So, I’ll confess that other than cleaning the sink out just a few minutes ago, I’ve done no other FlyLady work today. I did get up and wash masks at 5:30 this morning as I forgot to do it last night.  And I did a few loads of laundry while waiting to go to work (didn’t go in until 11).

Work was a little hectic (rainy days at a preschool = hectic!) and then, I stayed a bit later to help out as a couple of the afternoon staff called in as they weren’t feeling well and thought they should get COVID testing.

Home to find my husband made dinner (tacos not spaghetti for us this evening). However, that wasn’t the best part. Apparently, this cleaning out the sink stuff is slightly contagious. I had to run J to his lesson and fully resigned myself to returning to a sink full of dishes.

Nope! My husband did the dishes! There were only a few bowls and cups in the sink (teenagers). Quite a refreshing change in the routine.

I’ve not been saying anything (well, not much…) about the sink cleaning each night. Made it very nice to see someone else around here also make the effort. And a bit easier to unload the dishwasher and clean the sink out tonight. Hoping this pattern holds.

In Flylady land, the weekend missions are a bit different. No serious cleaning tasks outside of the routines of shining the kitchen sink and such.

Saturdays are for family fun and Sundays are for renewing the spirit.

Saturday

Family fun is a bit different around here as the boys are older. G works every Saturday. My husband went to help a friend in the morning. And J had a band competition in the afternoon. So, I was on my own for a bit of fun in the morning. In keeping with my small fall bucket list, I went and visited a local farmer’s market. A successful outing. Found pretty flowers, apple jam, and salsa. I’m excited to try another visit to that location during the peak of the market season.

I suppose our real family fun was watching the band competition (2nd in their division, woohoo!) and then J going with me to get food after (Culver’s did not win any awards. First time for everything but they messed up our order. SIGH)

Sunday

It was an usually hot fall day and I spent most of it in my favorite place, outside!  Also visited a couple different garden centers.

A lot of perennial plants on sale right now (best time to buy those! they might look a little sad now but they’ll bounce back and rebloom next year). Also, picked up some pansies (annuals around here) to give the front porch an extra boost of fall color.

Spent time pulling up some plants in the garden. I decided we’d seen the last of the spring-planted cucumbers so pulled it. Now my okra will see a bit more sun (I’m determined to have fall okra, even if I have to glue a bag of frozen okra to the plant).  Pulled a bunch of weeds from the flower garden by the front porch before the rain moved into the area. And spent some time reading.

Preparing For Tomorrow

Overall, I’d say I stayed true to the Flylady schedule this weekend.

Tonight between watching the second half of the cringe-worthy (so far) Chiefs game, I need to wash masks, clean the kitchen sink (though it’s not too bad), get J’s lunch sorted, and figure out what to wear to work in the morning. Also, need to make sure I go to bed at a decent hour.

How are you preparing for your Monday?

Yesterday was busy. Work. Had to help my son come up with senior gift ideas for his section members in band  (no minute like the last minute, motto of teenagers everywhere I think). Make dinner. Football game.

Long day that started early. So, doing Flylady missions or even basics wasn’t really at the front of things for me.

However, I did load the dishes and empty the sink after dinner.  Then, we went to the football game. After the very long football game night, I came home and went to bed without even looking at the sink again.

Figured I’d just deal with whatever happened over night this morning. Woke up to the strangest sight.

The sink remained empty overnight! There were very few dishes but they were all stacked beside the empty sink. Huh? Interesting. Maybe the kids are noticing. (I say the kids because it took very little time for my husband to toss his breakfast dishes in the sink.)

Anyway, I thought of this old commercial from the 80’s about an antiperspirant.

There slogan: so effective you can skip a day!

Ha, maybe the sink thing is going to be just that effective after all. (I didn’t mean to skip a blogging day in the series but really it was a long day yesterday & I was tired)

On that note, upstairs I go to clean out the sink for the night.

Probably a pretty quick post tonight. I just committed to being at work at 7a.m. tomorrow morning. Worked not quite a full day today but I’m still a bit tired.

I’m sitting here listening to random Christmas tunes as my son practices on the concert euphonium. Cheery enough.  Thought I better take a moment to check in with how things went today.

Honestly, not much happened on the Flylady front as I was working. My husband had the day off and was kind enough to catch us up on the laundry.

I came home and made dinner, grilled chicken and salad (husband made that) with croissants (from Sam’s club) on the side. A few cut up vegetables and dip on the table while it all cooked.

Happy to report that even though I had to run the dishwasher twice after getting home from work (once while fixing dinner and again after for clean up), the counters and kitchen sink are indeed clear.

The task of the day was to wipe down the large appliances. So, I quickly did that. Quickly being the key word. I guess I’ll focus on the task more seriously on another day. Back to the progress not perfection thought. A little bit of something done is still better than doing nothing at all I suppose.

Funny thing is even though I know Flylady is all about using a timer, I’ve still not done that. I just do what I need to do and call it good. Not to say I haven’t used a timer in the past or won’t in the future. Just currently, I find I don’t need one.

What I do need is to go to bed at a decent hour.  So I’ll end this with a question: Do you use a timer?

Today was a much better day than yesterday. Of course, a visit to the hairdresser always leaves me in better spirits. And I didn’t wake up with aching arms so that helped tremendously as well.

Today I did the Flylady missions from both yesterday and today. And tackled a few anti-procrastination day tasks. Including a few I didn’t even know I’d been ignoring.

Crumb tray of the toaster is now clean!

Started with yesterday’s task. Wash off the kitchen counters with hot soapy water. Sometimes (very rarely) lack of counter space is a good thing!  Also, took a minute to wipe down the items on the counter as well. And clean the crumb tray on the toaster as noted up above.

Before:After:

Can’t see a lot of difference in the two photos but the counter is cleaner. Or rather was clean. For a second. Ha!

The other task was to clean around the sink faucet. With a toothbrush. Our sink faucet is newer so I just used the Power Dawn soap and a rag. (Forgot to take an after photo!)

Still quite a few things I didn’t do today but her motto of Progress and not perfection is returning to my mind a bit. My main goal is to clean the sink each night.

A Few Anti-Procrastination Tasks Completed Today

They’ll sound simple but they were really bugging me so I’m glad to have them done.

• Took the tag off my new indoor fall rug for the front door. Seriously, it’s been there a week and I didn’t take the tag off of it. First, I wanted to make sure I liked it (I did) and then, I just kept thinking oh, I’ll do it in a minute. It’s done now.
• Clean out my purse. Pretty sure this is a Friday thing in Flylady land but it’s been at least 2-3 months. So many grocery lists! Now, I know exactly what I have in there including enough cash for a small cup of coffee out somewhere.
• Started to do my on-line training (finally) for work. However, I did stop as I have questions. Since I work tomorrow, I figured I should get answers before continuing.
• Made a plan with J to get together tomorrow and look at his dual credit English bill. He just needs to log on to his account so I can get it paid by the deadline.
• And used up the tomatoes on the counter before they went bad, BLT for lunch. It was yummy! Also, finally got around to making spicy black-eyed peas for dinner (with ham and cornbread)

**********

Tomorrow is back to the working world for me so we’ll see how I do on the tasks. However, the sink is already cleaned for tonight so I’m actually going to get to bed before 10:30. Exciting stuff.

Did you get any long neglected items crossed off your list today?

Trying very hard to post every day for this series. However, there’s not a lot to report today.

Not even a series of fun photos to share. I did not sleep well last night. Then, I decided to do some serious weed trimming in the lot next door. Seems we had a couple of people trying to get into the backdoor of that house (owner is currently not living there and the house/yard is in a bit of disarray).

Grumpy from not enough sleep. So sore from the weed trimming. Did I mention I used hedge trimmers and not a weed eater to do all this? Add in the adrenaline as I was so scared a snake was in the mess and the word for today was exhaustion. (Probably were snakes but thankfully, I didn’t see any. Wore my snow boots for the work just in case)

Am I making excuses? Probably. However, the only thing that happened in the housekeeping arena around here was the unloading/loading of the dishwasher. A switch of laundry from the washer to the dryer. No folding!

And I made dinner. Fried pork chops and baked potatoes. All I had in me tonight. Didn’t help that my husband came home and said trimming the crazy weeds (some were over my head!) in the back didn’t help and probably made it easier for people. UGH. And a second UGH for the sadness I felt as I cut down my bird habitat areas thinking it a necessary and helpful task for the safety of everyone. I did leave some areas, just wanted a line of sight to their backdoor.

So, I’ve rubbed on the Aspercreme and taken an Advil. Still hurt, being old and out of shape is no fun. Now, I’m off to clean the kitchen sink and go to bed.

So today started kitchen week in Flylady land. Kitchen week sounds like it should be more fun. Like I should be baking yummy treats all week or something.

Can I just confess something here? Cleaning the kitchen is one of my very least favorite chores. Honestly, if we were divvying up chores in a house, I’d pick the bathroom over the kitchen. Of course, that’s only if the living room and bedrooms were already taken. Unless they were teenager bedrooms, then I’d still take the bathroom, I think.

So, I did do most of the kitchen items on the “flight plan” for Monday.

• threw away 27 pieces of trash (counted recycle items in my total including the plastic containers I thought I might reuse…not like we don’t have enough containers already)
• cleared out our mail hotspot. Brought a few bills down here to pay. Recycled a few old catalogs I’d been keeping for their coupons, not counted in 27 items.
• Cleared most the clutter off the kitchen table. 
• Pantry peek was already done. Happy to report I did buy less than usual at the store. On a mission for us to use up what we already have here.

Things I did not do:

• Most of the weekly home blessing tasks. No vacuuming, mopping, or sheet changing happened here.
• No dusting or polishing of mirrors and doors either.
• Didn’t really need to purge many catalogs and magazines as I do that out of habit the last week of each month

The only thing on the weekly home blessing task I completed (except just now realizing I forgot the trash down here) was to empty all the trash cans. Kind of an easy one to remember as tomorrow is our trash day. And not on the list, I did so much laundry. Still need to finish up a few loads of that tomorrow as well.

Speaking of trash…

The Monday Mission

I sort of last minute cleaned my kitchen trash can. Didn’t really follow the directions as I didn’t get to it until it was almost dark outside. May go ahead and do a better job of things with it tomorrow if time allows. However, I did wipe it off as it was quite disgusting. It probably needs another coat of paint or to be tossed and replaced with a new metal trashcan. Something to ponder. Anyway, here are the less than exciting (and kind of gross) before and after photos of the trash can.

Tomorrow’s task sounds so much simpler, just a serious wipe down of the counter tops. Speaking of tomorrow, I’ll end this here so I can get upstairs and clean out the kitchen sink.

However, let’s not end this post with trashy photos. Here’s a fall decoration that belonged to my late mother-in-law. I’m pondering where to hang it.

What’s your least favorite room to clean?

So, I’m going to show you some cringe-worthy photos here in a moment.  This portable outdoor charcoal grill was also cringe-worthy in my husband’s opinion. I’m really just sharing the photo to not start with the scary ones.

The story with the grill is that he bought it for me because I don’t care for hamburgers on the smoker. There is just something about a hamburger cooked over charcoal that smokers and gas grills don’t quite achieve. This portable, charcoal grill is what love looks like after 20+ years of marriage. The grill didn’t work very well though the hamburgers were still very good. However, I digress from the topic at hand.

If you’ve been following along, you might recall how I said the Flylady e-mails said this upcoming week was kitchen week. Still so many e-mails. Of course, I’ve not cleaned my e-mail out in a bit. I always plan to do it every week but it doesn’t always happen.

Anyway, I know I share a lot of outside photos of birds and flowers and random nature on here. There is a reason for that. It’s prettier than sharing the inside of my home. So, in an effort of realness….a scary one at that, I’m going to share the pictures I snapped of my kitchen this afternoon just after we had lunch.

Note, some are blurry as the motivation for the perfect photo is hard to find when snapping photos of a messy kitchen.

View from living room looking into the kitchen

(Note this is also after our trip to Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart where we hadn’t put everything away yet) And now, the view from the other side.

The weird half open shade thing is because they always pull one down when playing video games due to reflections from outside.

A Couple of Close Ups

We all know keeping the kitchen table clear is a struggle.

The bottom of the cleaning rack. Ironically, a place I planned to “neatly” store the cleaning supplies. And no, I have no idea why we have 3 fire extinguishers sitting there. Just need to find a place for them as I think I moved them to make room for something else and now I can’t remember what that was.

Shall we turn to the galley? This area is home to our appliances, the sink, and the counter tops.

Galley Kitchen View

Apologies for the blurry photo. The light was giving me fits of frustration.

In Focus Close-Ups

Yes, those biscuits are from this morning. Sometimes dishes get “lost” over there if I’m facing the sink cleaning things. And here’s the sink area, remember please, this was right after lunch. And yes, I did clean up a bit after the photo. However, it is still a bit of a mess.

Hopefully, my cringe worthy photos showed you a real side of things around here and maybe even made you feel better about your home. Here let’s clear our minds of all the mess with a soothing fall photo of a random acorn on the deck table.

My plan for the series this week is to show my kitchen progress as I follow along with the missions for each day. Contingent, of course, upon my work schedule (showing the progress, not doing the missions. I do plan to do them no matter what).

For now, I’m off to clean out my kitchen sink for the night.

NOTE: This post is part of my 31 Days series, FlyBaby Reborn. Making a landing page for all the posts is on the list for this week. Meanwhile, for more information, find my first post in the series here.

It’s 11 PM on Saturday night and way past my bedtime. Instead I’m posting here after spending about 30 minutes working on this:

A graphic designer, I am not. However, at least I have a button/photo for this series. Didn’t want to bore you with sink photos every night.

And yes, I did clean out the sink tonight. I wanted to skip it but weather cut our band competition time short (the band got in their performance but opted to come home rather than stay for the awards portion). So, I had no excuse. Even threw in a load of laundry.

Had a chuckle reading through a few of the many (had forgot how many e-mails!) Flylady e-mails as next week is apparently kitchen week. And one of the tasks involved the pantry. Said don’t take everything out to re-organize it. Funny because earlier today I half-emptied the pantry thinking I’d do just that.

We’ll see what happens during the course of the new week. For tonight, I’m keeping this way past my bedtime post short and ending it here.

I started my 31 days of doing the shiny sink thing a night early. In case you missed it, I’m doing a 31 days series titled FlyBaby Reborn. Started it yesterday (so a day early!).

So on September 30th before I went to bed, I shined my sink. True I didn’t go all in with the scrubbing. Mainly I just emptied it of dishes and cleaned it before going to bed.

Morning

Now, remember that I have a college aged son and a teenager living here. This is what I woke up to this morning.

Ugh. However, I chose to leave it. Made the bed. I don’t know maybe an unmade bed bothers me more.

And Tonight

It was a hectic first Friday of the month around here. Worked all day, afterward delivered a trash bag order to a friend and that turned into nice dinner out. We actually started with plans to get coffee but alas no indoor Starbucks at the location we picked so I don’t know…coffee morphed into a margarita. And dinner. And coming home to this?!

I didn’t even fix/eat dinner here tonight. Must say I am thankful they found something considering we didn’t have much. How exactly do deli chicken (we’ve been keeping some in the freezer) and rice make this kind of mess?

One margarita is not enough to answer that question. However, staying true to the Flylady form…I said nothing and simply cleaned up the mess. Realizing I forgot to push the button on the dishwasher last night. Oops. Loaded a few more dishes in there. And then, glad to have this stuff.

Just picked it up yesterday. I do have a long term plan for my late night snack fiends to find this and clean those dishes! And so, here is tonight’s “shiny sink” though again it’s mostly just clean not the full on shiny yet. 

And to start things off right and “official” tonight, I signed up for the Flylady e-mails (again).

Do you follow the Flylady sytem, does it work for you?