necessary changes. She has the money, she has the space, she just doesn't want to change anything. Even though in long term she would be better off on ground floor anyway. Will have to talk to my sis. My Dad is also not facing up to the situation and he's not going to be any help either...They are both stubborn and determined...

I've suggested stair lift btw...

My post has now been eaten...twice.
Dying here.

PAPERWORK...sorry to shout but anyone have ideas? This is major weakness for me. Paperwork for school, son's special needs, house finances, separation/divorce stuff, day-to-day expenses (receipts thrown into monthly envelopes but thats as far as I've got).
I dont have the means or the will to do a fancy system but it's the one area thats really pulling me down at the moment.
I think thats my Feb goal...sort that out.

Sorry to be abrupt but third time writing is just dull

some one motivate me to get up and do something...
up half night with snotty kids(i have it too)feeling sorry for myself
get up and go ran off down the road laughing
have only managed to take 5min walk and dump 2bags in a clothes bin other than the school run and played a bit/comforted 4yo little zoo who feeling bit crap too
breakfast dishes are mocking me and i need to get in gear!
i dont have a ta da more erm....er!!!!!

Apologies - today's mission is to declutter your 'dresser', which means dressing table (thanks, Linzer ). It was Thursday's mission to declutter your bedside table. I have done neither .

Very tired today after not getting enough sleep last night (sympathies, liveinazoo). Met up with a friend first thing, after the school run, have come home for lunch and to work, but DH now doesn't need me to work, so am going to get on with schoolwork with DS1. Think I might creep back to bed for a nap later....

dundee welcome!

Would recommend you cancel the emails - they are just a pita and get you down. Just pop on here daily for all your reminders. Much nicer.

wannabe My routine for paperwork is this. As soon as the mail comes in I separate it into 'to do' and 'file' piles. The 'to do' stuff goes into the drawer under my telephone table for dealing with on a Thursday (my day for paperwork). The stuff for filing is put in a filing tray I keep in a cupboard in the living room.

Every Thursday I deal with the 'to do' paperwork then add it to the filing then do all the filing. Because it is done every week it only takes about 15 minutes.

I have lever arch files to store my paperwork. One for the bank accounts, one for morgage, insurances and loans, one for incomings i.e. wages/tax credits/child benefit etc, one for outgoings (car/telephone/elec etc) and another for miscellaneous stuff. I use cardboard dividers in the files to separate the bills etc - dead cheap and effective.

Receipts that I need to save are kept in a box file. I go through this about once a year and chuck what is out of date.

Do a bit at a time to clear what has built up - don't do it all at once or you will probably sicken yourself. Start by maybe just dividing into piles of bank statements, incomings paperwork, outgoings paperwork, school paperwork, divorce paperwork etc. Another day you can start to sort the piles of bills into Electricity/Telephone/Car/Sky etc. Once you have got it all sorted into separate categories you can create files and start putting the paperwork in. Once you have everything filed, keep up to date by picking a day in the week when you will deal with mail and file everything. And stick to it. Little and often always helps you keep on top of things.

At work today so trying to finish accounts. Boring.

Ta da

Up, showered, dressed to shoes
Swished upstairs bathroom
Made bed
Emptied and refilled dw
Shined sink and tops

To do

Hoover

Just checking in. Afraid I can add nothing else to my TA DA list yet as I have been out and seeing my DM until 2.30pm.

Glad to see you still popping in blackcat Seeing your DM is a ta da!

Hope you are feeling a bit better.

Weeeel toffee whirl you see if I'd just angled the camera a bit you would see just around the corner another 2 racks coming off the walls so heavily are they plied with coats!

room rescued front room,althoug it took nearly an hour not 15mins