Flying on our broomsticks into October

[HauntingHazel]

Witches, vampires & zombies - whoever/whatever you are, all are welcome on this spooky flylady thread.

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.

October's monthly focus is paper clutter.

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

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

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

Placemarking. Expectations low, potentially a lot of lurking. Appreciate all the chat anyway! Thank you Hazel for shepherding us through another month.

Thanks Hazel. Love the decs
🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃
I've lost my mojo. Still flying though. Let's see what I achieve this month.

I'm here for it!

Welcome Pumpkins & antiperspirant (or welcome back if you've been here before/ name changed, I can't keep track!).

Welcome back Ditzy just remember the routines, a little bit at a time and it'll all come naturally.

                    👻👻👻👻👻👻👻👻

One thing I find that helps me is to add your ta da lists. Basically everything you've accomplished. There are days when I don't feel like I've done much, but when I've listed everything out that I've done that day, there's now than I thought. It can also motivate other people, especially if something only takes 2 minutes to do.

And if nothing else, be here for the chat! We've all moaned, boasted (proud parent moments) and just had general chit chat on these threads. It's a safe, friendly corner on mn!

I'm not sure what happened with my ghosts for you, but that's not how they were when I typed them in!

Oh well!
Just a heads up, I love the Halloween emoji's so expect to see a lot of them on this thread!
☠️🕸🕷👻🦇💀🪦⚰️🎃

Tuesday is plan & play day. 👻

It's the 1st of the month, so that means we are moving back into zone 1: Porch, entryway & dining room.
https://www.flylady.net/d/zones/zone-1/
Tuesday's mission is to dust off your plants, give them a good water, declutter any dead leaves etc.

Baby Step 1: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/
Shine your sink! How to: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/flying-lessons/shine-sink/
It really does make a difference to come into the kitchen 1st thing in the morning and countertops & sink are clear, clean & shiny!

Hi can I join you all? In the middle of a huge clear out and want to then keep on top of things better. I gutted one child bedroom yesterday, will do another today and add my entrance way as well.

Porch and entry way are the areas that are most neglected in my home. I'll show them some love today.

Porch and entryway had a lot happen in them last month but are now in the final stages of the DIY/decorating project where some areas are now totally "signed off" and things are going back up on walls etc. Other bits might be finished by the end of the week - exciting times. The porch still has some finishing touches to do after the big door swap earlier in the year too, so there's a few things I'm hoping to knock off the to do list this week. Luckily, I did a huge dining room plant sort-out over the weekend so I have some spare "FlyLady time" today 😊

Thank you for the new thread, Hazel.
I'm not one for name-changing much, as I became LaMarzipan for one Christmas and got into a proper muddle changing back.
However, for the purposes of this thread, I'm considering myself to be LaarrghMwah-ha-harschallin 👻 🎃
Still flapping gamely on here.
One of the things I find useful for getting started with FLYing is to do the little jobs that have been really irritating me and causing me to catastrophise.
Eg "OMG! I've just noticed some huge, dusty cobwebs behind the bureau! Therefore the whole house is filthy and a health hazard!".
I realised that, although everything needed doing, I started fretting most when I was sitting on the sofa and could see some dusty windows in the sitting room and through to the catflap which was grubby. My thought process then would be "Every window in the house needs cleaning now!" and "The catflap leads into the kitchen and is grubby, hence my whole kitchen is unhygienic".
This time, I cleaned that one window and lathered down the catflap and felt immensely better. My kitchen was hygieneic before (catflap isn't near any food/preparation surfaces) but now I believed it and all the windows will eventually be cleaned, but the one that really bothered me was done.
I've got an old book called "The I Hate to Housekeep Book" by Peg Bracken. It's actually very funny in parts as well as having some great advice. One bit went something like:
"If you notice some jam on the woodwork you may immediately remember that new product that's been developed especially to clean jam etc off woodwork. So you decide that you'll get it next time you shop and do all the woodwork in the house. However, a quick swipe at that particular bit of jam with a wet cloth will solve that particular problem and a quick swipe is better than no swipe at all".
Not an exact quote and she puts it more wittily but it's pretty much the same idea as FL and her views on perfectionism.
Perfection paralysises me as it seems so impossible to get everything clean and tidy all at once. Mainly because it is impossible. But overcoming it and doing even a little really helps to unstick you.
Ta-das today:
Done my morning routine (includes getting the bathrooms swished and swiped; kitchen sink wiped round; supper plans checked and appropriate recipe book out);
Caught up on emails, WhatsApp etc
Plans for today will be house bleugh of the downstairs and taking some clothes to the charity shop. I'll clean half of the hall windows, the front door, winkle out some dirt and dust from some of the carpet edges and move the coat-stand and shoe rack to vacuum underneath them as my Zone mission. Sounds a lot but it's a small hall.
Sorry for the long, rambling post - the zeal of the convert, I suppose 😊

Placemarking. This thread is helping me so much! Thanks HauntingHazel for running it again. I really appreciate it!

Thanks @HauntingHazel really appreciate you running things again, I will volunteer for Nov unless someone else wants to do it as I have had quite a long break since last time now. Back later

@LaMarschallin I quite like rambling posts with a cuppa. Sounds like you’re being nicely productive.

I’ve done a run to the dump (40 mile round trip ugh), and hoovered the front porch, I still need to wash down the storm doors and stand staring at it wondering how I can make such a small gloomy place prettier. I do this regularly and still haven’t worked it out.

Welcome @Poisonwood 👋 it sounds like you've made a great start already! Can you post any pictures of what you're struggling with? I understand if not. Are you in a position that you could paint the door a pretty colour? Or just put a hook in it and hang something up? Or is it the interior you're not sure about?

ED thank you for the offer for November. I'm sure I'll forget by the end of the month though, so you'll need to remind me!

Miss I'm sure your entryway & porch will love the attention!

Pumpkins it's nice to be ahead in the zone! Adding finishing touches is so satisfying (mostly because that means the project is done!)

Dilly I'm so glad the thread is helpful, it is for me too!

Must run, I've got to get DS to school, then get back ready to do the final virtual inspection of the house! I'll be back later, hopefully with some ta das!

LaMarschallin that book sounds perfect and goes right along with Flylady! The goal isn't to have everything perfect, it's to make it better than it was! A little bit at a time 🎃
Great plan for zone work today also, it sounds achievable.

Poison wood flowers make anything prettier. If you're broke and can't afford flowers, get a Christmas Cactus. It probably won't flower much/at all because they like sun, but they're pretty even as greenery, kinda impossible to kill (if the leaves start wrinkling you've left it too long without water but it will revive). Once you have one you can have many, just scoop some sort of dirt from outside (it's not picky), pinch off some excess growth (the leaves are segmented, take them at a join) from the first one and stick it in your pot of dirt, watering more than usual until it's properly rooted itself. It'll grow just fine.

Today's achievements:
🚗 Morning routine
🚗 Cleaned out the boot of my car.
🚗 Bought new makeup

To-do:
🚕 Exercise
🚕 Evening routine

Today's done list:

• Morning routine
• Cleared coffee table
• Household admin
• Prepared photos and frames for gallery wall

@HauntingHazel I’ll try adding pictures, trying to see it as a blank canvas but it’s such a small space that’s quickly walked through I just can’t seem to think. Do I tie it in with hallway colours inside or go for something different, and what can actually be added at all anyways lol.

@ItsieDitzyBitsOfOnionInTheSoup you’re right, I actually have some cuttings from DP’s Christmas Cactus happily taking at the minute - maybe I could put a shelf up above the storm doors…I do tend to leave one side of door open all the time so postman can deliver easily and let some extra light in to hall through front door glazing.

Sink all ready for the morning and I cleared out a chest of drawers of doom.

Could you put one of those narrow picture shelves from Ikea above the doors @Poisonwood then you can prop up a few pictures, gets over the difficulty of positioning them exactly on the wall. We have just put some up in our hall, which is painted white so they blend in, I was originally planning a gallery wall but lacked the confidence to start baging lots of nails in and get the positions right. I think I’ll also get a few tiny cactuses, Christmas cacti are a good idea too, I’ve got a huge one at work. Or money plants, got one of those at work too.

@HauntingHazel love your decorations! We often go to a friend’s house for a Hallowe’en party, she goes all out with them too. We decorate our front window for trick or treaters nearer the time and I have an autumn wreath on the front door and a couple of fabric pumpkins out now.

Tada!

Cleaned toilet properly and bathroom floor
Swiped bath and basin
Removed an assortment of pizza boxes and rink cans from DS’s bedroom (he went back to uni on Sunday and I didn’t realise till he’d gone, I don't tend to go in much when he’s here)
Cleaned the inside of DS’s bedroom window
Brushed staircarpet (rubber brush to pick up cat hair)
Tabletted cat
Deleted emails and made a to do list from those that need attention

Poison oooh, so much you could do! Do you use the other storm door at all? You could make the wall an accent wall, add some paneling of some kind (or create your own design), put up a couple of hooks. You could add a mirror to the wall, or hanging planters. I had fun looking through Pinterest and Amazon 🤣

Above the door you can add a shelf and put up seasonal decor, pictures etc. Just use a shelf that has a ledge on it since the door is right under it. You could just add a sign/ picture/ saying.

Ditzy I have killed a cactus! 😳 I didn't know you could grow more from the leaves though!

Pumpkins I had a photo gallery wall in our old house, I still haven't put much up in the 3 years we've been here!

ED I have a lot of fun decorating, not so much putting it all away though. I keep meaning to buy some fabric pumpkins 🎃 (I'm not as talented as you to make them!). That's awful you had to throw away DSs rubbish after he left, that would make me mad!

Ta das:
🕷 virtual home inspection done for the bank
🕸 bank to get the final payment for the restoration company
🕷 drive to next big town to restoration company corporate office to pay them off & get insurance cheque signed by them (took MIL with me for support)
🕸 took MIL to lunch & went shopping
🕷 LOLs x4, including our sheets
🕸 remade bed
🕷 put clean clothes away
🕸 went back to the bank to deposit the signed cheque

It's such a relief to be done with that company. We are going out tonight to celebrate 🥳 just dinner, but our favourite restaurant!

Wednesday is anti-procrastination day.

Wednesday's mission is to sweep your front porch and wipe down your front door. Shake out any mats you have as well. This does actually make a huge difference!
I did mine on Sunday, before we put our decorations up. It can also reduce what actually makes a mess inside your house as well. I find that if it's been a couple of weeks since I've swept, I'll have pine needles in my house 🤬

Baby Step 2: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-2/
Get dressed to shoes. Don't forget to shine your sink as well!

@EerilyDecorated thanks for idea, and the reminder to buy a rubber brush!!

@HauntingHazel thank you, sometimes I think we just need a fresh pair of eyes to look at a problem.