Serene of the Oakland Serenes

I used to resist being told what to do unless I was at work. These days, I use being told what to do as a tool. When I feel overwhelmed by something, I sometimes ask someone near me to tell me what to do next, and it breaks the logjam. Similarly, the morning routines have made my mornings more productive just by existing. When I wonder what I should do next, I just consult the list. This will sound obvious to some people, but it's a different way of approaching my mornings. I used to just get up, sit in front of the computer until about ten minutes before I had to be out the door, and then rush around getting ready for work, often forgetting to take my keys or my wallet with me.

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Day Thirty: Look at your calendar for next month. Does anyone have a birthday? We often forget to send cards and purchase gifts because we have so much going on. Put this on your errands list so you can buy cards and gifts on your errand day. If you don’t know what an errands day is, read the FLYing Lesson about Routines to see FlyLady’s Basic Weekly Plan and how to create your own. You don’t have to start doing it yet, just start thinking about it.

Okay, I was just talking about needing a weekly routine. This will be helpful. I'll work on it this morning.

Checking my calendar, the next birthday in my family is my own, and it's more than a month away. Eventually, I'd like to acknowledge all my good friends' birthdays, as well.

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Finding it hard to get myself to tackle decluttering in the morning, because it's really early, I'm the only one up, and I don't want to get all dusty and dirty before work. So I'm moving it to the afternoons, before my shower, and we'll see how that goes.

It's silly how excited I am to have a weekend free of plans to do anything except working on the last few areas of fuckedness in my home. My desk. My dresser/closet. The disgusting bathroom. The food-storage-container cabinet. The refrigerator.

(I'm not sure I'll get to it, but the storeroom could use decluttering, too, but at least it's all neat in there, because James keeps it so. We're thinking of moving next year during my furlough, though, and that will be easier if we go through all the boxes of stored stuff and get rid of what we don't want to move.)

So. Onward!

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Day Twenty-nine: You have worked very hard this past month. Hopefully you have become familiar with our “FLY Washing” e-mail system and you are seeing some progress in your home. It took FlyLady nine months of building her routines one habit at a time to get her home running on automatic pilot. Please do not beat yourself up over this. Anything you do today is better than it used to be! Celebrate each accomplishment and enjoy the process. Before you know it you will be having more time for the things that you love to do.

Right now, go to the Taking Care of You page and find the Weekly Pamper Mission. Read it, then think about when you are going to do it. You may have to put it on your calendar to really make it happen. Schedule yourself some “you” time — you deserve it!

This week's "Mission" is to use vinegar as a hair rinse. Well, that was easy. :-)

The past couple days, we've been playing around with Magic Erasers (well, generic versions of it) and wow, for some stuff, they really are amazing. Our floors are dark, so I don't know if it'll photograph well, but James cleaned ONE square of our old-style linoleum with one and it's so dramatic. Now I guess we'll have to clean the OTHER 749 squares. Le Sigh.

Decluttering will happen today. So will photos. But first, my morning routines and my breakfast. A girl's gotta have her priorities.

Three things:

1) Thanks to hel for pointing out that my unfucking pictures are on boingboing today. Unattributed. By Cory Doctorow. Do I feel dissed or honored? (Neither, really. It's just fun.)

2) James looked around our place yesterday and said, "You know, I think we got our place unfucked." I still see stuff I need to do, but I think he's right. Our kitchen is clean; we ate at an already-cleared table; he scrubbed the living hell out of the floor, and it just feels more peaceful and ordered in here. In what, twenty-nine days, including two days off? Something like that. Not bad.

3) I was so tired yesterday that I didn't even notice I skipped a day. I did, however, sleep in, and then attempt to time my morning routine, but I got as far as the fifteen-minute decluttering session before it was time to go to work. I'm gonna try it on the weekend, though.

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Day Twenty-seven: Today, think about what you are fixing for dinner before 6 p.m. rolls around. You can do it as part of your before-bed routine for tomorrow or as part of your morning routine for today. Write this in your Control Journal.

What’s for dinner tonight?

Hmm. I think I'm gonna do this as a morning thing, because I don't tend to even look at my evening list at this point. I'm still making the morning list a habit.

Tonight, James is making pizza. Last night, he made vegan tacos. Yumma.

I've been setting the alarm for 5am so that I have two full hours to get things done before I leave for The Best Job Ever. Today, that meant I sat around and goofed off on the internet for two hours. Well, no, I also made my breakfast, gathered stuff up for work, got dressed without rushing, etc. But still. Tomorrow, I'm gonna try to do my routine first thing so it gets done.

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Day Twenty-five: Today, read FlyLady’s personal testimonial on how she started developing her routines one habit at a time. Just so you know, it took her several months to do this; nobody expects you to have your routines accomplished in just one month of BabySteps! Be nice to yourself and don’t beat yourself up. Your consistent BabySteps will get you there.

Crashed out after work yesterday. It's going to take some time to get used to my new schedule.

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Day Twenty-four: One of the things that make our home always ready for company is the fact that our main bathroom is clean. Each morning as part of the Morning Routine, FlyLady does something we call the “Swish and Swipe.” This means you swish the toilet with a toilet bowl brush and wipe down the counter tops and sink with a rag and put away all the things you have gotten out. This takes all of two minutes to keep our bathroom ready for anyone.

Make sure you add the Swish and Swipe to your Morning Routine.



I've been doing a half-assed job of this since I started the Baby Steps, but I'll try to make more of a point of it. I was noticing this morning that it's nice to be in a cleanish bathroom, but it could be better.

The washer/dryer guy came by yesterday and postponed the work until today, so I still have some furniture from the store room messing up the living room, but that's temporary. I'm really gonna try to finish my routines today. Wish me luck.

It's my first day back to work after furlough. I leave around 7, so I set my alarm for 5, so that I have time for my morning routine and some writing before I have to get out the door. So far, so good. I'm hoping to do some of the quieter cleaning in the morning so James has less to do, and so I can start the day on a productive note. It'll be interesting to see if I'm able to do everything on the morning-routines list before I leave.

Yesterday was the worst pain day in recent memory, but I still managed to do the basics, which brings up this thought: apparently, to me, "the basics" means:

* getting dressed to street clothes
* feeding us real food
* doing at least some of the dishes (James and I have both been pretty good about this; could be better, but pretty good)
* picking up after myself
* keeping the Hot Spots from exploding
* making my lunch for the next day
* making sure the clean clothes are put away and the dirty clothes are in the hampers

I've been slacking on the decluttering for the past few days, but because I did so much of it for two weeks, the whole place is easier to keep clean. Still, I'm going to get back to the fifteen-minutes-a-day thing because the job is not yet done. Oh, Freecycle, how I love you. (And I have TONS of clothes to give away; starting today, I'll take a bag a day to my co-worker, and if she doesn't want them, I'll donate them.)

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Day Twenty-two: [ad for her pre-fab Control Journal, and then] All the BabyStep directions are on the website, too, in the FLYing Lessons. Learn how to build your own control journal in 15 steps.

I'm going to work on this today. So far, it contains my morning and evening routines, a copy of the Amsler Grid I use to test my eyes, and that page of "inspiration". I'd like it to be more robust, because it really is helping me to have something tangible to look at when I need motivation to do the next thing.

Hmm. Making my bed will not work in the mornings, because there's someone in it. I'll have to put it on a new "getting home from work" routine checklist. I'll go do that now.

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Okay, I did that and managed everything on my morning routines except the fifteen minutes of decluttering, which really makes more sense to do when everyone's awake. I think getting up early is going to work out. And I'm going to add "get some writing done" to my morning routines, because otherwise, I spend all this extra time in the morning goofing off and slowly working through the morning routines, when I would really like to get some work done on my writing.

Got my eyes dilated today, so I won't be spending a lot of time on the computer for the next few hours. I was proud of myself (and James) when I awoke to a clean kitchen after yesterday's gnocchi mess. I didn't *want* to clean up after it, but I behaved like an adult and did it, with help. This is progress.

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Day Twenty: Include laundry in your morning and evening routines; this makes getting up and getting dressed much easier. Laundry doesn’t take long to do when we don’t procrastinate one of the five steps: sort, wash, dry, fold, and put away. It only takes a few short minutes. When you include laundry in your routines everyone is blessed. Nothing says “I love you” more than clean underwear!

We don't have a washer and dryer, but we may soon, according to our landlady. At any rate, I've been making sure the laundry ends up in one of the two hampers (one in the bedroom, one outside the bathroom), and I'll put that in my routines.

As soon as my vision returns to normal, I'm gonna attack the kitchen cupboards.

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Day Eighteen: Did you know that we have Eleven Commandments? Read them today. You may want to print these out or write them in your Control Journal.

It's not that I disagree with the "commandments," but they're an example of why I feel more at home on UfYH. So, I don't know, sappy's not quite the word...

Woke up, made the bed, got dressed to shoes, cleaned the sink, made breakfast, and headed out for a date with stonebender and a shopping trip. I'm only just getting around to the rest of my routine, but that's okay. There's so much less stress around it because I'm doing a little every day, rather than trying to get it all done at once.

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Day Sixteen: Today, look in your inbox for an e-mail from FlyLady. It can be a Morning Musing, a testimonial, or an essay. Just take a few minutes and read over it. You never know what she is going to discuss. You can also go directly to the FlyLady BigTent group and read the messages.

Reading the emails is already part of my daily routine, but hey, whatever. Today's is telling about the FlyLady "De-clutter Games" that start tomorrow. The baby steps take priority, but if I have extra oomph, I'll do the De-clutter Games challenges, as well.

Off to do the rest of the list and make dinner. Pics in a bit.

I was gonna declutter my closet, but James picked the Mackenzie table. We call it the Mackenzie table because our friend Mackenzie is storing it here, and we're using it in the meantime. I've wanted to make a proper tea cart out of it for a while, so I worked on that while I decluttered.

Here it is before (the whole thing and the drawers), and the after will be under the cut tag.





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Yesterday, after getting home from hanging with the kid, I had NO energy left, and it was nice to say Okay, I can just rest, because my house may not be perfect, but it's in control, and I had already completed all my to-dos except the 15 minutes of decluttering before I left. Today, I'll get back on the decluttering wagon.

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Day Fourteen: Today, go read the essay that Kelly wrote about using a calendar.

As it happens, my work calendar, which is the online calendar I use for scheduling doctor visits, etc. (since I have to use the darn thing anyway) just got switched over to Google calendars. I don't have a personal Google account, for a few reasons, and I have been missing how easy that calendar is to use, so I'll actually have a little fun today putting all my reminders in there.

For decluttering, I had choice paralysis, so I asked James to pick something. He pointed out this box...



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