October-fest: a fledgling (at best) might spruce up its nest (then take a rest?).

[strictlycaballine]

Welcome to the October 2012 Fledgling Flyers thread. Park your mops, buckets, microfibre cloths, golden dusters and spiders-web-removing-implements here!

A huge "thank you" to Whoknows and Pushme for leading us throughout September!! (Hope you are recovering well Whoknows - take it steady!)

If your house is a mess and you are strugging with C.H.A.O.S. (can't have anyone over syndrome) and S.T.U.F.F. (something that undermines family fun) then this is the thread where we (loosely) follow the step-by-step Flylady housekeeping system (in our own, unique, relaxed style) with lots of chat, support and along the way.

This little-and-often system is designed so that you can follow a series of steps and routines each day (which gradually become second nature) in weekly designated zones of the house; defining and minimising housework - which in theory should leave you with more time to do other more interesting things instead! At the same time it is intended to reduce that panicky "rabbit in headlights" feeling when you are overwhelmed and everything needs doing all at once. No problem if you miss a day or two; just jump right back in and it will all come around next month again anyway!

We advise not signing up to receive the Flylady e-mails as you will be inundated! All the information you need will be linked here on a daily basis.

From the first of the month, we will be following Flylady's steps and routines using a three-pronged approach (dependent on the stage everyone is at):

• start or repeat baby steps

• repeat baby steps + do 15 mins a day decluttering in the current zone

• reinforce babysteps and do daily missions if you have finished decluttering.

[And if you are really enthusiastic and have finished decluttering - you can go on to detailed deep cleaning in each zone.]

More info here on getting started, and the flylady system here and here Don't be put off by the barf-tastic language of the site - the underlying system is sound.

All welcome!!

I've just had the computer crash and lost a days typing and a carefully compiled personals, and still to do list. Whimper, weep!

immediate still to do's
rescue mat
remake now dry bed
grab loo rolls and conditioner
collect d/s
swimming
launderette
hang stuff
check maths
dinner
bed

How was your ds when he was diagnosed madwoman?

How old? He was only officially dx a year ago - but has been flagged since starting school. Because he was bright enough they kind of let it slide - so everyone would raise it as a concern, but wouldn't do anything about it (presumably because intermittently he produced a good bit of work and hadn't killed anyone). And of course this is his third school, so the moving around makes it trickier to follow anything through. This time it was raised within 4 weeks of starting the new school. Teacher discussed it for an about and a quarter, then burst into tears. (Same teacher that said he couldn't have pizza for a year).

So I guess he's got time to improve. He's been on the meds for 10 months, but she isn't keen to up the dose yet as he's small for his age. Learning support are variable... And this year they put him in a split with a grade lower. It really was the absolute worst thing to do - his behaviour and concentration will regress. I'm a bit on edge about the meeting next week, but we'll see.

So he has actually had a moderately late diagnosis. It makes it so much harder imo. I am not surprised you are concerned about him being in the spilt class I would be. I would love to say you'd see the results of support and strategies immediately but ime it takes a lot of time from the start of implementation to proper results. Dsis was diagnosed at 3 but the strategies and support work that was put in place didn't show full affect until she was about 10. She never had to go on medicines but it was strongly suggested. Mum didn't want to go down that route. These days you wouldn't know to speak to her. She is doing really well. But it is terribly hard and little things like the split class thing would have put her back too. I hope that you can get it sorted madwoman

Right, taking deep breath and preparing to get out of the door.

Need to check that I've got everything and that DH knows everything he needs to know for the next 2 days!!

Big waves to all. Back Saturday afternoon...

Ta da continued:

Empty dryer
Fold clothes while still warm (avoiding ironing )
Transfer cushion covers from WM to dryer
Load into WM
Spend 10 mins attempting to dry sofa
Put 2 baskets of folded/ironed clothes away
Finish decluttering box from spare room
Sort 3 boxes of clean clothes into ironing/away baskets
Put 2 baskets of clothes away
Nursery run
Put dry cushion covers onto sofa cushions
Transfer load from WM to Dryer
Put lounge room rug into WM
Sweep lounge floor
Sort clean clothes baskets into ironing/put away baskets
Declutter 3 large bags of papers etc from spare room
School run
Empty dryer, sort into away/ironing
Dinner for DSs
Transfer rug from WM to dryer
Starch load of shirts etc, put onto spin
Hang up items to line dry
Eat a quick dinner

Sitting here munching on my dinner, have to rush out to a meeting tonight, still haven't done enough though!!! (I know, I know, I've done a lot, but I have sooooo much to do!!!)

Oh, and:

Pair a large pile of socks (and put the odd ones back into the basket!!)

DH will be ever so pleased to see some socks in his drawer!!!!

TA da:
Wmx2
Folded and hung from dryer ;-)
Finally heard back from accountant and emailed him the financials.

To do:
Blardy everything.
Including probably answering impossible questions from accountant.

He's doing it voluntarily, and I had to confess that we've had a non-compliance investigation this year (dating back before my involvement - I introduced payroll when I took over and had been making contributions on employees behalf's quite happily - but hadn't realized that no one before had e.ver done so, hence when I started paying can equiv of tax and NI, the govt went 'oh, hello...') the embarrassing thing is that this dude has done the books for the two previous years... I can't quite bring myself to say 'OI! Wtaf!' but I still can't believe that he didn't even notice... I sorted it all out, and it's all paid, and we only had a teeny small fine but, I mean, surely an accountant should have, well, noticed? As should the rest of the damn board. I mean, they weren't even counter-signing stuff, and the GM had a debit card.

So, I'm a bit jittery. I'm not an accountant, and I've pretty much had to self teach payroll, and so I'm faintly panic stricken. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn't have a sense of humour failure and refuse to do them - because we have neither the time nor the money to find someone else...

LPlate - I have just bagged a large number of odd socks in prep for the children when they get in from school. It's chores time! They must be able to find some pairs...

Must catch up on today's thread!

Busy day! Morning routine did NOT happen as I stayed in bed until 10 mins before I had to leave for work - disaster!
Ta da:
Work
Coached football after school
Raced off to piano lesson
Quick rescue-grocery shop
Dinner

No flying except rebooted laundry...
Making a flying visit to DMil now, then coming home to Downton Abbey boxset and bed!

Evening everyone

[Doffs hat in respect to those of you struggling with sn issues who constantly have to battle school/educational authorities on behalf of your dc. Sounds like an unnecessarily fraught process for dc and parents alike and must require constant bucket-loads of tenacity/courage]

Gossip/Madwoman how depressing and awful about excluding your dc from Ofsted inspection/pizza lunch for a year Deeply unfair

Bitchy great to hear your dsis is doing so well now (in spite all of the above issues) Hope hair brush/memory stick turned up eventually. My boudoir is one great ruddy hole wherein things get lost atm.

Will be thinking of you this weekend Blue

Arrggh - hate it when that happens Justgettingonwithit!

Well done re: your humungous list Lplate don't be hard on yourself - small steps remember!

Madwoman for you following a day of accountancy torture! Hope it is sorted ok. If not, PA may be able to advise ...she is resident fledgling accountancy expert!

[Breaks open more bottles of for all in naughty corner and waits for Castlelough (thanks from me too Ellie)]

I'm knackered and have done very little of my list again despite being busy all day Bit peed off with dh who (having just come back from business trip) has decided to go on another one to London tomorrow leaving me to re-jig a load of carefully made arrangements. On the positive side, dsis recovering well; although hope she won't be too disappointed at standard of home cooking here when she comes out tomorrow - Belgian hospital food is delicious!!

Huge wing flaps to everyone else. Going to post links now/then Gareth/then bed. G'night all!

bum and double bum

just did what Justgettingonwithit did and wrote out links and promptly lost the post

back after Gareth ....

i have actually done some fecking flying.

Ta da:-

Living room cleaned
Washing done
Drying done
Kitchen cleaned
Washing up done
Dining room cleaned
Bathroom tidied
Hallway tidied
Dinner cooked and cleared away
Packed lunches made
Clothes laid out

Quite a productive evening!

bitchy good to see you. Sorry about your friend. A very difficult conversation indeed.

whoknows glad to hear you are taking things easy

No time for more personal, i need more . this week has been one of those that i thought would never end and I cannot wait for tomorrow night!

I am going to have a soak in a long hot bath, big waves to everyone!

Oh and i did mean to say blue i hope everything goes ok this weekend.

Canada, castle. (Alberta) I may have been slightly out of my depth when they begged me to do it, not knowing anything about, well, anything really. But it's only adding up and taking away . Thank The Lord for government websites is all I can say.

Have just spent an hour with the accountant on the phone, and he's not too traumatized. Found two errors (or rather queried two numbers and I went back and found the errors) and I think we're only a dollar askew now. am waiting for his next magic phone call where he tells me it's all finalized... I have offered him gin.

He also didn't realize I had been running payroll and benefits and whatnot, and thinks we should outsource that straight away, as it's too time consuming for a voluntary position. I think I may love the man. (The fact that his gf is enormously pg and about to give birth at any second is not relevant.)

Ooo, PA. Actually I think she may have offered help before. Someone did, when I had been handed the non-compliance investigation as the brand new treasurer... Oh, how we laughed... I think your recuperation is safe, PA. Hope you are feeling a bit better!

(He did laugh when he realized I have been calculating everything myself, and producing T4s etc (like P60s and whatnot) using the online calculators and the govt templates. I'm a regular one man band, me. It's all legit and entirely above board. Just mostly people outsource it as it's too much hassle!)

Sc - I did get around it by trying to make sure I gave him cold pizza in his packed lunch on those days, but it really wasn't the same. It was the main reason we were considering home Ed, tbh. It seemed ludicrous that they were the ones that raised his sn and formalized support procedures, but then punished him for something that was a direct result of it. Poor wee chap.

Still frantically flapping...

Ta da list

15 mins de-cluttering
Took bin bag full of crap lovely things we no longer need to charity shop
cooked tea
load of washing
ironed clothes for tomorrow
made halloween cookies with ds and iced them

Got to go wash up, finish ironing, have a bath. Love to all .

[more waves] [concealing lack of flying]

On our impromptu SN board over at this end ds2 was deemed to be up to scratch by the school [somehow I think they have got this the wrong way round , and an "immature" but "a lovely boy" whatever that is meant to mean! He did French and welding by way of introduction to the joys of Secondary...
I forsee huge problems when he actuallyhas to do any work, but at least he is now very enthusiastic about the school itself.

done
two enormous batches of shopping, still have to do the cheesey/storecupboard bit tomorrow. Then that should see us out for a month I reckon, filled the freezer up too.

Dh now in excellent spirits about his new life self-employed; this is actually scarier than when he was worried...

tonight we managed
talking to ds1 form teacher on phone (more difficult that it sounds)
Ds1 drama club at school, he loves that
Guides
Fencing
crashing out on the sofa
and unloading the dw
dd did some homework, ds1 was meant to be revising Enuma Elish but as he hasn't written anything relevant in his RE book we have given up on that...
Several episodes of Dr Who later zzzz for all

[Re-fills Ellie's glass and offers bottle around ....]

You've done well today Sowornout! Well done

Madwoman good to hear accountancy torture nearly resolved and arf at gin inducements! [Aw at cold pizza too. He's lucky to have you batting for him]

Whey hey at the Flying Ellie! Hats off for doing all that after a full day's teaching. No wonder you are on the bottle I'd be downing a whole one

Crikey. Where did the week go?

Tomorrow's baby-step, no 12 for Fri 12th Oct is here consolidating first 12 baby-steps/morning & evening routines etc and using them to build (slowly) your cj. Actual step is deleting e-mails from Fat Fairy which hopefully you won't have to do, because you haven't signed up to Big Tent, oh no.

Tomorrow is our last day (for this month anyway) in Zone 2: the kitchen Try and declutter in this zone for 15 mins.

NB If you haven't already done a fling boogie in the kitchen this wk, then you have one more day in which to do so!

If your kitchen is already decluttered, then you can progress to detailed cleaning

The last mission of the week is sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor

Friday is declutter your car and handbag day

Don't forget to try and get rid of paper clutter for 15 mins every day this month

If I've missed anything, have a look at the flight plan for tomorrow which should update automatically.

G'night all!

**

x post

Cheers Castlelough [hic] g'night!

Phew! You lot have been busy one way or another and have lots of "Non-Flying" stuff going on in your lives.

Took the Fat Fairy's advice today and did a couple of brief blitzes. I didn't time them but didn't dawdle.

Ta Da

• Utility room tidied and bits put away under the sink - Note to self: Buy Loo Cleaner
• Craft stuff put away of off the dining room table
• Random bits lying about the living room put where they should be
• Breakfast dishes washed and floor swept
• Kerplunk put back into its box
• Spent the afternoon dealing with paperwork/filing (and put quite a few un-needed bits in the recycling!) Need to do some more tomorrow but it's mostly a few more changes of addresses and getting the warranties on the kitchen appliances activated.
• Left the house ship-shape in case The Boss came in for coffee but as DD and I were at swimming when they got back he didn't! Well at least the house is tidy

Tonight is fish and chips night due to DD finishing swimming at 6.30 so it's my one night off washing pots

DH and I have been internet surfing to try to find a sideboard we a) both like and b) doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Also need to order a couple of chest of drawers, a bookcase and a storage unit from Ikea [gulps hard thinking of the ££££]

Leaving some of DD's cake on the side x

TA da:

The Financial Statement!!!

and, I've just remembered I've got a meeting tonight.
In the PUB!!! Ha ha ha! Really! I had an odd little note to self scribbled on calendar and then when I deciphered it, realized I'm meeting a couple of guiding laydeez tonight to go over parade procedures (could be for Remembrance Day, could be for Christmas... I'm a bit confused), but how about that?! Ha!

I'm not even thinking about my list for tomorrow. Deliberately. Not. But I will post it before I go to bed, because if I don't get it all done, the world is going to crash and burn come Saturday...

It was -3 last night. I am going fecking camping. Boy do I need a drink.

Swan, I am loving French and welding. Ds would love that too. He's a maths geek at heart, though.