Fledging flyers - December's messaholics anonymous meeting place

[droitwitchmum]

Everyone welcome, newcomers and old(ish) flappers alike!

Here you can do any of the following:

• repeat or start baby steps

• repeat baby steps + do 15 mins a day decluttering in the current zone

• reinforce babysteps and do daily missions if you have finished decluttering

As Christmas is approaching I will also be posting Christmas missions.

I'll post links early in the morning on the relevant day while I'm making the coffee and brewing tea. There might even be toast...

Good luck!

Glad to hear the amount of plastic decreases with age. Ds is mad on lego at the moment and i have storage tubes of lego coming out of my ears. Some in bits and some in one piece. The old star wars thing seems to be timeless. Ds has just started collecting that. But our biggest bit of plastic this christmas was a skate board ramp that he will have to wait until spring to use. its just to cold and icey.

OM- Have a lovely trip. ENjoy then break and the east coast air.

Today is full of flying plans but i have woken up with a bad pain in the top of my shoulders and back. Its it making moving hard so will have to take a few pain killers before getting up and on. hoping just got cold in the night. Got a fair bit done last night so not feeling too bad about the to do mountain.

[Staggers into room, not quite with it today]Just going to do 15 mins flying and then not get bogged down with all little things [including lego)
and keep enjoying my XMAS break
Feel very pleased with myself for tidying the dcs rooms last night when they were in bath and hoovering dd's floor when she was getting dressed for bed.

Realised cannot deal with toys till after Xmas is long past and kids at school. Will just have to wallow for now.
Also want to do as many of dd's kits as possible whilst we have this family time, and a bit of peace and quiet.

Laundry is going well
sink shining and washing up
Floorsweeping ditto
S & S ditto
clutter is still gathering though

Hang in there swan. Its less then a week til school for us. It will get there and it is new clutter so should be hopeully slightly easier to deal with then stuff that has sat in a box for months and needs attention. You'll get there!

dem did you have to mention that it is less than a week till school

I am looking at the pile of must done before Jan 4th and getting a bit panicy. help. Tis very much on my brain at the mo.

three more weeks of mat leave then I'm back to school too

If I come in bearing leftover mulled wine and Christmas cake can I come back in.

Just popping my head in to say I'm starting to get back in the swing of things after the Christmas chaos and will be ready to really get going from Monday.

Might be in and out for the chat before then - y'know just to ease myself in gently.

Hope you all had lovely non-tidy but not completely chaotic Christmases.

Hello! Great to see everyone back - hope you all had wonderful Christmases ...

Gosh, you have certainly all been busy ... I think I have been enjoying Christmas a bit too much and have done absolutely NO flying (other than clearing up meals) at all .... it's just so rare that dd, dh and I are altogether in the same place and that dh takes 5 consective days off work...it's been really, really fab...just spent the day playing with dd, reading newspapers, going for walks, eating fruit, cold sausages and Christmas cake and dancing round to old Nancy Sinatra cds.....but now the house is a complete disaster ....

Must start properly tomorrow morning and will post my list then. Am in same position as Mellie, def need Jan thread, and have friends and family coming for new year and there's a humunguous list of chores for me to do before then ...and then it's back to work and school on 4th ....yikes!!!!

Oh and I'm with DroitwichMum on the space issue. We live in a large house (you get much more property for your money over here) and although we are v. lucky to have the space we are still messy and cluttered:

(1) because you don't have to be so circumspect about throwing out stuff ... there's always space to dump it somewhere ..so you do

(2) because I'm a lazy cow couch potato and it's more of an effort to "just nip upstairs" to get something from the roof or put something away if it involves clambering up or down lots of stairs....

(3) because if you don't use all of the spaces available for something specific, they become elephant graveyards for your sister's broken ironing board, your uncle's spare treadmill and your brother's bashed in guitar....

I know there's a balance but honestly, clutter just grows in line with the amount of space available to house it ....ruthless chucking out is the only way to go ....if you bring in one new pair of trainers/one CD/one book/ you have to chuck a corresponding old item out.....I'll follow my own advice one of these days too ....

Mahoosive respect to Droitwich for keeping all the steps going throughout the holidays.....and thanks for shiny new Jan thread (great title btw)!! Did your ds manage to keep his clothes on during all the festivities?

Swan you have it exactly right as usual... ... keep enjoying the holidays and keep doing focused bits of cleaning here and there ....no "all or nothing" thinking ...will try and follow your v. sound example

DEM hope your shoulder is better

Pluto "profitez" (as they say over here) and hope you have a blast during your last two weeks ...'tis tough I know though x

Hope you have a lovely trip Optimistle - we usually try to get to the coast once during new year - nowt like bracing sea air to start the year off refreshed...

Dreamingofawhitexmasteam - dream fulfilled over here!!! But nearly all the snow has gone now ...hope your cold is better

Hello to SBB, MrsDingDong and Wtd

and PF - bet you lived up to your nickname this Christmas!!

Right, I'm off to pour myself a little snifter of something, try out some of my Christmas smellies and have a long hot bubble bath, watch a DVD (when dh finally descends from bedtime story duty ..; why do blokes take so long????) and get an early night in preparation for the big clean-up tomorrow ...

Pours Christmas snifters all round ....night all ....

Yay!! x posts HavingaRR!! Great to see you ...no offerings necessary but mmmm... that cake is good ....

And waves to Mini-M PushmePullyou Annabel and anyone I've missed (looks round hopefully for ShoppingVeggie)

Evening all. So today i have been:

sorting the office, discovering the bedroom fall, laundry (including the ironing), paperwork sorting. Havent finished any of the above yet but have made huge progress. Although now i have moved the clutter of the floor i have lost its insulating effect and need to get a rug. PLus it is very nice to have a bedroom which is for relaxing and not for working in. Looking forward to chilling out in it tonight.

Evening all!

Evening all!

Lovely to see you back too SCTB
Was white here also on Christmas Eve, but thank goodness gone by Christmas Day so DS could ride his bike

On top of the usual, I have
changed DS' bed and tidied his room
put away all the odds and sods of Xmas decorations except the crib and the tree
started to clear some space for DS' new gifts
Put away all my new presents

Oh and -get me- MEAL PLANNED! Hurrah!!

Great work there DEM and hi to everyone else

Good morning! It finally snowed here last night but hasn't settled. Hope everyone else is ok - DH saw loads of snow on his travels yesterday.

vvvv excited - look what I've found! Holiday Clean-up missions! Enjoy (there are videos )

Babystep today is to check your calendar to see what is happening next month. I have 3 birthdays and my new working pattern

The mission fits in well with the clean-up one - putting things away. Get the DC involved!

My list
1 load of washing
try to get all of the washing (bedclothes etc) from yesterday dry
tidy bedrooms
tidy dining room
5 min room rescus of kitchen
1 hour of work
Food shopping
Library
s&s
shine sink

See you later - have a great day. I'm off to check the January thread - loads of places marked already

Morning DWM
Back to reality with a bump here and a visit due from Dynorod! I don't think our drainage system coped with the freezing weather or the number of visitors we had all using the facilities in one hit! iykwim
Anyway today I just need to do a couple of things so we are ready to go when DH comes home from work!
Get DC to pack own bags
Pack DH and my bag
Pack some perishable food/alcolhol
Hoover upstairs
Change bedding
Last bits of ironing
Buy firework cake

I thought that was a little list but, oh well!

Have a lovely day everyone and see you on our new shiney thread...

morning everyone, i second what om says it really is back to reality with a big fat bump. nice to see everyone back after the festivities hope you are all well and nice and relaxed. we had a very relaxed christmas here. as sc said it's not often we get lots of family time so have just enjoyed playing and not really done much flying at all. i listed posted yesterday and did not a jot .

today i am list posting but safe in the knowledge i have already done quite a lot so it looks a lot better

list goes like this:-

dw on done
wm unloaded, clothes in drier and wm back on done
general tidy downstairs done
floors swept and mopped done
sort dc's clothes out and get rid of things that don't fit
take remaining xmas pressies out of living room and find a place for them (apart from dd's because nowhere else for them to go!)
clean bathroom
change beds
go into town to try and find wii games that are really easy for ds (any ideas?)

it is a miserable day here today, cold and raining so the bit about going out may not get done. we shall see....have a good day everyone.

DWM - that's a good list - thanks for keeping us going
OM have a good trip - lucky you going away for new year, I've always wanted to do that...maybe next year, or perhaps we'll be in a lovely big new house and be able to have a party. Our present home is really too small for parties in the winter.
Elliepac I think I'll just copy and paste your list today - it's strangely like the one I'm working on...does your DS have the Wii play game - I think those games are pretty easy (but maybe not very exciting) it comes with a remote - if you need another one.

d/w loaded done
DS1's clothes sorted for charity etc done
Kitchen floor swept done
ironing mostly done to do
fresh bedding on all beds
perpetual tidy up of downstairs
tidy DS1's bedroom with his assistance
go to town to buy some clothes for work in the sales
finish the ironing

I gave up yesterday and went to bed with a good which i thoroughly enjoy and finished at 5.30am today is a nothing day so my aim is to:

sort out ds's room
put away clothes
pick up ds (back from a few days alone with his dad)
Ikea
early!!! night.

have a good day all.

Hi all

Just quick one as we're still festive here so both flyinmg and computer time have taken a bit of a back seat over the last few days .

Not going back to work until 11th Jan (hooray ) so just trying to keep generally on top of things until then. Not doing too badly but upstairs desperately needs hoovering and I keep not finding the time as either DD is awake and no time for hoovering, or is asleep upstairs so don't want to wake her.

Today's list is very short, namely either find credit card or cancel it - I think it has been 'toddler posted' somewhere

Good to see everyone back and hope happy Christmases were had by all

ooh, something odd is going on. Yesterday was the second time I posted to say hello and it didn't work! Probably related to me doing something wrong rather than Mumsnet malfunction!

Anyway, I'll try again HELLO EVERYONE - hope you all had a fabulous Christmas!

Back soon - going to have to resume flying at some point as things are starting to fall out of some of the cupboards when I open the doors!

Hi all (rather shame-faced because I didn't get to bed at all early last night despite genuinely good intentions...in fact it was 2.50 am by the time we crawled up the stairs..dh and I having got in to a long and rather heated debate about the house renovation ....a bit too much red wine involved too !!....but at least we have finally come up with a plan of action we can both agree on (again!)....so it was worth it in a tortuous kind of way)

I have packed dd and dh off to the woods so I can get something done and now I'm feeling really resentful that I am stuck at home doing housework when they are out having all the fun. How perverse is that when it was my idea in the first place?!!

Heigh ho. Had better stop grumbling and:

• write out final few new year cards (people tend to send more NY cards over here than Christmas cards)

• deliver them on foot

• put clothes away in bedroom

• sort washing

• start washing

• 15 mins tidy of sitting room

• 15 mins tidy of bedroom

• 15 mins tidy of home office

• 15 mins tidy of bathroom

(have done supermarket shop and cleaned out gps)

Been thinking about new year resolutions:

Following Jan baby-steps really consistently (consistency here is the key not perfectionism) will cover most of it but also want to

power walk 50 mins in park x3 or x2 a week (haven't quite decided which is most realistic)

continue 20 mins language learning per day x 6 a week

lose 10kg slowly through healthy eating and being more active not dieting

look after my own health better ie nothing major just go and get some regular health screens and checks etc, eyes tested, dental check ups that sort of thing

continue doing something creative for an hour or two every Tuesday

continue to have a regular sewing project 'on the go' in the evenings

keep my posts on this thread a bit shorter (fgrin)

AND REALLY REALLY NEED TO FOCUS ON GETTING TO BED AT A DECENT HOUR

That sounds a lot but I am already doing the language and the creative projects and most of the baby-steps (apart from this week!)

Sorry to use this thread as a personal sounding board!! But it really helps to see it written down ....

Right must stop procrastinating and get stuck in ....half the day is gone already ...

Sorry. Sorry. That was a rather self-centred post - (or even more self-centred than usual!! ) forgot to wave to everyone!!

Hello to MiniM, Pushme, DidEinstein's, Pluto Ellie + everyone else and thank you for excellent list DroitwichM

Hi everyone,

Have slipped a bit in terms of making lists etc, suspect I won't really get back to it till next week when everyone is back to school/work. In order to give myself a boot up the bum I have invited 4 other families over for New Years Day, given that we live in a small Victorian terrace house (eg Coronation Street) this may be a bit unwise! But, I watched Corrie the other day and the Barlows had about 20 people at Christmas lunch in their tiny house, so why not?

I also have DD's birthday party next week so quite a bit to do, then as soon as that's over it's on to DS's party. Groan. If I am not on here much in the next couple of weeks it's because I am partied out, and not in a good way either.

SC - I like your resolutions. I have been thinking about applying Flying principles to other areas of my life (diet, exercise particularly) ie making small changes one at a time so that they become built in habits before you realise it. I will update on this when I have decided what my first babysteps are going to be. Less MN time really ought to feature too.....

Better go, procrastination has beome habitual again this week and that is not the way to Fly.

Hello lovely fly ladies, I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas. It's been lovely in the dinosaur house and I'm a lot less stressed than I was before Christmas, probably something to do with all the booze .

I have had to do some paid work over the last couple of days but I've nearly finished that now, so will get a couple of days off over the New Year.

DH has been helping me with cleaning the house. We live in a flood zone and last night the river in front of our house burst its banks so the field in front of us is one enormous lake, so DH and I have spent all day decluttering downstairs, making sure there's nothing on the floor etc, so as DH said, if we do get flooded at least the house will be clean . Nothing like a bit of panic to kick you into action though. It's stopped raining now and I don't think any more rain is forecast for the next few days so hopefully water will go down before the next lot arrives. Emergency bags are packed for a quick evacuation though - we've been flooded for the last two years so I'm not holding my breath that we're going to get away with it this year.

I have used it as an excuse to clean out the futility room so am feeling quite proud of myself!

Desk space is cleaned.

DH has sorted out his CD's/DVD's and actually put some in the bin .

Like you SC I've been thinking about a bit of structure to my life in the New Year, so have got to try and organise the work/life balance a bit better.

I'd love to do some exercise but it will have to be in front of TV (obviously Wii Fit or Davina DVD and not just sitting on the sofa watching Mr Motivator do his stuff) as DS's are too young to leave while I go for a run and when they're not home I'm working.

Starting my OU French course in February so must try and fit in an hour or so a day studying.

Flying obviously, just keeping on top of things if anything.

Look after my health, haven't been to the dentist had eyes tested for years. so to that end I'm off to see an insurance guy tomorrow to buy us some top up health insurance.

Try and spend more time playing with the DC's rather than just doing homework/cooking tea and reading bedtime stories on a school night. Will maybe send them to bed 30 mins later so we can play a family game every couple of nights.

OK am off to have a bit of a drink and do my ironing. Not that much of the Mint Baileys left ladies, so I'm going to have to open the normal one - help yourselves and there's some Christmas choccies left so have a couple of them on your way past too.

See you tomorrow for the last day of the year.

morning ladies, couldn't sleep so have been up since stupid o'clock, nothing productive done you understand, just sat here, drunk some coffee and lurked on mn .

seeing wtd and sc being all philosophical got me thinking and there are lots of things i would like to change.

1. stop eating cake and be skinny (unrealistic expectation - should read eat less cake (there's got to be some pleasure in life), get off my sofa for a change, purchase wii fit, use it madly for a month and then watch it sit by the tv for the next 11 )

1. live in an immaculately decorated and tidy/clean house (unrealistic expectation - should read actually get round to decorating living room/hallway, get dh off his bum to finish bathroom, win the lottery to re-do kitchen and actually conquer the babysteps after 4 months of trying )

1. like wtd spend more time with dc's during the week (realistic expectation but that requires me to be able to fly after 7.30pm and not watch soaps give in to tiredness so easily - possibly unrealistic)

1. sort finances out instead of just muddling through and actually have some savings (unrealistic expectation - should read try to be a little less disorganised and not spend money on things i don't need )

so that's it, a whole brand new and improved ellie for 2010? hmmmmmm we shall see!

today's list is humongous due to small soiree tonight although it is 'only' my sister and our closest 'couple' friends, both of whom have seen my house in far worse states than it currently is so not tooooo stressed....yet. :-

unload wm/load
go to tesco for party food
clean bathroom
tidy/clean our bedroom (really don't want to do this but friend's baby will be going in the travel cot in our bedroom while the rest of us are partying so needs must)
tidy ds room so dc's can play in there tonight
panic
cook/prepare food

have a fab day and if i don't get back on here (probably will, can never resist a quick peek!) i wish you all a very happy and peaceful new year and see you on the january thread!

Morning ellie. That's one hell of a list. Glad to see you included panic on it - so important to plan ahead

Today's clean-up mission is to put some decs away - although she is letting you keep the tree up . Ours are coming down at the weekend

I like today's babystep. Remember how far you have come and what you have achieved instead of thinking 'I still haven't done X X or X'

The mission is to have a detailed vacuum of the living room and boy does mine need it (long haired black cat - you get the picture!)

My list today is
go to osteopath
get off backside and DO SOMETHING! Had 2 days of doing very little. I need to room rescue our bedroo, kitchen and dining room, then that vacuum of the living room might be just the thing to get me to do the rest of the house too.

Back for progress report later!

Morning all
Ellie - it is important to book in that time for the panic and nervous breakdown cos other wise you never seem to get round to it good luck with all your preperations for tonight.

so yesterday i managed;
sort out ds's room half
put away clothes ignored
pick up ds done
Ikea half got hat wanted
early!!! night. did was alseep before 10.30pm and not up til after 8.30am so needles to say i feel like rubbish. so today the plan is:

crawl out of bed and get up
play with ds
sort ds' room out
clothes
pick up some streamers and blowers
cook party food (little sausages, little sausage rolls and scrambled egg)
Lay other bits
let ds deafen me and drive me mad for halfhour
put ds into bed and
Get an early night.

yes ok i know it is new years eve but this traditionally is the one day of the year when i get an early night. tv is crap and i am so worn out from double ended candle burning that needs must.

Happy new year to you all and see you on the january thread. Have a good day.