October Flying - lets get those Fledgling nests cosy

[EfficientlyDecluttering]

Welcome to this long running thread, a lot of posters have been here a long time but all newbies and returners are very welcome, do join us!

Do NOT sign up for the Flylady emails - there are too many of them.

There are Baby Steps for starting out, add one thing at a time to start good habits and routines.

There are 5 zones in the house that we will rotate through, don't worry about finishing it all this month, it'll come around again next month! Flylady is NOT about perfectionism! You may need to adjust the zones to suit your house.

Habit of the month of October is paper clutter http://www.flylady.net/d/habits-of-the-month/october/

Daily missions: each day of the week has a different mission.

• Monday: Home Blessing (or as we call it, home bleugh)
• Tuesday: plan & play
• Wednesday: anti-procrastination
• Thursday: errand day
• Friday: clean car & purse out and date night (which can be anything you make it, night in, night with friends, actual dates are not always going to happen)
• Saturday: family fun day
• Sunday: renew your spirit - again whatever you make of it, but it is time just for you.

Common acronyms we use:

• LOL: load of laundry (washing is certainly NOT funny!)
• DW: dishwasher, we are not rotating wives by any means, although an extra pair of hands could come in handy sometimes 😆
• LMS: lose/lost my shit
• DNLMS: did not lose my shit

I will try and update the links every day, but they do update automatically on the website so you can just click on the ones in this post.

Apparently the app is very useful too, I am going to try that this month, I know some are already using it.

Links are below 👇

Launch Pad : http://www.flylady.net/c/lp.php - this is the main hub of Flylady, you can find links to most of the useful info here, including the Daily Flight Plan.

Direct Link to Flight Plan here http://www.flylady.net/c/fp.php?tzm=-60

Zones: www.flylady.net/d/zones/

Baby Steps: www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/

Pompoms I don't think I even know 60 people 🤔😅 Get well soon

Elf 💊 for your ulcer 😁 hope the party goes well

Ugh, official people at 8am Hazel 😱 I am not a morning person hope they get it all finished soon and your family can return to normality

That's a lot of DIY 🔨 Hills, hope you're not too sore after it all

Scourgify the more I declutter the more I see that needs decluttering. I'm definitely looking at areas in the home with new eyes. I've been focused on making my bedroom less of a dumping ground too

Morning all, wet and very windy here and we are in SE England so imagine we are far from in the worst of this storm, hope everyone is safe and dry.

I was out of the house from 8am to 10pm yesterday so the Flying was minimal. Hoping to catch up a bit after work tonight. Sorry so many Fledglings are still under the weather, maybe we need to re-open the naughty corner with soft cushions, hot chocolate and soothing music.

However if you are Flying, this is today’s Flight Plan http://www.flylady.net/c/fp.php?tzm=-60

The missions for today are to toss out old cosmetics in the bathroom and carry out a 27 fling boogie on the spare room or elsewhere (get rid of 27 things that do not belong in there). It is also errand day.

We have road closures due to trees down, I expect the usual suspects to be flooded also. But I am giving ds a lift to college to save him freezing in the 5 mile walk (total) he has getting there by train.

Another day, another long to do list.
ta da
DW loaded and on to run
washing machine running the first load
the working list sorted in my brain
moved a few boxes
find the photo for finally getting ds' rail card sorted
pin ds down to make a decision about the flu jab he has been offered
research new computers as mine has decided life is not worth functioning.
Sort out my prescription request and the bugger forgot when i went shopping list (so can pick up on way home)

Hoping I can avoid the side effects of stress today. Too much stress plays havoc with my digestive system in my old age.
Right I better get a wriggle on as i have been functioning in Pjs and that is just now socially acceptable in public.

Hope you all have gentle and as productive as you require/desire days!

Morning!

I've got the next 1.5 weeks off work so I'm hoping to fit in plenty of flying! First job will be the get the perpetuals under control again...think the washing machine will be running most of the day!

Got quite a lot done yesterday. Earbuds, etc, checked and duds thrown out. Came across an mp3 player loaded up with some of my favourite music, and two thumb drives of family photos. All now in a safe and logical place.

Emptied a large shoebox of various stash-and-dash bits and pieces, then put the box in the recycling so I don't fill it again instead putting things where they belong. Threw out two broken pairs of swim goggles.

Roasted a mini turkey crown. Thought I'd ordered a small or medium, but this'll do fine for me until the ravenous hordes return.

Cleared some thinner branches in the garden that had snapped off in the wind. Closed all the window vents, which cut back a bit on the draughts.

Today is filing, two LoLs, a quick dash round the garden. No errands until the weather calms down a bit.

Scourgify and Hills very impressive TaDas
Hazel how are you feeling?

I've been hiding in the house while birds are flying past the window backwards.
I felt guilty sending toddler to nursery today, but in my defense, it was good for him to play with his friends. I even survived nursery pick up.

Other than that it has been mainly keeping things going with routines. Didn't do any deep cleaning.

Ditzy I didn't see them at all, so hopefully they showed up. I have to be at work at 7am, so I leave the house just after 6:30am the days I work. So I was at work when they were due to arrive.
Elf I'm feeling better than yesterday. I'm at work today. But I'm still not fully recovered. I wouldn't feel guilty for dropping off your toddler, I'm sure he had fun playing with his friends.
ED I definitely belong in the naughty corner with minimal flying this week!

I'm in the naughty corner for the evening, I had my flu and covid jabs earlier and everyone else is out so I am putting my feet up with cat, crochet and cuppa to catch up with this week's Doctors (gutted its being cancelled).

I keep forgetting to come back here, I’m all out of sorts sometimes. Haven’t been able to do that much apart from the very basics but hoping to get a bit of laundry done tomorrow because it’s a bit overdue to be done

Keep plodding on @JewelleryCat you'll get there. It's hard keeping up with house chores when you're going through a difficult patch. One day you'll notice new habits taking hold though

I've noticed if you go to your lists, the "watching" or the "I'm on" list, if you click those three dots at the side of a thread you can choose to "pin" it. I haven't tried it (total technophobe!) but I suspect it'll put the thread to the top of the list and keep it there, which may make it easier for you to remember we're here. If you lose us there'll usually be a new thread linked at the end of the old one (they run monthly) or just go onto the Housekeeping forum, it's quite a slow-moving forum so we're easy to find

How's the house looking Hazel?

I'm thinking of decorating for Halloween this year. Not doing trick or treat though 🎃

Ditzy the painter actually showed up today! He's really busy, not lazy at all and probably has too much going on at the moment since he had a couple employees quit last week 🙄 he painted the main room of the basement with one coat (it's a lot of wall!), who knows if he'll be back tomorrow though 🤷‍♀️
The roofers showed up, then left as the roofing material hadn't arrived 🤦‍♀️ it should be here tomorrow then it'll be all steam ahead. DH said there was a whole crew of people, but no material to work with!

Ta Das:
☠️ worked all day
💀 vacuumed most of the house, including the stairs, as there was debris everywhere
☠️ called about a delivery, I ordered the wrong sized leashes for the dogs (their's are old and worn out), they refunded me, but didn't want me sending them back!
💀 shook my head as I look in both bathrooms. Workmen have been using them, fair enough, but left the lid and seat up 🤬
That reminds me, I need to go wipe the main bathroom down! We haven't been using the other one since we moved our bedroom.

I have some of my decorations up Ditzy but nowhere near as much as usual. It's quite depressing actually.

We’ve got autumn decorations up (various fake pumpkins and a wreath) but not the spooky stuff yet. We have a big front window and are close to the street so we do a big display there around the 31st but I don’t want all of it out for too long - all the things that go on the sill have to be raised up on little piles of books or DVDs to get them above the height of the window frame so it looks a lot better from the outside than the inside. I miss trick or treating now the DCs are too old, DD does too but she dresses up on Hallowe’en to give all the sweets out.

Anyway, today it is warm and wet, I have got the back door open and the sound of steady but not too heavy rain is quite relaxing (everyone else still asleep).

Friday in Flylady-land is the time to clean out your house and car, my car definitely needs doing. I am using a smaller bag at the moment (the famous-on-MN Uniqlo bag) so clutter doesn’t build up in there too much.

Our final mission for the week is to shine your bathroom counters and sinks

Flight plan here http://www.flylady.net/c/fp.php?tzm=-60

I would love to have decorations up. I have one autumnal gnome in my car as a token. There is too much mess and chaos every where.

ta da
1st load of washing through the washing machine
duvet and pillow soaking in the bath tub
1 pile of paperwork sorted
yesterday's late load of washing hung up
milk retrieved
some file boxes removed down stairs
start to find findable accessible temp homes for makeup stuff, hair stuff etc
try to figure out where to put the taken down furniture (both those left whole and those disassembled
try to figure out where the findable safe place for all the screws etc for reassembling furniture later.

It was too cold in the house to not get dressed straight away. Next up figure out access to as many radiators as possible and make the house workman ready despite the complete and utter chaos.

Still huge amounts of stuffs to be done. But I can almost see the floor in my room which I don't think has happened in years. And my office is nearly empty which is something i don't think has ever happened. I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end up it is still a lot of work. And so so so so much chaos.

Morning all. Just popping in with lists from this week. I’ve been gradually recovering from whatever virus I had, and DS finally made it back to college (he missed a full week too). Managed work this week - just a couple of hours left to fit in today - and actually left the house yesterday 🥳🫣

Monday
🐊printed stuff out for home ed
🐊filled in form for CAB appt
🐊work
🐊phonics book with Cagletini
🐊uni tutorial

Tuesday
🪃home ed with Cagletini
🪃LOL1
🪃set up DS’ phone (with great difficulty, it’s not usually such a faff!)
🪃home ed with DS
🪃went round the (metaphorical) houses trying to find info about changing tenancy, finding housing for DH etc… somehow DLMS
🪃LOL1 in dryer
🪃LOL2
🪃put Cagletini to bed
🪃ordered Tesco

Wednesday
🤡work
🤡home ed stuff
🤡LOL
🤡LOL in dryer

Thursday
🏆booked gig tickets for a Christmas present
🏆home ed
🏆work
🏆went to award ceremony with colleague
🏆put Cagletini to bed

I was feeling quite inspired last night about maybe having a friend over in half term when H is out, I’m not sure if I will yet but needing to tidy a lot would be a good thing if I can manage it. Mainly living room but also hallway, kitchen and bathroom would need drastic sorting… can I manage that in 6 days with other stuff to fit in 🤔

Right. I have been doing very little so far today, just home ed stuff with Cagletini, and I need to get a move on as if I’m going to tidy up enough to have people round (which I haven’t felt able to do for ages for various reasons) I can’t afford to leave it all to do in a few days. I need to spread it out.

I’ve written a list of obvious tasks but still feel a bit overwhelmed by it - even writing a power of three is hard! I look at individual tasks like “clean front door” and it’s hard to see the value in them - individually they feel a bit pointless as everywhere else would still be messy, does that make sense?! Also some things it feels pointless to do now because they’d need redoing next week anyway, but I do know they’d be easier next week really. So what I need to do is remember that all of those tasks added up would make a huge difference!

po3.1
❗️Get dressed 😳 in something comfy and take painkillers
❗️Move some shelf contents around to fit baskets in, and put baskets in with literacy/phonics stuff
❗️Find a spare bag and gather lots of stuff that needs to be put away in Cagletini’s room

Sing yes I often feel the same. It's a mindset thing. My only cure has been to sacrifice one entire day to the Home Blessings, which in my case is more like all the Detailed Cleaning lists too, so I can sit down at the end of it knowing it's all done and the whole place looks lovely. I need that. Then tell myself it's all been done and will be done again, to stop me endlessly cleaning. If you can't do that all you can do is make peace with the fact that by doing a bit each day/week like FlyLady says to, the entire place never gets too bad in any one area. It does make sense and fits in well round a young family

I know that if everything has turned to total shite, eg through illness, it can be turned around again fairly quickly

For me that's:
🕸️Throwing open all the windows to air the place while the kettle is boiling
🕸️Taking painkillers and waiting for them to take effect while I drink my tea
🕸️Changing the bedding because it makes the rooms smell so much fresher. I'll usually fold it up neatly-ish and put it by the washing machine to remind me to wash it
🕸️Collect up all dirty crockery and stack it on the countertop next to the sink
🕸️Collect up dirty clothes from floors and put in washing basket
🕸️Throw everything from floor onto chairs/tables/beds and run hoover round
🕸️Either put things away if it's a 2 second job or stack neatly on chairs/tables/beds if it's a bigger job
🕸️Clean doorknobs and window handles for hygiene reasons
🕸️Sweep hard floors so all the bits don't go back onto the hoovered carpet
🕸️Empty bins and put in new liners
🕸️Take a bath myself

That's my basic pulling everything back from chaos routine and is more tidying than cleaning. Then it's catching up on laundry, washing up, putting things away, dealing with post etc so there's no piles of things everywhere, but I'd probably do that on the second/third day of getting everything back under control. Then would start on the cleaning another day

The value in the ongoing cleaning of little things is in finding if I do something when it doesn't look like it needs doing, it's an easy 2 second job. If I wait until it looks like it needs doing, it takes significant elbow grease and with all the different things that need doing taking 10min to 1/2 hour, it adds up to hours of hard work that can't be finished in a day... It's not really a to-do list it's an avoidance list. You're wiping the door today to avoid scrubbing it next week and repainting it next summer

Thank you, I’ve just pinned it so hopefully I will remember you guys are here because I do like reading this topic :) I’m hoping it will kickstart me into the motivation I had before instead of just doing the basics

Thanks so much ditzy that’s really helpful 💜

And so true about the wiping something today to avoid scrubbing/repainting! I am definitely at the stage of everything having been left far too long. We’ve always struggled with keeping on top of everything but reached a tipping point in the last year or so, and sort of gave up.

I stayed overwhelmed for a while after my previous post and I only managed a bit of my po3, and then plans with friends changed which threw me off more (being autistic I struggle with unexpected changes anyway, but it’s definitely a lot worse ATM). But I had a good chat with H and made some plans re getting rid of stuff and packing some of his things up (even though he has nowhere to move to yet) and that helped.

I then chatted to a friend for a bit, confirmed plans for her to come round next week (which means I must tidy and clean!) and she’s taking stuff to the charity shop with me too 💜. So then I felt better and finished my po3.

po3.2
❗️Get a big BRC and go through it - I need to be ruthless and get rid of as much as possible
❗️Go through three big bags of washed textiles (old sheets etc) and see what can be thrown, try and squish the rest into fewer bags
❗️Put some DIY stuff away

But first, a Netflix episode and a snack.

Thanks ditzy. I've got this thread at the top of my list now.

Spent most of yesterday sorting all the papers that have been waiting in piles. One file each for health, one each for school. At some point I'll print out all the important emails from school and file those too. I've tried really hard, but struggle with paperless school, and retain info much better when I can hold paper or book in my hand.

Trimmed back a few more thin branches in the garden today, as the wind was blowing them close to the phone line. Slept for ages in the afternoon after all that fresh air. Doing a little more filing this evening. Didn't get round to LoLs. Will try again tomorrow.

Hello if you don't mind I'd like to join your thread. It seems like a realistic, friendly approach to having a tidy house and I absolutely need that. I find the more time I have the less I do and I am a professional procrastinator 🙈 I also seem to be never quite fighting fit and have aches and pains that put me off doing some of the cleaning I previously would have thought was easy.

Today's Ta Das

❗️Had a lovely bath with Epsom salts
❗️Brief tidy of the bathroom - really needs a deep clean as I have ❗️two ds who frequent the gym = multiple showers and no one apart from me thinks to clean
❗️LOL x1. This is a major stumbling block for me as I feel all I do is laundry. I have envisaged multiple scenarios where we all wash our own clothes but ultimately with energy prices through the roof this would cost me a fortune.
❗️Cats fed
❗️Downstairs floors swept
❗️ Sorted some admin stuff that took about 30 mins to do but 2 hrs to contemplate 🙈
❗️Dinner made and now chilling watching tv

Sing my house is never more tidy than when I'm having a visitor and I love the few days after when it's still tidy but it never lasts. That's my ultimate goal to have a house that's visitor ready in under 10 mins

I'm glad the pin feature worked for you Cat and Scourgify

Welcome to the thread Born. Lots of ill people and procrastination going on on this thread but we keep trying

Ta-da's:

🕷️Morning routine
🕷️Found new underwear I'd previously stashed away to replace raggedy stretched out old stuff
🕷️Went for a drizzly walk
🕷️Made thought-progress with something tricky but haven't actually done anything yet
🕷️Shopping list
🕷️ Decluttering
🕷️Evening routine

Welcome born 👋 it looks like you've already made a great start! I love my house when it's visitor friendly as well, it'll be nice to get it back to that when all the work is finished on our house, whenever that may be!

Ditzy I love it when I come across something new to replace something old and worn out. I just have to actually throw out the old worn out stuff when I buy the new!

Tonight we went to the high school to the football game (American football 🏈) as DS was playing his trombone with their band (he's still in junior high school and will move up next year 😱).
It was great fun to watch actually, mostly the band though as I'm not that fussed about the sport. But I was just thinking, our lives will be a lot more busy while he's in high school. They play at all the local games (all sports), go to competitions all over - the marching band is competing tomorrow, so all kinds of fundraisers and concerts as well. Besides DS plans to be in band, marching band as well as jazz band! I'm tired and broke just thinking about it!

Anyway, when we got home we did some rearranging downstairs in the basement. The main room is finally done (paint only, carpets still need replacing). DH & I started moving things back, and making room for things that need to come out of the laundry room, pantry & DS's bedroom. DS and I will move the rest around tomorrow and we'll all finish whatever is left on Sunday.
I'm tired and ready for bed 😴 hopefully I'll have ta das tomorrow (Saturday) 🍒👋

Welcome born lovely to have you here, with the professional procrastination you’ll fit right in 😁 my aim is to be maybe an hour to properly visitor ready, we are all very untidy people. But I’d like to have a home where I don’t feel mortified if someone turns up unannounced if that makes sense!

Re laundry it may be worth trying to get the DC to do their own, it works well here (other than everyone remembering to not leave clothes on the floor, but I’m tackling that soon with a laundry “hub”…)

Hazel aww that’s so lovely seeing DS play, I definitely feel you re the expense etc (dancing is DD1’s thing and there’s a lot of it) but it’s such great experience I guess 💜

I seem to wake up feeling rubbish every morning at the moment, hopefully once I’m a bit more awake I can continue yesterday’s progress.

Friday
🤦🏻‍♀️paid invoice
🤦🏻‍♀️ordered last little present for Cagletini’s birthday
🤦🏻‍♀️made arrangements for a work thing, charity shop run and movie night with friend
🤦🏻‍♀️moved stuff round on shelves and used baskets for some home ed supplies
🤦🏻‍♀️put away some DIY stuff
🤦🏻‍♀️put away some of Cagletini’s stuff
🤦🏻‍♀️went through three bags of bedding and other textiles, got rid of lots and divided the rest into two bags for bedding/other
🤦🏻‍♀️started a charity shop bag
🤦🏻‍♀️started packing H’s stuff as I found it
🤦🏻‍♀️sorted some of BRC, didn’t finish but progress is progress

Right. I’ve got an hour till my uni tutorial. Need to get stuff done!

po3.1
❗️Breakfast
❗️Tidy some of Cagletini’s toys including using a new basket for some (they were on a shelf under her bed but it’s not working like that as she wants to bring it all downstairs to play, so Kallax basket it is!)
❗️Shower and dressed

po3.2
❗️Pack up a bit more stuff for H
❗️Gather a few more bits for charity bag
❗️Log on at 10.25 to find tutorial