Learning to Fly(lady)

I'm joining in with Sophia from My Great Challenge on YouTube, in trying to follow the routines of the infamous Flylady in an attempt to get and to keep my house in order.  She is making a series of videos charting her progress using the Flylady's techniques for creating a routine that allows you to keep on top of your housekeeping and helps you to declutter unnecessary items from your home.

I watched a few of Sophia's videos on the subject and jotted down a few notes before I decided to actually join with her and try to follow Flylady's baby steps to develop new household routines. It was only when I went out and bought some bleach today that I finally committed myself to start the process myself and tonight I completed the first step, namely to Shine Your Sink.

This action forms the initial basis of the new routine, as it then allows you form the habit to shine your sink each evening before retiring.

There are many steps that follow this one, but it all starts here and other things then can be added to this routine, building it up into a comprehensive way to tackle your whole home in the time you have available.

So first step - Shine Your Sink

Fill your sink with a bleach/water solution and leave for one hour. (Make sure you open a window as the fumes from the bleach are quite strong). Empty the sink and then take a cloth, scrubbie, toothbrush or whatever else you need to use and shine your sink/draining board areas thoroughly.

Follow this up by cleaning this area every evening before retiring to bed (exact timing is up to the individual).

I duly followed these instructions.  It had been a while since I'd deep cleaned the sink area, so quite a bit of limescale had built up in some parts of the draining board, especially around the base of the tap.  I tackled this whilst my sink was cleaning itself by using a mixture of water and isopropyl alcohol which very quickly breaks down the limescale, allowing it to be easily wiped away.  Any stubborn bits were subsequently attacked with a razor blade, with great care.

Here's the finished result.

As you can see, we have a double sink.  The left hand side is for washing up our dishes, the right for washing the dog's dishes. In the interests of hygiene, I like to keep these tasks totally separate. The right/dog side does tend to get overlooked in terms of cleaning as it is used less, so it can get a bit grimy.  Hopefully, this new routine will help me to be more disciplined about keeping it clean.

Having shined my sinks, it does instantly make the kitchen feel tidier and cleaner and there's nothing quite like coming down to a clean sink area in a morning. I may not use bleach each time as it is quite strong, but I will probably use it once a week to keep it clean.

Anyway, having watched 2 further videos of Sophia I have also started to prepare what Flylady calls a control journal which helps you to stick to the routines you create and I have prepared the initial morning and evening routines that Flylady suggests you will need to follow.

Included in these routines are some essentials aside from shining your sink, such as recognising and tackling hotspots of clutter in your home (set a timer and tackle one hotspot each day for 5 minutes only), a daily 15 minute declutter of any area you choose, make your bed daily, always prepare and set out your clothes for the next day, check your calendar and ask yourself 'What's for dinner?' (to remind you to get what you need out of the freezer), dress up for the day (i.e. don't stay in your pyjamas all day), do one load of laundry per day, (I won't be doing this as we don't make enough laundry to do a load each day, but will probably do 3 or 4 each week), swish and swipe your bathroom(s) (again just five minutes should be sufficient for decluttering and wiping clean your bathroom surfaces and quickly cleaning the toilet) and finally, set a time to go to bed/sleep and wake up and try to stick to it.

Some of these things I do already.  I always wash up after dinner and try to leave my sink area tidy on retiring of an evening and I always dress up for the day, make my bed in a morning and try to check my menu plan and take out any meat I might need from the freezer, so I do know that doing these things works and helps to make the day go much more smoothly.  I also know that if I don't do these things, it can create problems.

Step Two of Flylady's system is to visit Flylady.net. and take some flying lessons.  This will be my homework over the weekend whilst we are away.

In addition to doing this, I will probably also start to read this book that I found today in Home Bargains for £1. Hopefully, it won't confuse me too much.