More on my FLYing adventures....

i began Fly Lady back in January when i was deep in my annual Seasonal Depression...my house trashed, my floors sticky and crunchy...laundry rotating on the couch. I have proudly been babystepping the system for 6 months now!! My family is mostly on-board (we are still working on baby-stepping the kiddoes into keeping their rooms tidy), and we have made LOTS of changes in our habits including 'decluttering' the dish cabinet because i was tired of washing 2 dishwasher loads of dishes per day in my small portable dishwasher. I labeled a bowl, plate, cup and silverware for each member of the family, and moved the rest to the very TOP of the cupboard (company). We now wash each dish after each meal and get it put away to keep the sink clear (because my family now understands now nice it is to have a shiney sink!!)

i have gotten rid of countless bags of un-needed items, donating them to the thrift store if i couldn't think of specific people that could use my stuff. We still have a long way to go, but its amazing how much stuff i have gotten rid of in just 6 months.

DH was able to rip out the 35 year old living room carpet to reveal beautiful hard wood floors because all the excess junk in the livingroom is GONE!! My bedroom has become a haven, where before it was a dumping ground for the stash n dash (Its like Marla has been to my house HAHA I thought i was the only one besides my mom that did stash n dash)! And now i have a new bedspread on the way to make my bed even more special, and a place to put the Jammy Bag my mama made me when i was little :

The Apron

2 weeks ago i decided i needed some new aprons, and the frugal Taycia wanted inexpensive but durable. I first checked the ones on the Flylady.net website. Cute, big pocket vests--$19.99 plus shipping. OUCH! I know that purchases from her shop fund the program and keep it free...but I have already spent my $$ on the Rubba tools and Duster LOL!! I looked elsewhere online and found some CUTE cobbler style ones from plentyofaprons.com. Now, i love cobbler aprons, especially if they are long enough in back to cover my butt as i tend to wipe my hands on my butt more often than on a towel. $8.95 each for v-neck aprons plus shipping was too good to pass up! So i ordered a couple, and waited....and waited....and am still waiting. By last Thursday the waiting had been driving me CRAZY, and the link won't give me tracking info and i am grumpy. So i was working on decluttering in the bigger Attic room and came across the bag'o'shirts to be 'recycled'. Most of these shirts are Zach's old dress shirts that he has worn a hole in the elbow and i was planning on taking them down to the Cleaners and just having the sleeves hemmed but never got around to it. I had the genious idea of recycling the fabric into an apron, but wasn't quite sure on how i was going to accomplish this. So as soon as we got home from Story Time, and i got my kiddoes fed their lunch I began creating. I started just cutting and pressing and sewing and Bonzai'd zach's Blattner shirt into:

I loved the design so much that i made 2 more out of other shirts the same day. The pockets are the salvagable material from the sleeves, the side buttons are from the sleeve cuff as well. Needless to say i will be sending the Aprons i ordered back and getting my $25 back, especially since i made three aprons from old shirts in about 2 hours.

Five minutes.

Know what i can do in five minutes? I can pick up the stray toys that migrated to the living room and toss them as far as my kids rooms (they get a timer later to pick all that up BWAHAHAHA), straighten the couch cushions, get blankets stuffed back into the 'blanket basket', and still have time to deal with the papers Miss Jo left on the dining table.

In 10 minutes i can vacuum, or spot clean windows, or dust the main floor, or quick clean the man room (Dust AND vacuum).

In 15 minutes i can get my kitchen from a sinkful of dishes to spotless, save for some of the ground in grunge on the cabinets...but that is another 15 minute project. I can also fold and put away one load of laundry in 15 mn or less.

What can you do in just a handful of minutes? Get out an egg timer and do it now!!

FLYin by the seat of my pants!

I joined Fly Lady 8 weeks ago. I had finally hit rock bottom on my housekeeping, tired of the STUFF being shuffled around because nobody knew what to do with it. i have been meaning to post about it, but have been PRO-crastinating big time.

I caved and actually checked out the Fly Lady website, signed up for her Big Tent site and daily digest email, and clicked the 'Getting Started' link in one of the big purple boxes. I read through the page and curiosly clicked the "Beginner Babysteps" link

GO SHINE YOUR SINK appeared on an image of a sticky note. Intrigued by this, i went into the kitchen and reluctantly took all the dirty dishes out of the sink and scrubbed it with some Soft Scrub (anyone with white enamel knows how stained they get). It was SOOOO pretty! I didn't want to put the dirty dishes back in, but in order to deal with those i actually had to UNLOAD my dishwasher.

By day 4 i had been shining my sink for FOUR days and getting ALL the way dressed to the shoes i hated so much (yeah, i am a barefoot girl--but the shoes do have an affect on the attitude), and i began my Control Journal just like Fly Lady suggests. Amazingly the journal seemed to help keep me on task better than any other 'tool' i had tried to use. By Day 15 i had a whole routine for morning and night, my Mt. Washmore was more under control, I was dressing to shoes every morning, and my sink was almost always empty. On top of that i had been following the 15 minutes of decluttering every day and had literally gotten rid of an entire room full of stuff just chipping away for 15 minutes each day. By day 31 i was FLYing high after realizing that Zach and I had moved over 250# of un-used stuff from our home to the thrift stores in town. I still have another load to drop off that is un-accounted for, which i need to do soon as my pickup bed looks like a travelling yard sale!

I still have a long way to go, but i now have the tools to keep FLYing high!

Sigh...the Holidays.

This year the family is mostly getting hand made gifts. You heard me! Hand made! I have tons of yarn just sitting there so i may as well put some of it to use!

Its not because we are poor...or that i am cheap (some of my yarn, I confess, was not cheap) but rather i love giving gifts that people will use and love and not let sit and gather dust in some random box.

So there. Deal with it. :)

People make me grumpy...

I hate when i delegate tasks to discover it would have been quicker and less painful to just do it myself. And now the clock is ticking and i have to get stuff done NOW on the double no help. By. My. Self. Gr.

Sometimes new is OK

We bought metal folding chairs instead of regular dining chairs because they are just more practical for our lifestyle right now in the fact that i can fold them up out of sight if the two climbers get too frisky, and i can take em out and hose them down if they get too nasty...which is only practical in the summer of course. I am dead tired of scrubbing crap off my folding chairs. I decided that slipcovers were a necessary evil since i can pull them off and wash them when they get dirty rather than scrubbing snot, pudding, and spaghetti sauce off daily...especially with as much entertaining as we do.

I began researching the most cost-effective and time-effective way to meet my need. New fabric is increasingly expensive, and with estimating about 3 yds/chair and 5 chairs to cover...YIKES! The thrift stores around here have very little in regards to fabric, most of it is remnants from other people's projects and really isn't much good for more than quilting, and seem to be very short on sheets i could recycle. (I found one with Barney...and i REFUSE to recycle a Barney the Dinosaur sheet for my dining chairs. I do have standards you know!)

I started looking online for slipcovers for folding chairs and they were either as much as making my own or i had to order 100!! I finally found a site, YaYa Creations, that offered them in singles, for $2.50 each!! and Flat rate shipping!! Hey I can deal with that! They are polyester, so i can't dye them, but i can wash them and bleach them as needed!! And if i get the whim i can take some fabric paint and stencil them (or get some iron on transfers to paint) with something 1950's since that is the 'theme' i seem to be following.

They may not be a fluffy expensive dining chair, but they work for us and work with my 'bohemian' style of "this and that" and look way nicer than the crusty black folding chairs i bought on sale at the kwalget store.