set up FLYlady routines

I’m not going to be too ambitious to start with. I’m just going to concentrate on doing house blessing on a Monday, and spending a few minutes each day making the house better than it was. If I can work through that all the time and extra when I’m in the right mood, then I’m heading in the right direction.
I know I can work in new routines, because I’ve done it. I can create new habits, but it can’t be done all at once.

I’m determined to get further on the house this time. I’ve decided that I can’t possibly begrudge spending 30 minutes a day on housework. I’m allotting 30 minutes each weekday on specific tasks/rooms, and gradually those areas should get sorted. They will be public areas. The rest can wait for now. I can’t juggle all the balls at once from the start, so let’s cut down on the balls and concentrate on mastering a few at a time.

The new routine is:
Monday – houseblessing, which means emptying bins, dusting and hoovering. This has been happening most Mondays for 18 months.
Tuesday – sitting room.
Wednesday – kitchen
Thursday – dining room
Friday – hall, landing and bathroom.

If I set the timer for 30 minutes and do whatever I can in that area for the time allotted, I should start seeing an improvement, while still having plenty of time for other tasks in the day.

Oh, and if I’m capable of checking my emails for ten minutes before I go to bed, I’m perfectly capable of making sure the washing up is done as well.

I’ll report in next week with progress!

Every so often I think I’m making progress on this, but I backslide again. I keep remembering flylady’s advice, you’re not behind, just jump in where you are. It didn’t get messy in a day and it won’t get clean in a day.
Having a messy house is really starting to cramp my style now, and my kids are getting old enough that it could well start to cramp their social lives as well. I must get this organized. Otherwise one day the kids will be gone and I’ll be left knowing that they’ve never known what it’s like to live in a tidy, organized house.

I want to not only get better at housework, but teach my children to keep things tidy as well. I decided for the next few weeks to concentrate on making the beds. We all get a blob if our bed is properly made in the morning (no toys dumped on the bed, and in my case no piles of clean clothes laid all over the bed). When we have at least 25 blobs each I’ll buy a new swing for the garden, as our old one was so corroded it had to be dismantled. The new swing will be a big wooden one, to take adults as well.
I’m hoping that by starting small we can form the habit and it will be easier to add in new habits once this one is properly established. In the meantime I’m enjoying earning my blob every morning! The only one excused from bedmaking is DH, and that’s his privilege because he is always the first one out of it in the mornings.
We can earn extra blobs for doing at least half an hour’s work around the house or garden – three of us earned them for mowing the grass and strimming the garden.

I’m determined not to try too much too soon, but to establish good habits gradually. I’ve managed the weekly home blessing, and morning routines come naturally. So for this week I have two aims:
To lay out my clothes for the next day
To keep my sink empty and shining as often as possible.
Let’s see how I go with these simple aims for one week.

While I haven’t got very far in actually setting up routines to maintain the house, I’ve done a lot of tidying/decluttering today and yesterday. I’ve worked on the boys’ bedroom for a couple of hours, and I tidied the kitchen sides yesterday. I even shone my sink this morning!
I’m feeling a lot better about the house and about my ability to cope with it and get it under control. And I even managed to find my precious flylady pen, which had disappeared into a black hole in the boys’ bedroom!

I’m trying to get somewhere with my routines. So far I have a morning routine, which runs pretty well. I haven’t really managed an evening routine very often, although on the odd occasion I’ve laid out my clothes I’ve felt better as a result.
One thing I have succeeded at though is the weekly houseblessing. Every Monday morning I empty the bins, dust and hoover. I feel much better knowing at least the basics are being done, and the children know they have to have their bedroom floors reasonably clean at least once a week. They benefit when their rooms are tidy, and it’s really for them that I want to get going properly on routines.