My new laundry system...

I am back to doing Flylady, and that means a load of laundry a day. I am notorious for leaving the clean laundry in a pile to fold and put away "all at once." Instead, what usually happens is that it comes time for bed and there's still a load in the washer or dryer so I haven't dealt with all the clean laundry yet - it's still piled high on the bed! For some people, Mt. Washmore is a pile of dirty clothes. For me, it's a pile of clean clothes that are now all wrinkly and overwhelming! So, I do what any normal person with a deep down need for order is and I... dump the pile onto the window seat to deal with later. It, of course, spills onto the floor because there are too many clothes to fit on the window seat!

So... when I wake up in the morning, not only do I have to remember that I have clothes in the washing machine, but I am greeted by a giant mound of clothes on the floor. It's too overwhelming to deal with, so I just make Leif fish his clean underwear out of the pile for the next week and pretend like it's not there.

But it is.

And it weighs me down, keeping me from doing anything I really want to do. I feel too guilty about the pile to do anything fun, but I am overwhelmed by the pile and avoiding it, so I sit around and do nothing but eat to soothe my stress.

But last week I went back to Flylady and started tackling my problems 15 minutes at a time. And do you want to know something? For a week now, my laundry has been under control. I'm not saying every article of clothing we own has been clean and in the closet every day, but the laundry is not hanging over my head. I started doing 1 load a day and I established a new laundry system for my home.

I got one of these:

to keep next to the washer and dryer, and I got 3 canvas bins to go with it. Here's the theory... dirty laundry comes downstairs in a laundry basket. I load 1/2 or 1/3 of the laundry from the basket into the washer, because we have giant laundry baskets that I love. Because I'm only doing a load a day of laundry, the rest of the dirty stuff stays in the basket. But where does the clean stuff go? Well, the hanging stuff gets put on hangers immediately, and hung on my new laundry rack. Then, the rest gets sorted and folded based on which person it belongs to. One bin for each family member, or to use however works best (e.g. Leif, Elizabeth, Towels, if I don't have any of Ellie's laundry in that particular load). Then, the hanging items and baskets go upstairs one at a time to be emptied and brought back down. If there are any empty hangers in the closet, they go back in the basket to head downstairs and get stored on the laundry rack. I can deal with one small basket of clothes at a time. That is not overwhelming, and it takes just a couple minutes to put everything away. I don't have to do all 3 loads of laundry in one day, because it's fine if the dirty clothes stay in the basket until tomorrow to do the next load. Dirty clothes go in the laundry basket, clean clothes go in the canvas totes. It's great!

And so far, it is working wonderfully - and my laundry's all caught up!!

Systems....

Right now I am participating in a weekly challenge and accountability group with my director. It has really been eye opening for me! This week we wrote out Frustrations / Solutions lists for our businesses and personal lives. In doing that I realized that my most basic frustrations come down to not having systems in place for getting things done. My frustrations are not with the special things that pop up, but with the every day items that I can't seem to keep up on. Things like...

Laundry
Writing Thank You Notes
Dishes
Cleaning the house
Bible Study
Exercise
Meal Planning

... see where I'm going with this?

So... I need to build some systems. I say "build" because they will take time. They will grow into what I need them to be, but I need to get them into place first. So... back to flylady, methinks. I'm going to pick the 3 most important things to do every morning, day, and night and do them. Just 3 things, I think. Let's see...

Morning Routine:
1. Make bed
2. Empty dishwasher
3. Bible Study

Daytime Routine:
1. Exercise
2. 15 minutes of cleaning / decluttering
3. Laundry

Evening Routine:
1. Skin care
2. Dishes / Shine sink
3. Items for tomorrow in the car / ready to go

I'm fighting with myself over a physical notebook or this blog again... I get sucked into the computer when I try to use the blog, but a notebook is large and gets in the way and drives Leif crazy. So... I need to have a solution one way or the other. Perhaps I'll put it out here, then shrink the routine list and just have a copy of it in my MK binder to go off each day. Maybe that's a good solution...

Fly Lady

I woke up to a clean kitchen this morning, and made my bed as soon as Leif rolled out of it! I'm wearing workout clothes and I did yoga. I took my temperature and weighed myself and I'm considering going downstairs right now to do some DDR with Ellie.

That's progress!

I'm starting to have some routines in place, which is HUGE. My biggest problem is still time management, though, and I seem to be taking MUCH longer than necessary to do simple tasks! But I'm trying to plug away and work toward making those routines stick. It's taking time as I take babysteps, but I think it will be worth it.

I added the flylady tool bar to firefox, so we'll see if that helps me at all when it comes to reminding and keeping on task with my routines. I hope so! If nothing else, maybe I will listen to the blogtalkradio once in a while, as I never have and Erika raves about it. We'll see.

Today starts a new super fling boogie, so I'm going to take 15 minutes to do it. I'm trying to simplify this year, and this is always a great way to do it!

I'm also going to meal plan today for the week and add any items I need to the grocery list. I'm hoping to make it to the store today or tomorrow, so that will be good.

I've written out my 6 most important things and I need to follow that today.

Today is another day of babysteps, and one by one I will take them.

If we fail to plan, we plan to fail....

I need to remake my plan, revisit my priorities, and reboot my life. It's time to start over. My house is a mess, my waist is becoming a body clutter hot spot, and I can't seem to stay on top of anything! I need help!!

So I'm taking a deep breath (*inhale* *exhale*) and I'm taking a good hard look at what my life looks like and what I want it to look like, what sacrifices I'm willing to make to get it to look like that, and how I'm going to get there. So let's start with the ideal...

In my ideal world, I am not sleep deprived. So I should probably be going to bed much sooner than I do now, as it is close to 1am when I am writing this... But because we are dealing in ideals here, I'm just going to think about how my ideal day would go. It would go something like this...

Morning
6am - get up, eat breakfast, read my Bible, check email
6:30 - yoga / stretching
7:00 - Eliana up, dressed, get her breakfast, read her a Bible story while she eats.
7:30 - laundry into the washer, cardio with Eliana
8:30 - Eliana watches PBS while I do strength training
9:00 - shower
9:15 - dressed, hair, makeup
9:30 - ready to go out the door for the day (on days in town), empty dishwasher, dinner thawing/in crock pot
10:00 - laundry into the dryer, blog / spark people
10:30 - activities with Eliana and around the house
11:30 - lunch
12:00 - Eliana plays by herself while I fold / put away laundry
12:30 - clean zones / hot spots and tidy up
1:00 - art activities with Eliana or playing outside
2:30 - snack time
3:00 - quiet time reading books and reading Eliana a Bible story
4:00 - Eliana plays by herself or watches a video while I get the house cleaned up before Leif comes home
5:00 - cooking dinner
6:00 - dinner time
7:00 - Eliana gets a bath and gets ready for bed while I do Mary Kay
8:00 - Eliana's bed time and I clean up the dinner dishes
8:30 - craft / me time
9:30 - bedtime routine
10:00 - bedtime

Whew! I'm sort of tired just reading all this stuff and typing it out! But it looks like the biggest thing I will need to change if I want to make exercise a priority is going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. I love to sleep in and I love to stay up late, but I just don't think it's conducive to the healthy lifestyle I want to maintain. So... that looks like the first change I will have to make. Bed by 10, up at 6. We'll see how that works.

But for now it's 1:15 am and I really ought to get some sleep. I won't be up by 6 tomorrow morning, but if I don't go to sleep now I'll be lucky to be up by 10!

I need a new plan. Again.

Every time the seasons change I seem to need a new plan. The last few weeks have been busy as all of our Fall activities have started up and, unfortunately, the cleaning schedule that worked this summer is no longer working for me! So I need to come up with a new plan (or, rather, get back to the old Flylady plan, more likely) and use a little discipline to stick to it! Here's what I need to work around...

Monday:
10-11a Kindermusik in Bozeman
7-9p Craft Night (twice a month)

Tuesday:
10-12p Open for MK Parties as scheduled
2-4p Open for MK Parties as scheduled
7-9p MK Success Meeting in Bozeman

Wednesday:
9:30-11a Bible Study in Belgrade
6-9p Scrapbooking Classes (every other week) in Bozeman

Thursday:
10-12p Playgroup in Bozeman

Friday:
10-3p Zoe/Ellie Playdate (every other week I have the girls here - the off weeks I'm in Bzn)

Saturday:
Open for MK Parties when scheduled

Sunday:
10-12p Church

So... as you can see, there's not a really good day to call my "cleaning day". I realize that with Flylady you only spend an hour doing your weekly home blessing, and maybe I just need to get back to that. Maybe I need to get back in the habit of swishing and swiping, doing a load of laundry a day, running dishes at night and emptying them in the morning, and keeping on top of things. That's probably what I need to do. But it still takes some scheduling to make sure I get it done, especially on days I need to be in town in the morning.

To be in town at 10, I need to leave the house at 9:30, more or less. Assuming it takes me an hour to get ready, I need to be up at 8:30. Ellie usually gets me up around 7 or 7:30 anyway, so I really need to use that extra hour wisely. I should be able to use the following schedule, if I keep myself to it:

• Wake Up / Take Temperature
• Make Bed
• Get Eliana changed / milk
• Shower
• Swish and Swipe Bathroom
• New washcloth for tomorrow
• Get Dressed (to the shoes!)
• Open / Close Windows
• Eat Breakfast - record
• Read Bible / Do Study
• Laundry to washer
• Empty Dishwasher
• Clean Up Breakfast Dishes

On days that I need to get to town, the next steps are to put Ellie in the car, round up my stuff, and get in the car and go. On days that I'm staying home, the next steps are to transfer clothes to the dryer and do 15 minutes in my zone.

There is more planning to be done, but we'll see how the morning routine goes first. That's enough planning for right now.

busy

This week has been a busy one. I spent Monday and Tuesday at Taylor's house, helping her with the babies. Today I had Bible study in the morning, then ate lunch with Leif, ran errands, and got home around 2, just in time for Ellie's nap. I put away the groceries, relaxed for about 30 minutes, and started dinner. After dinner I spent an hour or so putting away laundry. Tomorrow Erika and I are heading to Billings to take the girls to the circus and we're just going to make a day of it. Then Friday is my scrapbooking day. Erika will watch Ellie and I need to get most, if not all, of my class projects made for the open house next week. Lots to do. Busy week.

BUT I have been making an effort to get things ready the night before (milk/juice cups filled, my water bottle filled, diaper bag on the doorknob of the garage, setting out clothes, planning dinner) and that has really helped things go smoothly. I've been going to bed with a clean house and waking up to a clean house, and that has made me happier. I think Leif has been happier coming home to a clean house, too. It's all been good.