September Flylady: Fledglings inspired to make a fresh start at the beginning of a brand new term!

[mixedpeel]

Whether you're starting to build a new routine, stuck in a rut, or been around for years, join us on the monthly Flylady thread! Flylady has created a series of daily and weekly prompts to help anyone who finds it tricky to get or keep their house clean and tidy. She totally gets it if you feel overwhelmed or don't even know where to start - as do we! The best thing about Flylady is that you are never behind - just jump in at whatever point you are at, and do what you can.

This is a long running thread, but as a newbie myself I can confirm everyone is very friendly and all are welcome to join in. We spur each other on, but also commiserate when life gets in the way and we don't get as much done as we might have wanted to.

There are 5 zones that we will rotate through:
☀️Entryway, porch and dining room
☀️Bathroom & one other room
☀️Kitchen
☀️Master bedroom & master bathroom
☀️Living room
We usually link to the daily missions (jobs to do in whichever zone we're in) every day, but the new website doesn't seem to be working for me right now. I will keep trying, but they should update every day so you can click the link yourself to check. We will post the missions in the thread too so don't worry about missing anything. Most importantly, don't worry about finishing it all this month, it'll come around again next month! Flylady is NOT about perfectionism!

Do NOT sign up for the Flylady emails - it's an excessive amount sent every day. I have taken one for the team but use a junk email address. I will check them periodically and report anything interesting / useful

Flylady also tries to help us get into habits so that eventually we do things without even having to think about them. She has 31 baby steps to gradually pick up (on the previous website, since the link isn't working on the new site yet): https://mymerrymessylife.com/flylady-31-baby-steps/

Daily focus: each day of the week has a different focus. It's not all jobs jobs jobs by the way.
Monday: Home Blessing (or as we call it, home bleugh)
Tuesday: plan & play
Wednesday: anti-procrastination
Thursday: errand day
Friday: clean car & purse out day. It's also date night (with your significant other, or friends, or yourself!)
Saturday: family fun day
Sunday: renew your spirit

If you can, it's worth downloading the app (link on the flylady website), you can even have it send you notifications. You can also modify the tick lists to suit your home & lifestyle. There is a paid version and a free version, though the missions haven't been updating on the free app.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, some posters here have been doing Flylady for a very long time, and others are just starting out. We may have other things to add that we have found works for us that could help you too!

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 😆
S&S: Swish & Swipe (wipe the bathroom sink & toilet)
LMS: lose/lost my shit
DNLMS: did not lose my shit
There are probably more, feel free to ask us to explain something!

This is Wednesday mission on Flylady app

More from the app

And more

Morning 🌄 everyone 👋
I'm in sick bay still, fed up because I was on such a roll last week and now stalled again.
I've got a blood test this morning to check on my thyroid and have a couple of parcels to drop off.
Welcome @HedgerowD
I'm definitely not a perfectionist, but struggle with sorting one thing because I want to clean a whole room, and don't always have the energy so don't do any of it.
Flylady helps with the breaking tasks down into baby steps, and I'm not getting so overwhelmed with it all.

My dining table is the table of doom, everything from my kitchen that needs removing is on it, but I'll book an Anglo doorstep collection soon.
I'm letting my lovely old soup pot go, sadly it's just too heavy for me to lift safely now. It's been in and out of the kitchen like a yo-yo but I've finally decided to rehome it.

Morning!

@CherryogDog remember "you are never behind" hope you feel better soon.

Welcome @HedgerowD ask if you don't understand anything.

Tada!
✅washing on line <eyes up clouds doubtfully>
✅DW emptied and late night crockery put in
✅Drainer and sink cleared and wiped

Morning all! I failed to post last night because yesterday was frantic, but here are my YesTaDas 🤣.
✅ Finished client sewing (I bit off more than I could chew here, which is why yesterday was a bit desperate. I did 24 hrs sewing between midday Monday and midday Wednesday, and I am NOT doing that again!).
✅ Sewed nametapes on DC#4 (you know what I mean)
✅ Proved the power of Flylady by "starting the day again" at 4pm, after I'd handed over the sewing and reset myself with a hot bath and a chocolate orange. I did the morning routine and then got on with other necessary things, and the day ended smoothly instead of in chaos.
✅ Washed the hall curtains, because I think WillowHound has been Making His Feelings Known upon them 🤬.

I have not washed the front door yet, but I have sent DC#4 off to school after First Day Back photos, and done the breakfast / brain dump bit of my morning routine.

Next:
🍽️ Clearing the breakfast things
🐕 Dog walk
🏋🏻 Quick exercise routine
🧽 Shower and a wipe of the bathroom
🛏️ Make the bed
🧺 Sort out clean laundry & put a load in.

👋🏻 to everyone 👋🏻

Welcome @HedgerowD. Flylady might be really useful for you because as @CherryogDog says, she breaks down tasks into small chunks, and actively counsels against perfectionism or doing loads all at once. You can get more done with little bits here and there over time. It might be useful for you to try a timer, and force yourself to stop doing a task after 15 minutes. It might feel really hard at first, but if you want to do more, instead of carrying on and seeing the rest of the house go to pot, why not spend the next five minutes somewhere else in the house, picking up toys with the toddler, or emptying the dishwasher or whatever else needs to be done daily. Or shining the sink! Getting into the habit of ‘good enough’ rather than ‘perfect’ can mean more of your house is ‘good enough’ rather than one spotless area and the rest being carnage.

(plus let’s face it, the crappy thing about housework is that even ‘perfect’ only lasts 5 seconds, so it’s a fool’s game really!)

I really do like the sound of the little but often approach. Like you say, perfection doesn't last long in a house where real people live.

Managed a couple of errands today:
Bought DD a new school tie
Found the receipt in the back of my car so I can return the school skirts that DD doesn't like because they are 'too long'.

Tonight's plan is to declutter the spare room wardrobe and if that doesn't take too long I'll try and do 15 minutes decluttering in the cupboard of doom in the dining room.

@CherryogDog thank you. Yes I too often just don't bother at all rather than doing 10 or 15mins. I hope you feel better soon.

@ExpertlyDecluttering thank you!

@mixedpeel thank you. Today had gone well. Better than I expected actually. It feels far easier and nicer to set out and do a small chunk rather than want to do something fully and always failing. I've spent years of cycling through setting unrealistic goals, failing, feeling terrible and then just giving up.

I will go back to the first post but I'm afraid I will lose this post if I do it now! I don't know what a tada is? I assume the stuff we've completed? So far today I have;
done 2 LOL (remembered that one lol)
washed the front door
hoovered the hallway & front room & kitchen
dusted the hallway & front room
emptied dishwasher & partially refilled
cleaned the downstairs toilet (didn't end up doing the floor)
cleaned down the sides in the kitchen
decluttered the toddlers shoe basket
filled in the calendar for the next month as groups and preschool are starting up
watered all the plants
cleaning the bannister
spent 15 mins on hotspots in the front room

It doesn't sound like much but the house looks far better than it has for weeks!

God I've just edited because I don't know how to do those little ticks and used hashs instead and all the text ended up huge!

Good lists, @HedgehogNotes and @HedgerowD!

Yep, a tada list is the opposite of a to do list! A lovely way of celebrating all you’ve accomplished.

I don’t know where the ticks are either, HedgerowD… though I kind of wish I’d seen your list writ large!

Been at work all day and just been to the gym so no flying done. Family zoom later this evening but I will do one 15 minute thing at some point before then. It should be sorting the hall as I didn’t get that done yesterday.

Just going to pop this on here

Flyladys musings of the day

Not much in the way of TaDas but here they are

⛺️ Cleaned toilet
⛺️ DW Filled, emptied, refilled
⛺️ Made bread
⛺️ Swished and Swiped
⛺️ Washed up and put away what couldn’t go in the dishwasher

To Do

🫣 Quite a lot

Info for Friday 4th September:

Babystep 4: write babysteps 1 and 2 on post-its and stick them somewhere to remind you to do them. Anyone remember what they were?! Yep, shine your sink and get dressed (to shoes if that floats your boat). Even if you don’t do this, it’s worth thinking about how you work in terms of embedding new habits. A visual prompt like a post-it, a reminder on your phone? What would help you remember to shine that sink until you find yourself just doing it without thinking?https://mymerrymessylife.com/flylady-31-baby-steps/4/

Friday’s daily habit is to clean out your car and handbag. All that crud that accumulates - most of it will almost certainly be rubbish or recycling, but amongst in will be things you forgot were in there. If you haven’t done either for a while this might take longer than 15 minutes, but it’ll come round again next week so maybe pick whichever of the two looks worse at first glance.

Flylady also suggests that Friday be earmarked for Date Night - do something nice with a significant other, a friend or with yourself.

This is the final day in Zone 1: Porch, entrance hall and dining room. The daily mission link still isn’t working https://www.flylady.net/daily-mission, so thanks to @PeonyBulb for the mission from the app. Take 15 minutes in the dining room, and chuck out the rubbish, recycle the recycling and put anything that belongs somewhere else back in its rightful place. As it says there, we are reclaiming our house 15 minutes at a time. If you did this yesterday, maybe dust the high places like light fittings and tops of pictures, or use some lovely beeswax to polish any wooden furniture.

I’ve found a link to the section of the website which has her article on perfectionism that Peony did screenshots for us: https://flylady.net/morning-musing/the-vicious-cycle-of-perfectionism

Thanks @mixedpeel and @PeonyBulb

I finally got round to cleaning the inside of the front door this morning but didn't have time for the outside, will try and get to that tomorrow. While I had the glass spray and cloth out I did the wall mirror in the hall and boy was that badly overdue. Having things in set places, where you need them really does help, I keep
clean microfibre cloths in the kitchen and bathroom and the glass spray is in the understairs cupboard because it's not used as frequently as kitchen and bathroom cleaning sprays so this only took me a moment today.

Yesterday's ta das

🧡 decluttered spare room wardrobe
🧡 Got DD to pick up after herself before bedtime which means, incredibly, downstairs is still as tidy as it was after my mega clean on Monday. Don't think I've managed that before!

Didn't manage to do anything in dining room cupboard though. DH was working on his laptop in the dining room yesterday evening and I thought it wasn't fair to start piling stuff around him

Today's mission of clearing out my handbag is already half done because yesterday my bag fell off the sofa and landed upside-down on the floor. Since everything spilled out I threw out all the rubbish. So today I just have to go back and re-home the extra pens, loose coins and paperwork.

Didn't get much done yesterday other than a load of wool washing and cleaning the sink. Oh and I did the dining table which was still on its full extension from Christmas! Put a clean cloth on it and polished some other furniture.

Current goals are
Errands - take some stuff to tip.

• return stuff to Next
• Shopping

Put 5 things on Vinted each day. I did this earlier in the year and it worked really well. The walk to the lockers to post is good exercise too.

I might sort out one of the dressers in the dining room if I can before we change zones and I still need to do the inside of the door. I guess next time it comes round I can do a bit more on this zone and eventually it will be perfect!

The kids agreed to putting a doll on vinted, well, it going a while back, then ds 3 decided to play with it. It's definitely not a favourite but I was concidering taking it off vinted but it sold. I'm sentimental about kids toys and remember where most came from. But we have boxes and mountains of toys so really it's the right thing. This one was a boy our generation doll that was wearing a similar outfit to DS when he was nearly 2 so got all excited.

So I should post him off to a new home, get more love like Jessie in toy story. 🤣

The 20 item fling, or whatever it is doesn't work for me, I think I need a different approach, more for someone heading towards hoarding like me.

My DSis is due to adopt and we post a box of gifts, include some toys of DDS choosing I think I'd find that easier. Eg I found a few sets of jewellery making kids beads

Well my ex wants to sell my house and I it is a big house full of my stuff from all my hobbies etc. Going forward, I won't be able to store all this stuff, plus I don't use it so I am trying to whittle it down so it's easier to manage when I eventually move. It's just painful because I thought I'd have this house and all this space forever. My partner is thinking about buying my ex off but tbh, a fresh start somewhere else might be good for me.

I don't know what the 20 item fling is. I'm pretty good at getting rid of stuff, just also pretty good at accumulating it :(

@KitsyWitsy I've got a similar issue with craft stuff; some of it like paint and glues and so on, I've not used them in a few years but I keep thinking I might (but I know I won't). Scrapbooking papers that weren't cheap so don't want to get rid. I have way too many DMC threads beads and plain cross stitch fabrics and really, I should just parcel them up with a label and send them to the charity shop, as someone else could enjoy them. In fact, before finishing this post I grabbed a bag and went through the threads and fabrics, labelled them and they're ready to go to the charity shop. Another storage box emptied. Phew!

My zone for this week has been the bedroom and bathroom and next week will be hall stairs and landing; we're out for a few days next week so I've been my future friend and wiped the landing and stair area (mopped it the other day) and swept the hall and kitchen floors. I've not shiny shined my sink much but I have kept it clean and the dishes put away. The bathroom tiles are looking way better after using a magic sponge on them during every shower.

I know I keep saying this, but it's lovely to leave the house and come back to a relatively clean and tidy place. Have a great day, all xxx

I got the hump yesterday, went to post my parcels, only one had a prepaid label (that was emailed to me) that I needed to print off myself.
Spent nearly an hour trying to connect my printer to my newish laptop, getting more and more frustrated.
Had to ask a friend to print it off for me so I can post it today.
Bagged up some more charity clothes, took my laundry off the rack where it's been for a week, then needed to lie down.
I feel like I've got flu but without the respiratory symptoms.
Happy flying everyone!

@ExpertlyDecluttering good advice on having the appropriate cleaning stuff easily to hand. Then a quick job becomes a very quick job because everything is where you need it!

@HedgehogNotes it sounds like things are really changing in your household! Hope you and DD will be able to (mostly) keep it up. I had to laugh at your kamikaze handbag obviously saying “pick me” for the clean out!

Aw, @Alwaysgrowing , that doll does sound a particularly special one. It’s good modelling for your kids I think to regularly sell/give away outgrown toys. The adoption is a massive thing and it will be a very meaningful way of passing things on and demonstrating that the DC is fully part of the wider family.

@KitsyWitsy the stuff with your ex and your home does complicate things and add a whole other emotional layer to it. The 20 item fling will probably come up as a baby step later in the month. Pretty much what it says on the tin, stick some music on and run round to find 20 things to chuck out. What Flylady does is give you these little phrases/names for things so when you’re feeling overwhelmed or can’t think where to start, your brain can say “shine your sink!” or “do a 20 item fling”

I am inspired by your ‘do it now’ decision, @PamelaColmansMustard - packing a bag for charity mid-post is maybe a new target for all of us!

@CherryogDog I think companies should be banned from expecting customers to print off their own return labels, grrr. Or shall we just ban printers altogether?! They never get on with any other equipment and secretly drink toner overnight it seems. Grumpy little gits that just make us grumpy. Down with printers! It sounds like you might have the virus that I had a few weeks ago. Totally draining but like you say, hard to pin down what it is as no sneezing, coughing etc.

Here‘s flylady’s September habit - the Before Bed routine. I know longerstanding fledglings swear by this, but as a newbie I haven’t deployed it yet: https://flylady.net/morning-musing/15-minutes-makes-a-big-difference

We started doing this in September a couple of years ago and it genuinely stuck. The back to school energy makes it so much easier to reset the house too, not just the kids routines. I do a big clear of the kitchen surfaces every Sunday now and it makes the whole week feel less chaotic somehow.

@PamelaColmansMustard I destashed a lot of wool this year on Vinted. Made a few thousand! Yes, I really did have a lot! And I still do.

I have a lot of stuff from my cricut phase as well, including one machine I never used once! I have to accept I don't have time for all this stuff and just sell it especially since I am hoping to get a job soon so will have even less time.

@CherryogDog I am pretty technically minded but I have lost days to the most simplest of tasks. I use an old munbyn to print off my labels for vinted now but it took such a lot of setting up. I would rather put printed labels on stuff im sending than use digital thing at the lockers as I have heard of parcels getting mixed up. Still, they do anyway don't they.

So far today

One errand - emptied the car boot of stuff I've been carrying around for, forever. In it was a giant bag of teabags my son gave me. He writes reviews for amazon and he gave me them but I only drink Yorkshire tea. Tip men were very pleased and said it would keep them in tea for ages.

• Finished front door from hallway side and cleaned catflap.
• 2 things on vinted, hope to add more.

Next to do is, take stuff back to next and clean front windowsills. I can't do it now because my chatty neighbour is out there. And I want to put at least 3 more things on vinted for my 5 a day.

I do like the sound of the evening routine. Just to be set for tomorrow and in proper wind down mode before bedtime sounds like it would lead to a calmer state of mind.

I've de-cluttered the rest of my handbag. Not had much time to do anything else this evening. I'm about to put DD to bed then going to turn in myself. Not slept well this week and I'm shattered now. I'm really looking forward to getting settled into bed with my book this evening . . . maybe with a Friday night tipple as well!