July's Fledgling Flyers: Summer holidays are on their way and the clutter is going to FLY away

[elliepac]

Welcome old and new fledglings to the July Fledgling FLYers thread!

Thank you very much to cpmpy for leading us expertly through June- it's been a while since I lead so I can't promise to be as efficient but will do my best . This will start by copying and pasting pmpy's original June post

If you're overwhelmed by clutter and general household grub then join us as we (loosely) follow the step-by-step Flylady housekeeping system or languish in the naughty corner hoping to do better tomorrow

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 and maybe even detailed cleaning in the weekly zones

For more information have a look here, although to avoid a cluttered inbox, we advise not signing up to the Flylady emails. The basic principle is little and often and don't worry about perfection (no chance of that here!).

Don't worry if you are behind; just jump right back in and it will all come around next month again anyway!

All the links for the babysteps and missions will be posted here every day and we'll all be here to cheer each other on and chat our way through the month

Evening! Just caught up with the posts - sorry to read about Just and Toffee

Joining this thread hasn't half helped with my motivation! I can see how tackling a bit each day in the 'zone' will eventually make such a difference overall. Is it really saddo-tastic that I can't wait to start on the next (kitchen) zone??

Can I ask - Control journal... Does anyone have one?!

Polka I don't have an "official" one but I do have a diary that is perfect for my needs and has loads of space for numbers, and stuff etc etc. it's basically this and it kind of serves as my Control Journal.

Have also had a good chat with DM about her hoarding. She admits she can't live like that anymore and is adamant that when she moves home she will declutter having realised, since living here apparently(!), that decluttering is easy and doesn't have to all be done at once(!!!!!!!!!). Also, stuff does not bring people back from the dead. And that's a tough lesson to learn. I'm hopeful at least and will try to keep reinforcing through my own decluttering efforts.

Just checking in as I'm full of cold, sore throat, headache etc. so don't have much flying to report. Luckily the blitz I did at the beginning of the week has resulted in a nice uncluttered downstairs hall and have uncluttered a bit of the dining room. Off to bed now so hopefully will have a bit more energy tomorrow to finish dining room!

Toffee Hope you and your DC are ok. Cats are such small animals, but they leave such a huge gap in your home and you life when you lose them.

Thanks Trazzle. Love that diary! Want one. Think I'll start getting one together myself.
Asheth I agree about the huge gap losing a pet leaves. It is majorly horrible. Hope you feel better soon.

Just shone sink & tidied up and now off to bed. Night!

Sorry before I go - meant to say Trazzle I know what you mean re: your DM. My lovely Mum is a hoarder too and it's hard. I'm all for personal choice about how people live but just know her life would be better in so many ways if she could get rid of some of the useless (but sentimental) stuff weighing her down.

To do

from yesterdays list oppression

1- send email to school going fuck off! but not saying that.
2- Collect up last years textbooks. Now to be given to Cake Date firend who thinks she might like flicking through to help with her English.
3- Research happy Birthday DS computer and cunning partitions.
4- Stronghold last two of zoo.

New ones

1- One kitchen cupboard
2- Face the Bookcase Of Doom
3- More washing blitz now mountain is molehill and 30 degrees plus all day will ensure speedy drying.
4 FIND DRILL!!
5 Check out Unfuck Your Habitat. Which seems to be a bit like FlyLady but with impressive swearing and no "bless this house" stuff.

Potential on list but not putting it on list in case of oppression issues

Go to Post Office to charge up visa electron to buy next ac. years textbooks.

Do not come to blows with staff when they deny visa electron exists. Do not luanch self over counter when they wander off with ID card and Tax number card and then lose them again.

Do not have "Bloody Italy" ranty meltdown when five minute operation takes 2 hours due to hiring of people cos of who they know rather than their ability to engage brain before gob and a their "handicap" of feeling well put put when required to anything that looks like work.

Breath while in there.

Do not excite other queuers into mini verbal riot this time.

Take iPad. Load up Pocket with Unfuck your Habitat website pages to read offline for distraction potential.

Load visa card, not criminal record.

Well that makes my to do list look tame and boring Carpe

I want to look at 'unfuck my habitat'. Sounds like my kind of place.

I got the possesive wrong ! your not my

www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/

I am trying to download the Good Housekeeping magazine app.

My brain has gone off on a wander convinced that if I subscribe magic fairies will transform me into World's Bestest Effortless Housekeeper Ever.

I have done the kitchen and brought down washing. But other than that...I am still on my arse. Trying to buy my way out of the superglue that attaches me to the sofa .

remember that I went on a rant about tidy being the new norm a while back? it is beginning to sink in. People are starting to not dump things instead of dealing with them. The house is still a bit of a bomb site but it is far more controllable and less resembling total destruction

makes no comment wrt unfuck your habitat

Going from bad to worse here in the Toffee household. DS1's anxiety has gone through the roof and he was sick twice before school this morning. He definitely isn't ill and it was entirely anxiety related. Very reluctantly, I had to cancel his insight day today. I don't know what the school are going to do. I don't know if they are willing to work with his level of need.

And now DH is ill. He has come down with the same symptoms as he had three months ago, which, at the time, he thought was a kidney infection. He managed to get to the dr and has been given meds. They are referring him for an ultrasound. He was meant to go into work, but has had to go back to bed.

We were meant to be meeting DS1's teacher this afternoon, but now DS1 hasn't been in to school and DH is too ill to drive, so I shall have to cancel that. They must wonder what sort of family they are dealing with.

It's all a fucking nightmare, frankly.

Toffee I'm really sorry your day hasn't gone to plan.

CHB @ tidy being the new NORM!

Blue Sorry to read about DMil's cat.

Carpe good luck at the post office- try not to get arrested!

I had a very productive day yesterday . Made a great errands/anti-P list and stuck to it! Spent a lovely evening horseriding too, but my Crisis Cleaning took a back seat...

Today I've been to the gym (joined yesterday) for my fitness assessment - epic fail, I'm afraid!!!!!!
And I am FAT too.
It's easy to fool yourself, but not the fitness instructor watching you with an eagle eye, and querying why you've adjusted your MyFitnessPal app calorie allowance up to 1500 per day .

Did a Kettlebells class, and had to be scraped off the floor afterwards

Anyway ... To Do :

-Prep brunch (DH will be home shortly) and also dinner in advance for DH (I am going out!)
-Tackle a few remaining items from yesterday's list, mostly phonecalls.

• Go to school for a few hours to do the paperwork I didn't get done earlier in the week.
• Drop rent to landlady.
• Doll self up for staff end-of-year night out - planning to use my heated rollers!
• Try not to completely gorge self at dinner....

Btw Swan I'm very at the sound of your raspberries! Delicious!

Don't be too castle currently crisis cleaning as ds has a friend to come play later...

Afternoon all, popping in again.

Done
Changed DD's bedding
Laundry in
Dry laundry folded & put away

Treated myself to some Irn Bru in a glass bottle, it even has a 30p return. Just have to find a shop that takes them back.

Today's mission is to make a chart for DD, she's quite good, makes her bed, keeps her room reasonable, but it's other things like drinking enough. We've agreed a points system, to 'earn' days out over the holidays (I don't make it too difficult)

Hope you all have a good day.

Evening all. Have done no flying today, but met up with a friend I hadn't seen for years and his DD. She was about 6 the last time I saw her and today they were up for a uni open day... Had a nice lunch with them, and since then have mainly been watching tennis.

Toffee, sorry to hear things are so hard. Hope today improved.

Bitchy, glad to hear the new normal thing is working.

Castle - hope you have a great evening out.

Ok, sorry about former gloomy post. Am feeling a bit less despondent now. Have emailed DS1's teacher to explain DS1's absence and am hoping for a positive response.

WhoKnows - in response to your question yesterday: this is a

Toffee hope it works out with the school.

Not looking at MFP this week, will start back on Monday (hopefully this bloody cold will have gone by then)

DD's chart is just for the summer holiday, to try to keep some sort of order (and a surreptitious reminder to DH of things that need doing)

Ta-da: 8pm - left hospital with Joe.

Ordered and ate much pizza as they included a topping which we had asked them not to so got a free pizza as well as the one we ordered...

Calmed Joe down as he got a slight temp and was sick..

11.15: waved Joe and DH off to hospital as J now has uber-fever.

That's sod all flying, isn't it?

Oh, but I did put the washing in the machine ready for the morning.

I think you have a pretty good excuse not to do any Flying, Trazzle. Sorry to hear Joe had to go back to hospital. How rotten for him when he was back at home and sleeping in his own bed.

Goth - good luck with the chart.

Have just tidied up the kitchen and done all the washing up so I don't have to come down to a mountain of dirty washing up in the morning.

Toffee My son is almost 13. This ac. year just gone is the first good school year we have had since he was in year 2 elementary school. Don't apologise. Honest to god it is a horrible, stressful, painful time when your square peg kid doesn't fit in the one size fits all round school hole on offer. Just dealing with that on a day to day basis can feel like climbing M. Everest in ballet slippers. And gettingnthrought it is an acheivement in its own right.

Trazzle That's supersonic flying. That makes having housework, just housework, to deal with look like a walk in the park with extra added daffodils. You are soaring around above my head making things happen in the scariest and most stressful of circumstances. And If I lived anywhere near you I'd down tools and proffer myself as freebie housework help just for the sake of having something concrete I could do to help.

(((big fat hug to both of you)))))

Morning all .

Sorry I didn't get back on yesterday. Hectic day at work with Sports Day and a meeting and then straight turn around at home to go back out to the Prom for our departing Year 11's. It was a lovely evening . You remember them as shy, awkward Year 7's and they blossom and leave as fantastic young adults. Lovely.

twas a late night though and have done no flying. We have family round today as my Dsis's surrogacy went through the courts on Monday and my Dnephew is now officially a member of the family and dsis is officially his mum. Celebratory BBQ today so need a list:-

Cleaning downstairs and bathroom (DH did a fine job of tidying last night so just polishing and hoovering hopefully)
washing
drying
putting away
food shop
garden tidy
bbq food eating
wine drinking

Back in a sec with the links for today.

Here are your links for today.

Your babystep is Hot Spots. An important one this and one which can make a real difference if you nail it.

No missions today as it is the weekend.

Today is Family Fun Day so enjoy the lovely sunshine.

I am sat in the garden typing this and a bird just crapped on my head. Is that good luck?.

My Ta Dah! From yesterday

Three loads of washing
Some textbook sorting

...and then the heat soared to 33 degrees and I promptly fell asleep on the sofa.

So, while the HomeRoutines list style seems to work for me for just bog standard housework, it seems lists cause List Opression for Big Jobs. And I have a alot of accumulated Big Jobs due to MIL moving in, needing full time care, then dying, then all the horribly complicated legal stuff (did the last legal sign off in Milan last Friday) and the upset with the extended family. It was not the easiest of years. But she moved in with us a year ago next week. So I really want to demonstrate a corner turning to myself.

So...I am not writing a list To Do. I am going to try the fling boogie thing. Wandering around the house, picking a room that appeals and doing fifteen minutes in there.

It is supposed to be cloudy and rainy fornthe next ten days, which is crap for washing cos I wanted to do all the sofa covers and pillows and duvets and stuff. But good cos the temp will be much lower than thpical averages so I should stay upright and awake.

In theory I should feel crap, cos I haven't lived up to my list. But I don't actually. It's noce to be "in company" as it were, and I think the problem is not so much my ability to "suceed" in achieving goals, as much as it is my inability to write realistic lists. Am I approaching Normal PersonHood?

I still can't find my drill. And that is annoying me.

I think after Tuesday all my students will have a holiday coinciding for a full ten days, so I'll get a clear run. Which is nice.

All in all, still flapping my baby wings a clumsily, but feeling really zen about my imminent take off and floating around on air. Which is the best I've felt about the house for .... god, more than 20 years. So yay! Me! That's a massive improvement. When it becomes housework and not self loathing and Big Emotionally Tied Up stuff the load is cut by about 90% I think.