Flying into February. Flylady support and chat thread

[TheMainCharacter]

Are you looking to finally getting into a new routine with housework? Something simple to start that can be easy to add to over time? Flylady may be the answer for you!

This is a long running thread, but we are a friendly bunch and all are welcome to join in.

Do NOT sign up for the Flylady emails - it's an excessive amount sent every day.

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

There are 5 zones 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!

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. It's also date night (with your significant other, or friends, or yourself!)
• Saturday: family fun day
• Sunday: renew your spirit

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

There are more, feel free to ask us to explain something. I'll try to update links every day, although if you can, it's worth downloading the app, you can even have it send you notifications (although I only have it for when the zones change). You can also modify the tick lists to suit your home & lifestyle.

Links are below 👇 if I happen to not add links in time, they do update at midnight in the UK

Launch Pad: https://www.flylady.net/d/new-links/
Zones: https://www.flylady.net/d/zones/
Baby Steps:https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/
New/Most Popular Links | FlyLady.net
https://www.flylady.net/d/new-links

Cabbage this is the only thread I do on Mumsnet and I like emojis so I don't mind taking 10min picking an emoji for the day from the 100 or so on offer 😁. I add them after the list is typed same as Character

Today I cleaned the baking stuff on the corner cupboard. A few weeks ago something was spilled on the worktop and I didn't realize it had seeped through and made a terrible sticky mess on everything below

Thursday is errand day.

Today’s mission is to clean out the drawer or cabinet that houses your plastic wrap and foil etc.

Today’s baby step is to find a binder and write your morning and evening routine in it
https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-8/

✅ food shop even though I forgot the list!
✅ toddler group
✅ dehydrated bananas
✅ night class
✅ sewed a hungry caterpillar

Looking forward to today being over as I'm doing a one off event in the library for kids and I just need it to be done so I can rest as I'm not feeling great.

Thanks all for your help. I'm usually on desktop so the emoji just don't work the same. So here goes.

Today's wins:
🎉 Walked to the shop for lunch bits
🎉 LOL in progress
🎉 One round of washing up done
🎉 Cleared off Office "chair of despair"
🎉 Wiped down kitchen counters
🎉 Vacuumed stairs x1

Seeing all your routines has made me realise I don't really have a morning one that works for me. I'm going to experiment over the next few days adding in one thing at a time. My evening routine is laughable and very sporadic but that's already a work in progress so I'll leave it alone for a bit.

Full accountability disclosure time

Current morning routine:
🌞 Awake
🌞 Air bed, open windows
🌞 Breakfast (most days. Sometimes skip it or eat later)
🌞 Start work

Current evening routine:
💤 Fold sofa blankets
💤 Take through any mugs/glasses to the kitchen
💤 Potential for mad washing up/kitchen cleaning hour but this is rare
💤 Teeth, face, shower if necessary
💤 Sleep

@toddlergroupsing I hope your day went well and you’re feeling ok. Hope you get some rest now.

@CabbageBearGoat it has taken me years to get decent routines going and even now I don’t always do them! I have to do everything before I sit down as once I’m on that sofa that’s it! Good work on the emojis 😃

Today I dusted three surfaces and cleared a hotspot, that’s about it (as well as daily stuff)

Cabbage that's a good start to your routines, adding one thing at a time is a good idea.

toddler how did your event at the library go?

character your list is better than nothing!

My ta das are short:
😴 worked all day
😴 reheated leftovers for dinner
😴 refilled my water infuser
😴 got lunch ready for tomorrow
😴 got clothes out ready for morning
😴 had a couple cups of bedtime tea
😴 finished loading DW & started it
😴 shower & moisturised

It's bedtime for me!

Friday is clean your car and purse out day
Also date night.

Todays’s mission is to check on the cleaning supplies, dish rags and sponges. Get rid of any you don’t need and put new on the shopping list of any you’re low on.

Today’s baby step is to read the decluttering FLYing lesson and add a five minute room rescue to your morning routine
https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-9/

Change of plan for me today as I was going to spend the day catching up on the bits I hadn’t done earlier in the week but dc 3 and 4 are both off ill today so I will just have to get what I can done around them. It’s the last day of school before half term so it looks very suspicious and I am fully expecting a call from school to check they are actually ill and we haven’t gone on holiday!

@HazelNotHungryLC it went well thanks for asking. I was dreading Boone turning up but it was great and nobody wanted to go home (except me a bit after 3 hours!)

✅ h has cleaned car 🍾
✅ thrown a few small rags out
✅ lol on
✅ dehydrated a few million bananas
✅ picked up a lot of Vinted parcels ALL FOR ME AND NOT THE KIDS!
✅ sold a pair of shoes on Vinted
✅ sorted the foil drawer
✅ cleaned and reorganised 2 cupboards

@TheMainCharacter it's awful having ill kids. Everyone is throwing up around here. 50% of the class are off in the local school.

Are your school tough on absence? I took my daughter out for a day out with family and I emailed the school to be honest and they just replied 'have a lovely day out!' I was pretty shocked and glad I was honest.

@brightpompoms they’re not too strict but they did once ring me when dd had had a third Monday off in a term to check that there wasn’t anything else going on! Thankfully my dc just have a cold type virus with a temperature and not the vomit!

Also @brightpompoms I was meaning to ask how you dehydrate stuff? Do you have a dehydrator or do you use oven or air fryer?

Did you get anything exciting in your vinted parcels? I love it when something is actually for me!

Ah, found you all, I thought I had checked in at the start of the month but it seems I did not. Just been having a quick read through.

Flying has been a bit minimal here since Christmas, but despite that I managed to get the house visitor ready (downstairs only) in an hour or so this morning, with a sort of home bleugh. Which shows how much it has gradually improved with the help of this thread and Flylady ❤️.

✅Litter trays de-pooped
✅a few small hotspots put out
✅2 x LOL washed and dried
✅downstairs hoovered (middles of rooms only)
✅kitchen mopped
✅hall table and living room windowsill damp dusted
✅waste paper baskets emptied
✅wheely bin moved from drive to back of house

Then had a friend round for coffee and to put the world to rights. Lunch after that, then I sorted out some household admin (house insurance, needed quite a long phone call due to DH having bought a very expensive bike and a couple of other changes that I couldn’t find the answers to online). Company were very helpful though. Then I needed to book an appointment to go into the bank for something, FML, nearly lost the will to live with Barclays online chat, but it is booked now. Finally a bit of shopping and picked DD up from the station as it was pouring with rain. I don’t usually mind winter but this year it has seemed utterly relentless.

Saturday is Family Fun Day

Today’s baby step is learning about the power of 15 minutes. Set a timer for 15 minutes and give yourself permission to stop what you are doing after 15 minutes. It’s not a race to get everything done in 15 minutes either! Flylady suggests starting by gathering up rubbish for 15 minutes then when the timer goes off setting another and resting for 15 minutes.
https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-10/

Hi @EndlesslyDistracted glad you found us. That’s really good, well done on getting to that point. I’m definitely closer to that point than I was but I’ve let things slide a bit the past couple of weeks and need to get back on top of it. Will be hard with the kids around this coming week but then again not doing the school run gains me nearly 1.5 hours a day!

Thanks @TheMainCharacter. Half term here too but it doesn't actually make much difference any more now we've only got DD at college (DS is at uni), it still feels weird after all the years of childcare juggling. Just means she will be at home on my day off and I won't need to give her lifts to college (which is on my way to work anyway).

It's raining (again). Doing the house insurance yesterday has made me have a long hard think about all the clutter we've got stashed away in the loft and garden sheds, so I want to do some decluttering today. We have a small house but with quite a lot of storage so it's easy to shove stuff away and forget about it even though it will probably never be used again.

@TheMainCharacter I do have a dehydrator which we bought in lockdown as we'd grown so many tomatoes and strawberries. It's been fantastic for us but you can use the oven or air fryer. I don't have an air fryer though. And I'd be scared of the cost of the oven.
The banana slices take at least 12 hours and the dehydrator is cheap to run. I bet it would be quicker in the air fryer.
As for Vinted I had two pairs of boots as honestly my old ones are gone. I've had them resolved and the zips fixed and now I've done a home fix too!
Also I had two dresses and a necklace as I think I'm going to need to look the part for when we interview the head teacher candidates. I can't really rock up I'm saggy breastfeeding clothes 😂

@EndlesslyDistracted it's been never ending rain here and it's seems like the endless winter. Good luck with the declutter. I love getting rid of things.

So much rain here too. Urgh.

Character my morning routine is generally:

• shower, teeth, dressed, hair and makeup
• battle toddler into clothes/DD1 out of bed if DH hasn’t succeeded
• make beds and open blinds
• s&s if I have time
• empty DW
• LOL on on a timer
• sweep kitchen floor if I have time
• check everything is in nursery/school bags
• LMS at some point trying to get DC into shoes and into car with clean teeth and hair done
• (DH does bins, cat food and litter, empties dehumidifier, takes something out the freezer for tea)

Evening:

• eat (DH does pick ups and cooks as he’s home 2 hours before me)
• spend time with DC
• Dishes
• TD or hang up wet laundry
• DD reading etc
• DC bathed and ready for bed
• bedtime battles
• bed
• DH does a spruce up of the living room before he comes up

I haven’t done much zone work the last few days, I need to get back into the habit of checking the missions every day. I’ve just about stayed on top of the above routines and not done much else. DH was working yesterday and me and the DC just had a very lazy day in the house. I did do a grocery shop once he got home (mainly so I could have some peace)

Today we have a birthday party to attend, I’m
going to do the home bleurgh, ironing, and empty and hoover my car as it’s in for a service next week and is a bit embarrassing.

Hi ED! We have nothing in our loft - never been up there, not even to see what’s in the box left from the previous owner (they told us it was there). We could do with the storage, but I’d definitely end up just shoving stuff up there that would never be seen again. We used to keep the Christmas tree up there in our last house, but I got sick of having to nag DH to help me get it all down so now it’s in the cupboard under the stairs where I can easily get it without having to wait on our resident Ebeneezer Scrooge to assist.

I didn’t realise American cookers were so different to ours Hazel. Mine is gas so a bit of a pain to clean. It’s also black and shows up every little speck.

Hope you’re feeling better Toddlers

Sunday is renew your spirit day

Today’s baby step is to add another page to the control journal with some inspirational quotes on
https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-11/

(I have to admit I don’t do any of the control journal stuff)

Today’s list
lol
3x room rescues (living room, dd room, my room)
bins
clean out hamsters
clean downstairs loo- yesterday I noticed the base of the taps and round plughole were a bit crusty and the top of the cabinet is dusty.
vacuum downstairs

@Upsadiddles our car was cleaned this week for exactly the same reason.

@TheMainCharacter yea inspirational quotes are stomach churning to me and I don't keep a control journal. Thanks for the links though. They really keep me going.

Yesterday I sent the kids and H out so I they could have family time and I could have some peace. That's the new plan for when it's PMDD day. It really was wondeful and I did some power of 3's rather than just spend the whole time slaving to the house.
I made a huge pot of minestrone soup which everyone loved them H cooked Chinese for tea. Our kids eat so well but they won't go near Chinese food so we thought we'd make a celebration out of it complete with lucky gold cat and homemade red lanterns and it went down well.

Does anyone cook Chinese from scratch? We bought a kit but I wouldn't want to eat like that if it became a regular in our life.

My plan to today is to sew two skirts and two shawls for St David's Day costumes for the kids. I've bought the fabric and I'm raring to go.

Have a good day everyone.

Im back (again)
Im trying to shed the man child (again)
Im trying to find my house (again)

Sigh

<crawls out of naughty corner>

Morning everyone ☕️

I've lost all my mojo for everything, but I'm going to give myself a kick up the backside and enjoy the half term with the kids . We have a trip to London planned for Tuesday/Wednesday, mainly for dd1 UCL expand course, but we're going the day before to make the most of being in London (it actually worked out cheaper to book a hotel than pay for the train in business travel time !)

This morning I'm going to try to write brain dump of things that are overwhelming or things that need to be done and tick off the most urgent jobs first . Also forcing myself to go for a walk with dd2 later whilst the weather is looking good !

Hope everyone is doing ok ? Thanks for running the thread this month Main 💐

Up we have the standard cooker. It came with the house. The one in my old house had a glass top, which was so nice to clean. I do have a gas stove in storage that will need to be installed by a plumber. I'm going to need to scrub the life right out of it though, before bringing it on the house, as we got it 2nd hand (it's not very old), but it looks like the previous owner never cleaned it 🤮
Enjoy your birthday party!

pompoms it's so nice to treat ourselves every once in a while, isn't it? Making a celebration out of dinner sounds like a fun idea! Unfortunately I do not cook anything Chinese from scratch, hopefully someone will come along with advice on that. In the meantime, there's a lot of recipes on Pinterest you could check out.

THAT out sounds like a tough situation to be in. Is the man child just not leaving? Can any of your older DC help you rediscover the house? It's good to see you back on the thread, we can help you get through this!

searching enjoy London! The brain dump idea is a good one, especially to prioritise them.

character I don't use the control journal idea either, it's just not my style. If I got one, I would never use it!