Remember, remember to Fly through November, but Fledglings will chatter a lot

[BlueEyeshadow]

If 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 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 zones of the house which are designated weekly; defining and minimising housework - which in theory should leave you with loads more time to do someting more interesting 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!

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 Flying lessons. Here's the launch pad for more experienced fledglings. Don't be put off by the barf-tastic language of the site - the underlying system is sound!

Humungous thanks to SlimChance for leading us through October and such a copy-and-pasteable OP....

All welcome!!

Massive Dr Who fan!! So have had a very enjoyable evening.[Tardis]

I thought I posted a Ta da list last night but must forgotten to post message but basically was still on a roll! have put all the Christmas Bedding on (much to the boys excitement). And cooked dinner for 14.

Did have my smugness smacked off my face, when I discovered that my teenager had been hiding his weeks worth of dirty clothes in his wardrobe and 6 used towels under his bed. So wasn't on top of my laundry as I thought!

Haven't done any flying today... Did not even bother with the morning or evening routine.. So will go and hide in the naughty corner.

Also getting a little bit nervous about my first 10k in the morning, legs are achy just thinking about it.

Toffee Sorry about your news.

All ed out!

Had a lovely day, spent the whole day just with DD, we went shopping, to the library and had lunch. I think I wore her out

Got home in time to have pizza before settling down for the Dr. AND she didn't ask questions all the way through! A first!

Just hope the late night doesn't have a detrimental effect on her grading for karate tomorrow morning.

SC Helping Hands is school thing, I go in once a fortnight and help out with preparation, it's mainly cutting, laminating, cover sealing (sticky back plastic) or mounting the kids art work on sugar paper. It's a bit of a laugh, the other mums are nice.

Baby-step, no. 24, for today, Sunday 24th, is a useful one about swishing and swiping your bathroom.

Confusingly, in the flight plan it says we have moved to Zone 5 (the living room) but when you switch to "current zone" it is still in the boudoir. So I'm no further on with yesterday's dilemma.

Anyway, no missions because it is the weekend!

The focus for Sunday is renewing your spirit or doing something that makes you feel fulfilled/refreshed.

Habit of the month is still menu planning.

Today's flight plan is here.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone!

[SC arrives in ]

Whooooohooooo, whoooohoooo, hhhoooo, hooo hooo hoo hoo, diddee deedum diddee deedum [yes ok that's meant to be the Dr Who theme in case you are wondering]

Good morning all! Hope everyone OK!

Had rather a relaxing day yesterday as dh was working (tried to persuade him not to but failed) and dd went over to a friend's house after lunch. Leaving me to watch Channel 4 racing sort the boudoir. Then went out to do do shopping/haircut/bit of present buying before dh and I went out to some friends for supper but about half way through our meal we received a call from dd who in a very small voice explained that she felt "nervous in her tummy" and wanted to come home (the plan was that she stayed for a sleepover).

Oh well, our hosts were very understanding as we sped off and at least we were eating takeaway so they hadn't slaved all day cooking for us thankfully! And DD was fine once she had been picked up and reassured that all was well. Strange though because she happily goes on school trips, or when there are sleepovers with the entire class, or groups of girls, it's just individual friend's sleepovers she gets nervous about. I've no idea why, especially as the family she was with are the nicest people you could possibly encounter. Hopefully it's just a phase!

Anyway, enough of all that. How are all of you?

Good lucking running your first ever 10K today AngryBuddha Hope you enjoy it! [Love the way 'cooked dinner for 14' gets just a casual mention in your list btw!]

Goth your day sounds lufferly yesterday. [Think it was Toffee who asked about helping hands but I am v. interested to know too - would love to do something similar - dd's school never seem to want parents in the classroom unfortunately.] Good luck to your dd at karate today.

Hope you enjoyed your nights out Whoknows and Dizzy!

[Reminds self to buy dd 'Scrabble' for Christmas]

[Mary Rose Museum sounds wonderful Whoknows would love to go.]

Waves to Toffee (you wicked slattern you ). Think everyone is allowed a pyjama morning or day from time to time! Particularly when Dr Who is on!

Alice I hope you (and everyone else involved) have recovered from all of yesterday's excitement and your ds is feeling better! Again, think you were entitled to a "get nothing much done day" yesterday in the circumstances!

Bitchy hope you managed to catch up on some sleep last night. I totally get it about bossy technology btw. Dh insists on including me on his e-mail diary thing, so I'm constantly bombarded with messages saying "Dh to x at 14.00h" "Dh to y at 16.00h" "Dh to z at 18.00" and I find it monumentally irritating!!

Right, er, it's church this morning followed by ..er, continuing to work through Friday's list .. ... again ....

Big hearty wing flaps to one and all. Have a relaxing Sunday everyone!

ta da
cleaned upstairs bathroom sink while up once in the middle of the night (I was just standing there and thought "well, ok, since I'm here")

to do
pretty much everything else

DS1 is still feeling ill today so it's going to be a "get done what I can, when I can" day. I'll have to catch up on things both at home and on here when and as I can during the day.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Budha pray tell, what is this christmas bedding of which you speak?

Did quite a bit yesterday and crashed out early. Like early enough that ds had to wake me up to 1. give him a towel to get out of the bath and 2. to tuck him into bed. He is old enough to know he needs a towel but never remembers and tbh I should have reminded him but as i fell asleep when i sat down after running the bath i think i was too tired to remember. No harm done.

Today has another long to do list as we are out this afternoon and there are a few big things from yesterday that needs to be doing that didn't get done due to waking up late and being on a go slow.

Ta da list might appear but trying to leave the computer off as much as possible so it depends if i remember to post later.

Slim - My DD has had a few sleepover wobbles that have resulted in her having to come home - even from next door!

Angry - Good luck today to you and and Going to your DD

DD and I had a nice time last night and she even got a nomination for Best Newcomer and although she lost out to a boy who is a really great swimmer she was more focussed on winning a big shiny cup! That will be at least a couple of years in the future but I have a feeling it will result in more hours for me sitting poolside

She is currently cathcing up with Dr Who and then hopefully I can watch Strictly. Catch you all later
, ,

Jumping back on for the last week of the month!
I have been a wayward fledgling. I'm sorry! SC thank you for remembering me in your wingflaps!

Purchased a piece of furniture recently which has inspired a bout of cleaning and decluttering ! I haven't been this motivated in ages, so I hope to strike while the iron is hot.

Have cooked a roast dinner and prepped for tomorrow's chicken curry with the leftovers and plan to make a stock this evening and attempt to bake a cake. So I have this month's Habit nailed. I never meal planned before I met Flylady!

Hope everyone has been well and in good form xxx

Evening all.

Did a flurry of flying yesterday as we had friends over for dinner. In the end they didn't even go into the sitting room, but at least it would have been respectable if they had!

Apart from that, the last 2 days have been about cooking and blogging. The latest on the school situation is here if anyone is interested.

Toffee - so sorry to hear about your friend.

Portsmouth visit sounds good, WhoKnows.

Waves to Castle and everyone else.

anyone?

Thanks Blue [as I take ].

Bitchy I know! I know! I was corrupted by another thread on MN. We only do small Christmas presents for the 5dc. So I try to make the whole experience magical, including going OTT in house decorating Christmas duvet. Also brought the older boys ones, that are gingham on one side and has deer shapes on the other, slightly nicer material, but were cheaper.

Over the moon with my run. It was through the deer park at Woburn. Very muddy, cold, wet and hilly. But I smashed it. 59 minutes, very proud of myself! Especially as I missed the last two weeks training due to illness.

Ta Da
bathed 2 dc
Dinner
Tidied kitchen
Washed up
Dried up
Shined sink
5 lots of homework
Listen to 4 dc read.
Laid out clothes for tomorrow

To do
S&S
Evening routine
Lunch boxes
Read to boys

Toffee I'm so sorry for your friend. It's every parents nightmare.

I've been out shopping with dd today whilst dh stayed at home with ds & cleared the pantry out, did the washing & cooked Sunday dinner. I just have the ironing to do.

Dd has just discovered she left her dance bag with her ballet shoes in at school last week & she's got very important dance assessments this week !

She is so disorganised, always losing stuff. Argh!

Buddha that's brilliant! (We need a 'well done' smiley)

I'm going to do a little brag here, DD got her red belt today. So proud of her. And it's really given her a confidence boost.

Productive-ish day.

ta-dah
Beds
DD to karate
Windows
Sunday lunch
Washing up, DD dried
Blanch extra cauliflower, parsnips & sprouts
Make big batch of pastry, chilling in fridge ready to be used.
Washing up
Laundry
Attempted DD's birthday jigsaw
'Assisted' DD experiments (chemistry set got last Christmas)
Prepare dinner

to do
Washing up
Crotchet

Mmmm thanks for Blue .

Well done on your run AngryBuddha and Goth well done on DD's red belt!

Just read your blog post Blue - very well written, well done!
Was mildly disappointed though - thought you had opened a cookery school from my first read of your post!!!!

Ohhhhh whoknows 3 of my Great-Grandfathers served on HMS Victory! I always find it an emotional trip. Would love to see the new Mary Rose museum too.

Thanks for the Castle but have over indulged in mince pies today. So I will just sit in the naughty corner, as failed to finish my To Do list as decided to watch telly instead.
Going Well done to your dd.
Picture I have one like that! he bought home on Friday a packed lunch box which we haven't seen since before the Summer Holidays. And yes I made the mistake of opening it!! [Shock]

Evening all!!

Angrybuddha Many congratulations! That's amazing!! [How you manage to do any training at all with 5 dc is miraculous in itself, never mind smashing pbs!!] Hats off to you. Seriously!

And brilliantly well done to your dd too Goth! It's great when they find something they can draw confidence from.

And congratulations to your dd Dizzy for best newcomer nomination! [Glad to know it's not just my dd who has sleepover wobbles!] As it turns out, she has got a bad cough today, so perhaps best in the end that she didn't stay the night.

Oh no about forgotten ballet shoes Picturesinthefirelight (DD lost 3 pairs of shoes while she was dancing + one track-suit top + endless tights and hair accessories which all cost a small fortune.) Hope your dd can retrieve them in time!

Yay to Castle [snaffles a piece of delicious Victoria sponge]. Great to "see you"! How are you and your family doing?

[Just between ourselves I am hoping to receive a transformational piece of furniture from dh this Christmas although I'm not that hopeful. In this case a dresser with closed cupboards top and bottom in which to store good glasses, table linen etc which currently reside in two cardboard boxes under a manky table we inherited from the previous owners.

Big wing flaps to ¨Blue It's sod's law isn't it? You can bet your bottom dollar that if your sitting room had been a mess, then your guests would have gone in there!

[Makes note to read blog after this.] Hope campaigning going well.

Sorry to hear your ds is still ailing Alice. DD has gone down with something too. Tis the season I'm afraid.

Big waves to Sillybilly, Bitchy and everyone else!

A mixed sort of day here. Managed to get some of my boudoir done, but not all of it by any means. Everything seemed to take ages and everyone a bit on edge. DD veered between illness-induced lethargy and restless agitation. Listened to endless renditions of "jingle bells" on the recorder and endless recitations of poem for tomorrow and suffered tortuous maths hwk supervision like drawing teeth.

Dh and I had a silly argument over something quite ridiculous (ie how much dd will be paid by neighbour for cat-sitting job -as I saw it, he was incredibly rude to me in front of dd because I dared to have an opinion for once [sigh]). Anyway, we were just working through it by having a conversation about the real thing that is stressing us out atm (long story but involves dd's schooling next year as we have just found out that we may have to move her (somewhat disastrously) to a different school for the last yr of primary as she may not be eligible for any good local secondary schools otherwise) when dd herself appeared at 10.45m crying and saying her cough/throat hurt. And she has been up on and off ever since. So might as well post links now as I have a feeling it is going to be a long night ...

[Leaves out hot chocolate and raisin bread on naughty corner bar.]

xpost

AngryBuddha remove yourself from that naughty corner at once if you please [by order of temporary but vehement thread leader ] You are more than entitled to a sit-down and a couple of mince pies after your achievements today thank you much!

Urgh to awol lunch box incident!

er, thank you very much that is!

Sorry to mention it, but we are precisely a month away from C** everyone! [Yikes!]

Baby-step no 25, for Mon 25th November is an ignorable one involving a personal testimonial and how we should award ourselves gold stars etc etc etc blah blah blah.

This coming week we are in Zone 5: the sitting room (Nov 24 – 30). More info here.
Declutter in this zone for 15 mins every day!

**For those of you who were concerned that we never seem to get enough time in our sitting room - pls note that the Fat Fairy is allocating us an entire week in there this month!

Once Zone 5 is clear of clutter, you can go on to detailed cleaning.

The mission for Monday (and all the missions for the wk ahead) can be found here. It involves spending 15 mins finding rubbish and odds and ends lost down the sofa or under side tables etc.

Monday is the day for our home bleugh here.

The habit for November is still menu planning.

And the flight plan provides a summary of the above.

Have a productive start to the week everyone!

*

Angry/Bitchy - I've also been inspired by MN to buy the Christmas duvet covers for the DCs, the ones I bought are the blues ones in the link, I'm saving them for Dec 1st. I've also bought this one [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Retro-Nordic-Alpine-Snowflake-Revsersible/dp/B00BXGC7PG snowflake]] which went onto our bed a wee ago as it is winter themed rather than Christmas and I was too impatient to wait. Slightly different reason for me, I realised a couple of years ago that I was going through the motions at Christmas and finding the whole thing irritating and generally being humbug. So the last two years I have thrown myself in whole heartedly and enjoyed it a whole lot more.

Trazzle - that's amazing about your great grandfathers, what a bit of history to have in your family. It was quite shocking yesterday on the tour hearing that some of the "men" were as young as 8 .

We went back for a proper go round the Mary Rose museum without the DCs this afternoon, it is so impressive DH had quite a bad hangover and possibly didn't fully appreciate it. It will be even more amazing in 4 years, then it will be fully dried out and they will be able to make it even more accessible. I feel a connection to it because we went down to Southsea beach after school on the day it was raised and watched it on it's big raft.

Feet - sorry, very rude of me, please do PM me about the backup thing, I did mean to reply sooner .

Dizzy - well done to DD.

Flying wise, did a quick whizz round in advance of the babysitter arriving last night so things weren't too bad. Just spent an hour ironing and been inspired (randomly) to declutter my make-up. Possibly inspired by trying to use some of it for the first time in ages last night and realising that I use a very few things regularly and most of it virtually never.

oops link failure snowflake duvet

Well done both Angry and LittleGoth
Blue read your blog and it seems a shambles with everybody going round in circles with you guys stuck in the middle!

Quiet day here today. DH has left yesterday's meaty pans to soak overnight (bleurgh) but luckily for me washed them up before I got round to them!

• Chivvied DD to collate some info for her homework project. (They have to do a bio of a "Famous Briton" so she has picked Ellie Simmonds - no surprises there!)
• Washing load in and hung to dry
• Hoovered downstairs hall
• Raked up leaves and weeded flower bed out front and planted some snowdrops/crocuses
• RR the kitchen after DH had been cooking again!
• D/W on and sink shined
• Uniform/school bags readied and dinner money paid

Leaping back onto the fly wagon today.
To do:
Make beds
Ss
Dw
wash load on, dry, put away
pair sock mountain and put away
Dd to dancing
Hoover
Dust
Catch up with thread.

Good morning!

SC I hope DD wasn't too unwell last night, and that you managed to come to some solution regarding her schooling. Such a big decision really. Thanks for asking about my family. We're struggling along really. It isn't easy.

WhoKnows what a lovely duvet cover!

To Do today:

1 load laundry
Ironing - 30 mins
Cook dinner at DMiL's house
Keep kitchen tidy
Piano practice
Rescue long-abandoned knitting project
CLEAN bathroom and ensuite, both of which have been a little neglected, I'm afraid...