July Flylady Thread: Would July-k to join us?

[CabbageBearGoat]

Welcome to the July FlyLady thread! Need guidance with routines and keeping up with housework? This is the thread for you! FlyLady is a reliable and flexible system for keeping on top of housework, one thing at a time.

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

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

There are Baby Steps for starting out, which add one thing at a time to start off good habits and routines. If you're new to FlyLady, start with these. If you are not ready to start these at the beginning of the month you can set your own Day 1 as today and keep track by following the Baby Steps linked below.

After Baby Steps you can graduate to Zones. There are 5 Zones that we rotate through in the same order every month, week by week. Don't worry about finishing it all this month, it'll come around again next month! Flylady is NOT about perfectionism! The system is designed to compensate for those days which don't go to plan, as it all repeats. As FlyLady says herself, "You are never behind. Jump in where you are".

Daily missions: (each week is the same).
Monday: Home Blessing (or as we call it, home bleugh - a quick whizz over basic cleaning)
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 (something to recharge your batteries)

Common acronyms/phrases we use:
LOL: load of laundry (washing is certainly NOT funny!)
DW: dishwasher (we are not rotating wives!)
LMS: lose/lost my shit
DNLMS: did not lose my shit
BRC: box/basket of random crap
Mount Washmore: self explanatory

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 (useful for when the zones change). You can also modify the app's tick lists to suit your home & lifestyle. FlyLady is flexible.

Links are below 👇 if I happen to not add links in time, they do update at midnight for you.

Launch Pad (Quick links): www.flylady.net/d/new-links/

Flight Plan (Today at a glance): flylady.net/c/fp.php?tzm=-60

Weekly Zones (With this month's dates): https://www.flylady.net/d/zones/

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

Lovely photo, made me smile @HazelNotHungryLC

Kept up the momentum today by getting school uniform all in one place for the new school year. Everythingvthat fits is in

Posted too soon. All uniform that fits is downstairs, and the too-large stuff will go in the cupboard with a list on the door telling me what’s in there and the sizes.

Emptied out three mystery boxes from the living-room shelves, and reduced it to one box simply by putting things where they belong. Discovered two supermarket bags filled with items for donation right at the back of the cupboard. They’re at the hall table for DD’s next visit.

Bathroom - will try to draughtproof the lower window-pane.

Dragons very wise to do bitesize chunks of your to do list. Were you able to get much of it done?

Scourgify I'm glad you enjoyed my picture. The sunflowers make me happy every time I see them, I'm glad at least one other person feels the same way!

DH & I went out for dinner tonight, since it's the last night we have before DS come home.
The 1st restaurant we went to is a fancy restaurant.
We've eaten there a few times since they opened last year, but wanted to go just the 2 of us. We were sat in the bar area, waited about 15 minutes before we walked out. No one came to our table at all in that time. I was getting very agitated, I'm thirsty, hungry, tired and it wouldn't have been pretty if I'd have said something, so we went to our favourite restaurant instead.
We got a new waitress, so service was a little slow, BUT, we got our order taken, drinks and food delivered to our table. So we left there happy 😊

Ultimately no flying was done today, since I worked all day. I just rotated the DW before bed!

Here we are, the end of the working week. It's Friday!

Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-19/
Today's task is to read the testimonials, and there's one on the baby steps page about a B&B... AND do the usual routine things (get dressed, make the bed, shine the sink, timer-based tidying, choose clothes for tomorrow).

FlyBabies: 15mins decluttering your bathroom or your extra room.

FlyExperts: If this week has left you floored, today is your day. We're cleaning the floors. See what I did there? Hilarious, I know. FlyLady talks about skirting boards (in a bathroom?!) so if you have those then crack on. If not, you can be smug instead and do a swish and swipe of your flooring. Or you can vacuum your bathroom carpets. What a sentence. For the Extra Room it's about checking supplies of things.

Daily mission: Refreshing the car or your daily bag, and date night! There's a questionable pun in there about getting your bags cleaned out ready for date night but it might be too low-brow for Mumsnet.

Today's win: replacement tap caps arrived today and so I had great joy swapping out the old illegible ones. Long live eBay. I also printed labels for the new ingredients canisters, so it's been a satisfying afternoon. Not much else going on here - struggling with the heat a little!

ta da
deal with drama
have help come in to deal with the tomatoe plants for me
deal with the blocked kitchen sink drain
install a part on the car
discuss welfare of people here stuffs
open the door and feel sick from the 10C pluc jump we had in temps
spin the wool wash and get it hung out
clean the front door handles and the door above/below, also the bathroom door
start a shopping list
realise that my bra is loose enough around my back that it is uncomfortable. Have the boobs also shrunk? nope because that would just be beneficial. <mutter mutter, unnecessary, mutter mutter>

Can't remember if I posted at all this month yet, but I've been reading along whenever I had time. Updates for the month so far:

🤍 Slacking off a bit with routines, must get back on it
🖤 Lots of gardening, deadheading, weeding, watering, swept up
🤍 Painted fence
🖤 Cleaned windows inside and out
🤍 Shopping lists, food shopping, failed a bit on the meal planning so need to get back on top of that so as not to be wasteful
🖤 Bought some new clothes in the sale
🤍 Craft fair day out with activities
🖤 Been to the park quite a bit
🤍 Put car into garage for maintenance
🖤 Decluttering, feeling quite overwhelmed with it but I'm keeping on keeping on
🤍 Reading, I'm halfway through the book now and have started another one alongside it, non fiction this time
🖤 Wrote a letter and sent a birthday card
🤍 Doctors appointment
🖤 Kept up with home blessings
🤍 Finally dealt completely with a hot spot on the coffee table that's been a permanent feature for years
🖤 A bit of sunbathing

I also love your sunflower pic Hazel. Very poor service from the first restaurant though, glad you had a good time in the end
Like the new tap caps Cabbage
That's incredibly organised with the uniform Scourgify
My boobs change size with my weight too Dragons. I hope yours have shrunk if they're a nuisance and it's not just the bra going saggy

We're having a Saturday all day today.

Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-20/
Today's baby step is to add doing laundry into your daily routine. "A load a day keeps Mount Washmore away", she says. Some people swear by this little and often approach to washing. It's what I grew up with. Personally, I hate it! I much prefer the "Slob Comes Clean" method of having Laundry Day on just the one day of the week (but yes, that means everything washed, dried, put away, the lot). It's horrendous the first time you do it with a laundry backlog, but afterwards I find it's just so good to know you don't have to think about laundry at all for 6 days. Luckily, laundry day for me is Saturday! So here we go.

FlyBabies and FlyExperts: fly free, my pretties, fly free. You are released from the confines of the 15 minute tidies.

Daily mission: Family fun day. Get everybody doing something together and have a good time. Ideally those two go together, but I won't hold you to it.

Dragons I agree with Ditzy hopefully a loose fitting bra is a good thing and that it hasn't stretched out!

Ditzy thank you for the sunflower love 🌻it looks like you've been busy this month so far!

Cabbage that is such an improvement on your taps! Usually DS does 1 lol a day and it helps us stay on top of it. Where he was gone all week there's now a backlog, so that's my main chore for the day.

Ta das so far:
🌞 put the pool vacuum in to do it's thing (DH likes his gadgets so last year bought a robot vacuum for the pool! It actually works really well)
🌞 scheduled a time I can volunteer to help at a fundraiser next month for band (for DS) & scheduled DS at the same time
🌞 outside plants watered
🌞 sorted the laundry
🌞 1st lol in the washer

DS is exhausted from his week away, so he's still sleeping (just gone 10am), I'd love to let him sleep in longer, but he needs to get out and mow the grass before it gets too hot. We are still having very hot weather 🥵, which is perfect for the pool.

To dos:
🌡wake DS up so he can mow & get his dirty laundry in the laundry room
🌡sort my grocery list for dinner tonight
🌡go grocery shopping
🌡precook and prep for dinner tonight
🌡lots more laundry
🌡cool off in the pool

I may get more done than that. I really need to bleach the bathrooms too, but I don't know what else I'll accomplish today.

Well I got all of my to do list done! I ended up washing 6 loads of laundry so now I'm mostly caught up.
Tomorrow we're taking our blow up boat out to a nearby lake and going with all the ILs (MIL, FIL, SIL & BIL). We will have a picnic lunch out there and just enjoy not working 😂

We still have to figure out meals for the week. We're going camping Tuesday thru Sunday with MIL & FIL. It'll be nice to have time away and not working! So once those meals are figured out, I'll have to go grocery shopping, yet again.

**edited to say, when I say tomorrow, I mean Sunday 😂 I realise it's morning there right now and just gone midnight here!

We've had all the other days of the week so now it's time for Sunday.

Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-21/
Keep doing the baby steps, those routines. FlyLady wants you to email her any questions you have.

FlyBabies and FlyExperts: You're once again off the hook from 15 minute tidying until tomorrow when it starts all over again... in a totally reassuring and reliable kind of way rather than an unstoppable carousel of cleaning kind of way. Hopefully.

Daily mission: Renew your spirit. Or as we're in the bathroom, your spigots. Whatever helps you prepare for the week ahead and feel more connected to your inner self.

Can i run away and join a circus? The people here are exhausting. The building work is exhausting. The chaos is exhausting. And all the stress results in insomnia so I am exhausted. Joining a circus has got to be less effort no?

Seriously though. I only have one thing on my to do list today: Deal with the kitchen. Ok maybe 2 and hang the clean wool socks out to dry. I have two things. Until I break down what the kitchen will entail. But shhhhhh not thinking about it.

Dragons the circus does sound less stressful than what you're dealing with, even if you end up working with lions!
When you put deal with kitchen I know that ends up being a long list for you, but maybe that'll mean an escape from the other stressors in your life, if only for a day (or a few hours). Have you gone out for a walk lately or is it too touristy right now?

Yesterday I did end up rotating the DW and DH & DS rotated it again after dinner. I had also done my handwash dishes, but yet again, there's still more to do today.

I hurt my ankle and am waiting for an Orthopedic appointment but the local hospital has had massive problems with RAC so there are really really long wait lists as a result. Hill and crutches don't combine well.
Tourist wise, as schools only really broke up last and this week hasn't been the worst because the weather has been terrible. We have had the usual issue with tourist drivers though. And next time i see a donation box for the local air ambulance or mountain rescue I am going to see what i can donate there because they have been busy early this year.

Into Week 4 of July. Penultimate week here, we're in the home stretch if you're flagging.

The week ahead:
Here are your handy links, moving away from the bathroom and into the main bedroom and any associated ensuites, wardrobes etc.
https://www.flylady.net/d/zones/zone-4/
https://www.flylady.net/d/zones/detailed-cleaning-zone-4/

FlyBabies: You'll be shocked to know that once again you'll be spending your daily 15 minutes decluttering in here. She makes a very valid point that no room gets untidy and unclean in a week and it won't be fixed in a week either - the important part if about making progress, however small.

Monday's To Dos:
Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-22/
Today's task is to get to that Control Journal. If you've been procrastinating slash rebelling against this, FlyLady recommends looking at a "how to build a control journal in 15 steps" on the website. Then, routines!

FlyBabies and FlyExperts: Today we're together, spending 15mins decluttering and removing anything that doesn't belong in here. This includes anything in corners, under beds, hidden in the cupboard, etc. Get rid of those monsters. When we're children it's literal monsters, when we're adults it's the "I'll just put this in here so it's out the way" monsters, and before you know it you're living in a Warehouse of Forgotten Things. Make steps to change that today!

Daily mission: Home blessing today. Refreshing of sheets, bins, and the things that just need doing weekly. Pick a room and vacuum it too.

Oof. A short list today. Spent the entire morning waiting for a delivery (and then trusting the "your driver is two stops away"... for 3 HOURS) and I find it extremely difficult to get anything done if I feel the doorbell will go off imminently. Really looking forward to having our front door replaced in August - with that comes the return of our "porch parcel cam" so I can leave it "streaming" on a hub warning me of incoming delivery persons while I crack on with work. And having an open storm porch again will be great so that even if I miss the doorbell there's a high chance they'll leave it for us in said porch as a "safe place". Anyway, so that took me through to 2pm already. Although success on the delivery itself. Maternity sports kit that fits! Elsewhere:

Restocked bathrooms with loo roll
Delayed WGAC loo roll delivery
Changed over bathroom towels
Bread made in machine
Investigated baby swim classes
15mins declutter of bedroom chest of drawers
Finances admin

@SleepingIceDragons sorry to hear about your ankle! That sounds very frustrating. Hope you can get it looked at soon

May I sneak out of the naughty corner and rejoin you all please ? My routines have gone completely out of the window , my home doesn't feel like a home anymore and I'm dragging myself and the kids through the week until we all break up for the summer !

I've been to the doctors recently about a pain in my leg, they've done a full blood test and my folic acid levels are low which has been prescribed straight away. I started taking them yesterday so I'm hoping that gives me a little more energy . The receptionist asked for me to rebook with the doctor because I'm borderline with something else but won't tell me what . They've booked me in with the only gp in the practice rather than the junior staff I saw previously so I'm guessing my body is struggling in some way and that maybe why I can't to keep up with life at the moment. This still doesn't stop the mum guilt though!

Any advice on where I should start ? If you were living in utter chaos , what would be your priority? The only thing I have kept up with is getting clothes ready for the next day....

Thanks for reading 💐

sunny so good to see you back on here, although what you're going through sounds difficult right now.
If I were you I would get on top of the dishes in the kitchen (end up with a shiny sink) so that you can prepare food as needed. Try to clear any clutter from the countertops, even if it means putting them in a bag or box to deal with another time.
I also would make sure your bedroom is calm, but I feel it's important to have a relaxing calm space to sleep.

I really hope you're able to get answers and the help you need to feel better and have more energy. Do you have to wait long till your appt?

Tuesday! We're on planning and playing today. Sorry for the delay, everyone - time has rather got away from me this morning.

Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-23/ 
Here we go, a big baby step. Today is about adding an afternoon routine, either about getting home or preparing for dinner/the evening. For today, the only item on that routine is "start dinner". FlyLady also suggests meal planning for the week but that's not a task you have to do right away.

FlyBabies: 15 minute declutter of something in Zone 4.

FlyExperts: Today we're focusing on clothes - any clothes that are on a floordrobe, chairdrobe or even stacks of clean washing you haven't put away yet. I also have clothes hanging on the back of my door but (smugly) I sort those at the weekend so it's all good there. However, the main point about today is it's a sneaky decluttering. If you're putting something away that you know you don't love to be useful or beautiful, add it to a "thanks but no thanks" pile.

Daily mission: Plan and play (or "plan it, don't panic" as I call it). Something that does good for your future self, start it today. Maybe it's meal planning, maybe it's weekend planning.

Hi @Searchingforsunnydays ! I understand what you mean about there being some potential relief in there being a bodily reason you're struggling - it's a silver lining. Hopefully you get a resolution soon and some sense of where to go. My de-chaos starter list is always with carrying a bin bag around and collecting any rubbish/recycling from counters, or emptying bins. It always seems like an easy job with not much thought (rubbish is usually quite clearly just rubbish) and it's satisfying to chuck things out and think "be gone!". I know having a clear sink does help, but personally I find it takes me a couple of slower days before I can face standing still at the sink, so if you're able to then I'd recommend the ultimate FlyLady starter of "start with the sink" but if you're more like me I'd recommend a trash hunt and anything that's actually quite quick (e.g. swish and swipe of a sink/mirror). Let us know how you get on.

Sunny

I start with trash. All bins emptied, new binbags in, a trip to the corner shop to buy some of you've run out. Then go round collecting up the trash from wherever.

Next, dishes. Gather a load, put them on to soak, gather the rest while you wait. Wash up, dry and put away. While each subsequent load soaks for 10min, do some cleaning, of anything, anywhere.

Lastly, laundry. Select your shortest wash (stuff the temperature, a bit cleaner is better than filthy for now, they'll be washed again soon enough), insert something (anything, if you've run out of laundry detergent) into the drum that will get things clean. Hang everything to dry. Preferably line dried outside, but a clothes airer, radiator, curtain pole or multiple-pegs-whatsit hanging above the bath is equally as good. So is garden furniture, trees without fruit or blossoms on them or the fence (if your neighbors won't steal it). Tumble dryer takes too long when there's multiple loads.

If you've time and energy after all that, pick up everything off the floor. It can be dumped on any flat surface for now, including beds. Then you can vacuum everywhere.

That will go a good way to tidying the place up.

FlyLady's system though is designed for you not to need to do that, you could just jump in where we're at and it'll all gradually get tidier again over the month. She also has an article called emergency cleaning or something like that in the archives section, for when the gradual approach isn't suitable.

Thank you for the warm welcome back and all your advice , I really do appreciate it 💐 I've just got home after school runs , work and after school clubs and I'm having 5 before starting with the evening routine of getting clothes ready for tomorrow and makeup off etc , I haven't eaten tea yet either so need to get something before crawling into bed !

This morning I managed to do my usual of everyone washed , fed and out of the house to where everyone needed to go . I did manage 5 minutes on my bedroom and 5 minutes on the kitchen sink before work because I read your comment @HazelNotHungryLC whilst eating breakfast , it gave me a bit of a kick up the bottom ! The doctors did offer me an appointment for this week but it was much easier to make one next week with breaking up from work. I'm booked in for Monday so not long to wait thankfully!
@CabbageBearGoat & @ItsieDitzyBitsOfOnionInTheSoup - Great advice about the rubbish collecting and getting on top of the laundry, thank you ! I'm lucky to have a dishwasher so I manage that part of the housekeeping fairly well - it's about the only bit that is kept on top of !

Better get going with the evening routine 😴 thanks again for the warm welcome back, I need to keep remembering that even 5 minute bursts of focus time can get lots done .

It is Wednesday once again, so we're here together on another anti-procrastination day.

Baby Step: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-24/
Welcome to the Swish & Swipe (S&S). Wipe the sink and toilet every morning as part of your morning routine so it's ready for guests all the time. The idea behind this is it never gets so bad it needs a "deep clean" although we do some toilet cleaning in bathroom week anyway, just in case.

FlyBabies: 15 minute declutter of Zone 4

FlyExperts: Today's focus task from FlyLady is the floor of your closet, particularly focused on shoes and decluttering any that don't bring you joy or have a purpose. Only keep your sole mates.

Daily mission: Today is about doing something you've been putting off - whether it's dusting something high up, or maybe like me you need to put up some pictures that have been hanging around (or not!) for too long. Get it done!

Not much Flying getting done here, as I’ve been enjoying the weather and battling the triffids. I can nearly walk the full length of one overgrown path in the back garden, and the path at the front is getting weeded in early morning bursts.