Grab your broomstick and fly with us into the October Flylady thread! 🎃🦇👻

[HauntingHazel]

Cobwebs, witches and ghouls await us as we head into October. The weather is changing (here anyway) so what better time to start, or restart, new routines!

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!

Zones:

1. Entryway, porch and dining room
2. Kitchen
3. Bathroom and one other room
4. Master bedroom
5. Living room

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 a week. 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 for you. Well, they should but there is some technical difficulties on their end while they update the website. You can also check out the Facebook page, she updates that daily multiple times

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

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

Alwayslearning25 your birthday filled weekend sounds fun! Your pumpkin patch sounds similar to ours. They have a little train for little ones, a big (huge) slide they make out of straw (adding plastic to slide on, of course), trampoline pads, axe throwing, swings, and lots more! They also sell food and treats there too. They then have a tractor pulled cart you can ride on to go to the pumpkin patch, which is a big field they grow them in. They also do a haunted maze on Saturday nights, not sure if we'll do that this year though (definitely not tonight).

Cherry I hope you find your guitar stand. Is your guitar not on it?? A walk in wardrobe sounds like a good idea for you. I forget that homes there don't usually have any built in wardrobes, as here they are not classed as a bedroom without one..

Dilly it does sound like your weekends are full with activities, especially adding in travel time since you're rural!

@Tomatotomatoo welcome to the thread 👋. Feel free to delurk any time!

THIS I love your username! Is everything going well for you?

Alwayslearning25 I had to look up threadworms and now wish I hadn't! I'm so sorry you're having to deal with that, hopefully there's no reinfection 🤞but glad it does seem easy to treat (albeit a lot of work cleaning etc).

The leaflet said up to 40% of children under 10 have them at anyone time which is a statistic I did not need to know.

That's an awful lot! 😱

Several branches in our garden needed immediate attention today after the storm, and there’s lots of sweeping up for me next week. Fortunately, nothing that wasn’t needing pruned anyway.

Inside I tackled the messy corner of my kitchen in small spurts. No idea why I can’t put things where they belong instead of creating mounds, but at least I’m aware. And I’ll do a wee bit more before bed.

@HauntingHazel Google gives me wildly different statistics. Eg, UK up to half, it being the most prevent parasite here. Europe 20-30% at some point in there childhood. And that it's very hard to judge as most cases go undetected. I would not have known if ds uses the toilet, but I saw one in the potty!

I have only ever had one suspected case with my 6 dc. That was when one dc aged about 3 kept waking in the night crying that his bum hurt. Nothing was ever seen but we treated everyone to be safe

Scourgify I have a problem with just seeing things down too. I'm trying to do better, but since I've started putting Halloween decorations up I've got a few hotspots I need to tackle! I feel your pain.

We went to the straw maze/ pumpkin patch. It was wet & muddy, but we got some pumpkins after going through the maze.
Dinner was at ILs tonight, it was soup, so nice and warming after a cold day!

Sunday is renew your spirit day.

Baby Step 5: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-5/
Write down any negative thoughts and turn them into positives.
Shine your sink (before bed)
Get dressed to shoes (1st thing)
Read the Flylady message of the day
Read your sticky notes

@HauntingHazel it's the little folding stand I take out with me. Must be in a very safe space...

Today is the day that I'm finishing upstairs 💪 💪
I bought lovely new summer bedding and pillows, and was saving them for when my bedroom was tidied and cleaned.
That never happened 🙂
Now the weather's turning I need my winter flannel sets, might have to get a new set as a treat 🙃

Cherry you absolutely deserve a new set for all your hard work!

My plan for today is to:
👻 put out the hotspot fires
👻 finish decorating for Halloween
👻 figure out meals
👻 grocery shopping
👻 make a batch of caramels/ cashew clusters (I'm selling them for Halloween)

Well, that was an exhausting weekend. Tommmow is normally a day with toddler DS, but DD has fracture clinic so I've booked him into the childminder for the morning. We've hoovered and cleaned a lot of sheets and towels this weekend.
What zone are we going to tomorrow.

Alwayslearning25 we are moving to zone 2, the kitchen!
I hope everything goes okay with DD tomorrow.

Monday is home bleugh day.
Empty bins, vacuum, change sheets - all in an hour! She says to spend no more than 10 minutes in each room.

We are moving to zone 2. The kitchen.
Monday's mission is to clean the kitchen bin, inside and out, once you've taken the rubbish out of course! You can use soapy water/ disinfectant spray/ whatever you'd like! If it has a lid, don't forget to clean that too!

Baby Step 6: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-6/
Set your timer for 2 minutes and put out a hotspot. You can do this wherever you have piles of anything built up. Put things away/ throw away rubbish, but only work on it for 2 minutes.

Ta das:
🎃 meals planned
👻 grocery shopping done
🎃 rotated DW
👻 wiped countertops x2
🎃 hotspot put out
👻 LOLs x3
🎃 outside Halloween decorations done (unless I finish making signs)
👻 inside Halloween decorations done
🎃 harvested veggies for dinner

I'm tired. I never did get to make my caramels. I'll try to make them tomorrow, if not it'll be Tuesday.

More pictures, if I can get them to load..
DH & I made the Zero tombstone. We're super proud of it!

Morning everyone ,

Loving the decorations @HauntingHazel ! I'll be getting mine out this weekend (if I can remember where I put them last year !) Thank you for running this months thread 💐

I'm looking forward to giving the kitchen some tlc this week - the room is definitely looking sorry for itself and a couple of the cupboards are driving me insane ! Hopefully I'll be back with so tadas later , but for now , I'm finishing my coffee, getting the kids up and to school, then offf to work . 2 more weeks to go until half term 🥳

Great zone and great baby step. Probably the one I've used the most. But, for me, I set a 3 minutes timer, often there was still mess after 2, and 3 sometimes allows for a quick wipe. I can't remember when I did the bin before so I will aim to do that today!

Great decorations @HauntingHazel , I'm very impressed!
Other than getting the extra shelves for my book cases my music room is finished.
I can't decide whether to get a small desk or a nice chair, there's not enough room for both.
I'd like a chair because there's a lot of natural light and would be a nice spot for reading.
But DP says I'd look like Norman Bates 😅
Everything that didn't belong in my bedroom is gone, just needs tidying and cleaning.
I bought extending dividers for my sock drawer, didn't measure properly and they're too long. So going to use them in my jumper drawer, that's today's ToDo, along with cutting down the amount of jumpers I own.

<Chef's kiss>, Hazel, those decorations are amazing!
Well done! Bet everyone around you loves them 🧡

They are great hazel.
Today's tadas:
Cleaned out the kitchen bin
3 minutes hotspots.
Made dinner.
Filled dw
Cleaned sink.

I feel like I did more, but I was out most of the day. I think I need to clean more to remove worm eggs... yesterday I ironed for the first time in years.

Todos:
Bedtime routine

Thank you for the decorations love! I do know I have random people say they've seen my house if it comes up in conversation! It's Jack they remember, especially if they're taking their kids trick or treating. We get a tonne of kids every year!

Cherry if you would prefer the chair and know you'd use it, that's what you should get! You've made great progress in your room. I'm excited for you!

Searching & Alwayslearning25 I'm with you both on the kitchen needing some extra love. I did clean out the fridge the other day, which helped with that (along with reorganizing it a bit too).
I plan on making caramels in the morning, so that will involve more of a deep clean beforehand (since they're orders for other people!).

Tuesday is plan & play day.

Tuesday's mission is to scrub your countertops. The perfect mission for me! Use hot soapy water and really scrub it clean. Move one thing at a time to clean under and behind it, put it back and move along. Scrub in multiple directions so you don't miss anything. Do a good job, but don't obsess over it!
Also continue with the other baby steps. We are building our routines!

Baby Step 7: https://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/31-beginner-babysteps/day-7/
Add to your bedtime routine - get your clothes out ready for the morning. Hang them on hangers on the door knob (or towel rack like me, in the bathroom that I get dressed in).

Great decorations @HauntingHazel . There’s a house in our road that goes full-Hallowe’en from the 1st October, more and more houses are decorating each year. I haven’t even got the autumn bits up yet, let alone Hallowe’en. There was a 15’ high Jack in the place I was staying last week (it had very high ceilings)

I think I have the choice between giving the counters a good crub and doing one of my couch to 5k runs this afternoon. As I am only at work until 1, going to school for 3 and also need to eat lunch in that time. It's also my biological nap time. But I slept well last night so should not choose nap! I do need to get fit, so the excersice might take priority over housework today.