🍁 Flylady November — Slow Days, Warm Drinks, and Shiny Sinks (title edited by MNHQ at request of OP)

[Alwayslearning25]

Well, here we are — darker evenings, the smell of woodsmoke in the air, and that slightly panicky feeling that Christmas is somehow next month. But fear not, lovely Flyladies — we’ve got this (mostly).

This thread is our little corner of calm amongst the chaos — a place to cheer each other on, share small wins, and occasionally moan about the state of the laundry mountain. Whether you’re shining your sink for the first time or just trying to keep the kitchen table visible for more than an hour, you’re in good company.

The Flylady system is all about baby steps — 15 minutes at a time, routines that mostly stick, and being kind to ourselves when life happens (because it always does). Pop in, post your list, or just lurk with a cuppa — everyone’s welcome.
Let’s make November about cosy corners, tidy-ish rooms, and gentle progress — before December sweeps in with tinsel and mince pies.
Kettle’s on. Who’s flying today? ☕🕯️🧺

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

@Searchingforsparkle I love that one of your tadas is coffee!
I've had an early cup of tea and now I'm on my 2nd coffee, I'm on a roll lol.
Didn't finish the cupboard sort out yesterday as we couldn't agree on what to do.
But I've finished one half of my bedroom deep clean.
Today's ToDos are clean the dog room, and finish my bedroom.
I've got a BT engineer coming tomorrow so I'll need to clean the hallway and front room.

I am 3 cups of tea in!

Ta da so far
🎆 self care - soak in the bath & trim nails
🎇 bathroom bins both emptied
🎆 quick scrub of both toilets
🎇 washer & dryer both on
🎆 recycling sorted
🎇 stripped my bed
🎆 laundry taken to utility room
🎇 nagged big DC to get up and do shit

Next up -
🧨 remake my bed
🧨 take out rubbish
🧨 hoover bedroom

Thanks for the thread Always!

My house is fairly clean but also quite chaotic. It's been half term, I've limited screen time quite significantly and we've had birthday presents in - all leading to more mess!

I am just hoping to keep on top of the dailies in November. That will be first priority and missions if I have time.

Christmas missions:
This is the control journal you can download and print out to use:
https://www.flylady.net/i/pdf/hoj_coj.pdf

Missions so far:
🎄grab a bag and toss any rubbish in it, walk around your house and try to fill it up
🎄start a holiday cruising journal (can use the one above or create your own)
🎄gather all your wrapping supplies together so you know where they are. You can use an old/ cheap suit hanging bag to store your rolls of wrapping paper. Put a clothes hanger in it and hang in your closet (if there's any room of course!)
🎄errand day: do you need more tape? Wrapping paper or bows etc? Nows the time to buy it and put with the wrapping supplies you already have
🎄set a budget. Don't forget things like wrapping supplies, travel expenses and food (as well as the obvious: presents). I feel like this should be done before you start buying wrapping supplies..
🎄plan your decorations. No need to pull them out, just decide what you are going to put out, and where is it going to go. Will you have a theme? Etc.
🎄plan & play. Are you staying home? Traveling? Will you have guests? Plan your travel, where you will put guests or any other activities you want to do around Christmas. Then play! Go get yourself some ice cream (or a hot drink!), relax in the bath, read a book, bake something - whatever you like!
🎄write down everyone's sizes in your family. That way you are prepared for when someone asks what size clothes you're DC are wearing or you can't quite remember when you're buying clothes yourself. Ask other members of the family if you're planning on buying any clothes as well
🎄errand day: do you need any baking supplies, like flour or sugar? Start adding some of those things to your shopping list now so you spread out the cost. Do you need dry cleaning done? Take that now so it's all ready well before December
🎄review your budget. Are things a little tight this year? (Yes!). Can you get with people now to discuss if you are actually going to do gifts this year? Decide on a theme (like tee shirts, or second hand gifts, or homemade gifts). Set a budget with them also

There is a lot there already since we're now on day 10, I'm late starting this!

The goal is to have everything done, planned for etc before December 1st. She calls it cruising through the holidays as she wants you to pretend you're going on a cruise the 1st of December and you need to have it all done by then.
You can start now, doing one thing a day if you're okay with going into December, being done closer to Christmas, or do 2 or 3 things per day to catch up.

Cabbage I'm glad DD is feeling better. Is she still too young for yoghurt? It's been a long time since mine were that little so I don't remember. But if she can have some, the good bacteria in it will help her tummy.

Alwayslearning25 it would be hard to live with someone who couldn't get rid of anything.
It sounds like tomorrow will be a lovely day with your plans!

Searching your trip away with DD sounds so nice! I hope you're able to get some things done to be your future friend for tomorrow

Cherry I love that you have a dog room! What do you store in there? Do they stay in there when you leave the house? I'm just curious!

THE that is a great ta da list! I love that self care is first.

Dilly getting on top of the dailies is a great idea. It will definitely make a big difference.

So it's official. I got the flu bug DH is getting over!
I got a few things done yesterday though before it fully hit me:
🍁 almost all outside Halloween decorations taken down and put away (I need help with Jack and poles)
🍁 all inside Halloween decorations taken down and put away
🍁 Thanksgiving/autumn decorations put up
🍁 vacuumed
🍁 handwashed dishes
🍁 wiped countertops thoroughly (moved things like the microwave etc.)
🍁 rotated DW
🍁 swept the front porch
🍁 swept the car port
🍁 relocated pumpkins from grass to front porch and threw away 2 of them that were going bad
🍁 gave Coco another bath as she was stinky (like she rolled in something dead)
🍁 washed blankets from the couches (due to Coco)
🍁 2 other LOLs

Today is our 23rd wedding anniversary!
We were going to go out for dinner tonight, not anymore though 😟
We really need to go shopping in the next big town, but that's not going to happen today, like I planned. I feel awful 🥴 I'm not sure I'll be going to work tomorrow with how I'm feeling now.

🍁Put away Halloween decs
🍁reset sofa
🍁polished coffee table
🍁swept kitchen floor
🍁clipped toenails
🍁picked up order from Next
🍁meal planned
🍁big shop done

Wiped out now… this broken shoulder is a proper hindrance!

@Doyathinkhesaurus how on earth did you break your shoulder?

Very productive afternoon here

🎇 living room toys tidied and a bit decluttered
🎆 pulled out all living room furniture and rearranged a bit
🎇 hoovered under furniture
🎆 hoovered rug & under rug
🎇 mopped living room and hall
🎆 tidied sofas
🎇 several LOL inc white wash
🎆 remade my bed
🎇 tidied and wiped kitchen sides
🎆 quick tidy of my bedroom
🎇 hoovered bedroom, stairs and landing
🎆 ordered more living room furniture
🎇 put away clean dry laundry
🎆 halloween bits mostly away (some autumn bits left out)

I fell over getting something out of my bag. Got my feet caught in the handles. Smacked into the doorframe.

I should be preserved in bubble wrap for my own safety…

habbit if the month : menu planning.

Well done all those with a productive weekend. I started a 500 peice jigsaw with DD while DS was napping. Otherwise, I changed DS bedding. Rotated DW, can't think of much else....

Babystep is to check the flylady website/app/Facebook page. There's some for everyone there. I found the habbit of the month. I can't find the mission on it so will check back once the Facebook page is updated.

Wow lots of amazing TaDas from everyone!
@Doyathinkhesaurus hope you're on the mend soon.
@HazelNuttyElf the dog room is the downstairs bathroom that we don't use, it's also the boot room.
The dogs sleep in there, and during the day when we're out we leave the back door open for them. Bit like an indoor kennel.
Also like Coco they both roll in stinky stuff, I can't lift my lurcher into the bath, so she only gets sponged off, so they can be a bit whiffy.
One day it will be turned into a utility room. One day....
Yesterday I LMS a bit at DP, long story short he's agreed to do the horses for me, one full day at the weekend and one afternoon until I'm on top of the big jobs/finish decluttering, and then drop the full day.
Obviously he thinks he's doing me a massive favour, because 3/4 hours a week is much more than 7 hours of dog walking and 80% of the housework.

Yesterday's TaDa, cleaned the dog room, top to bottom. Hoovered and mopped the kitchen floor. My back and hands were hurting then, so went for a really nice dog walk, then shopping, fed the horses and veg'd in front of the TV all evening.
ToDo today, clean front room and front hall as the TV engineer is coming.

Mission found on the comments of the app but I can't copy it ... Zone 1 Monday. Tidy your hallway for 15 minutes, collecting junk including post, jackets etc.

House blugh...I'm going to strip our bad as DS is down for a nap and our on top of mattress electric blanket arrived today so I'll make fresh bedding with that. It's a motivator. I didn't think it was good drying wether but it's actually mild and windy so I wish I'd got a load on the line. It looked due to rain but never came.

Alwayslearning25 I found the missions on her Facebook page. On the post that is named "your flight plan for <insert day>" you have to scroll a bit on that link to get to the daily mission. She seems to like to post about 4x the same thing (and multiple things too), every day, so it could take some scrolling!

Christmas mission for today:
🎄do a 27 boogie fling throughout your house. Have a small bin bag or grocery bag you carry with you, walk around your house and throw any rubbish away you may come across. Don't spend hours on this, set your timer for 15 minutes, if you need to.

doyouthinkhesaurus I hope your shoulder heals quickly! Do you have a sling or anything for support?

Cherry I hope your DH will step up and help more. It's not fair on you to do everything!
It sounds like your dog room is fairly big. Turning it into a utility room as well sounds ideal.

THE that was a very productive afternoon. And how exciting to be ordering more living room furniture!

I did a whole lot of nothing yesterday. Drank lots of chamomile tea with honey, took lots of cold & flu medicine and binge watched transformer movies with DH.
I'm home sick today, still have a fever and a cough that gets worse when I talk. I probably won't be back with ta das today!

I didn't realise it is on Facebook - no wonder everything I click on her website goes to the same page of new links etc.

Bedding done (just one bed). Also did a bit of hoovering and cleaned the toilet room as we had guests today for a playdate. Also made veg soup, went shopping this morning and am making a Bolognese. And I smashed a bottle of balsamic vinegar, so now the kitchen stinks as it went under the dishwasher and I may have a tiny glass shard in my thumb. It didn't fall from a height so the shards were more contained than last time. I am sleepy!

@HazelNuttyElfI have a sling and lots of paracetamol and ibuprofen!

So I cleaned my hob and my sink.
I failed to bless my house for an hour!!! My arm hurt.
Might go and sort some laundry and go to bed.

TaDas!
Tidied, dusted and vacuumed front room, front hallway and stairs.

I use an online pharmacy, and my parcel got delivered to the wrong address, a box of meds just left outside a random front door ffs.
Spent 40 minutes in a phone queue to speak to someone to raise a complaint.
So I was totally brain fried after that and didn't do anything else productive.

Morning. Sorry guys, Would anyone else be up for doing this thread? I don't think I have the time and energy yet and I should reduce my phone time.... It's just making me feel bad that im not doing enough housework allthough I know that's not the intention. it's DS third birthday this weekend so busy. Also about to go to work after a week off, not really looking forward to it....

@Alwayslearning25 I'll have a go, I could do with trying to resume a bit of normality and have stepped up the Flying in the last week or so. Are you still having to go to the app to find out the missions etc?

The missios on the app are wrong but someone usually comments the correct one, I use the website for babysteps, @HazelNuttyElf said the Facebook page, but I'm not on it.

I was doing the FB page last time I did the thread but it was fiddly, I will try the app again. I was hoping she might get the website sorted again.

Alwayslearning25 I understand completely. It is time consuming running the thread, especially when the website isn't working so you have to go multiple places to get the correct info.

ED I was just paraphrasing the missions from Facebook and only doing a link to the baby steps since they are still working okay.
I will still update the Christmas missions if you're okay with that?

timoteigirl the website has been down for a while now (I'm sure it's over a year, but I could be wrong). She says it's being updated, but even the app is stuck on the wrong zone for the missions.

doyathinkhesaurus don't overdo it with your arm! Delegate as much as possible.

Cherry that's a little scary that your meds ended up at someone else's house! Were you able to get it sorted in the end?

I'm still fighting this sickness. I do need to get some things done today, but not sure how much I can do before I crash.

Christmas mission:
🎄 plan what meals you will be making, don't forget about breakfast & lunch. If you are traveling, what can you bring? Start a grocery list of what you will need and start buying the non perishable food. This will help to spread out the cost, as well as help you be more prepared.

In the States we also have Thanksgiving coming up at the end of the month. We will be hosting, but the dishes are spread out between the whole family. ILs usually cook the turkey, stuffing and gravy. But I'm not sure what we'll actually be cooking this year for the meal. This will be discussed as a whole family this weekend. But I can at least make sure I have the basics for the dishes I usually make.

Once you have your planning done (or started), go play! Take a walk in the leaves, read a book, whatever you'd like to do that's fun for you.

@HazelNuttyElf no, the post office are trying to track the parcel, pharmacy2u have raised a complaint with the post office.

No flying for me today, apart from a WM drum/filter clean after washing the dog beds.
Will do better tomorrow!

@HazelNuttyElf thanks. I tried to resubscribe to get the Christmas cruise missions but obviously something is going on.