Oops, I think it’s supposed to be anti-procrastination day in fly lady land. And I got off to a good start with a few tasks.

My Three Anti-Procrastination Day Tasks

Pajamas! 

Finally tried on the Halloween pajamas I bought probably 2 weeks ago. Wanted to be prepared in case I got called into work on Halloween as it’s slated as a pajama day. And if I don’t get called in to help, can you ever really have too many pajamas?

Thinking the Fly lady answer is probably yes. SIGH. However, in my defense, I did rip a pair of my favorite pajama bottoms last year. So…they count as replacements.

Found Money! Sort Of…

I finally got around to taking a couple shirts I’d bought the boys at Kohls out of the bag to put them in the Christmas bin (I’m trying to shop ahead a bit). And when I took the receipt out of the bag to stash it in the Christmas receipt drawer of my dresser, I noticed a coupon thing that turned out to be $10 in Kohls cash that expires on Sunday. Also, a 15% off coupon. More Christmas shopping perhaps?

Also, I cleaned out my e-mail (a long overdue task…I’m awful at staying on top of it lately) and remembered to move my Got Milk payment over to the Amazon account. Apparently, I signed in with some class action lawsuit long ago not expecting anything but ended up with $7! Exciting stuff.

And To Even Out The Found Money, I Payed Some Bills

Planned to just pay everything and be done with it but then this happened….

My Fly Lady Fail

Did I do any of the missions in the bathroom and extra room? No. No, I did not. Didn’t even set foot in there except for the intended uses of the rooms.

It was a lazy, rainy day and I may or may not have fallen asleep reading my book for a bit. However, I’ve needed a nap for a while so maybe I should just go ahead and count it as a 4th anti-procrastination task.

Come to think of it, I also finally got around to registering for some parent teacher conferences at J’s school. They’re by appointment but we get to go in person this year.

There Is Hope

I think the rest from my nap might have helped as it’s actually 9:20 as I type this so I’ll get to bed closer to my normal time. 

And the sink is clear!

It’s main bathroom week in Flylady land this week. Not so exciting. Especially as our main bathroom is small. So yesterday’s 27 Fling boogie (the idea is to get rid of 27 pieces of clutter/trash in the room) wasn’t really applicable.

I did take the trash out of there today, maybe that counts?

In fairness, it’s main bathroom plus another room (her e-mails seem to focus on the guest room so I went with the basement as it’s where the boys’ friends stay once in a while).

Today, I did a mix of weekly tasks from her lists plus the daily missions. I was kind of all over the place.

In The Basement

I did do one of those 27 Fling boogie things. And this desk is pleasantly clear as I sit down here typing tonight.

The other thing was to wash bedding but I skipped to Wednesday’s wash the bathroom rugs mission and that took longer than I expected so….maybe tomorrow.

In The Bathroom

Here’s what I did in regards to cleaning our main bathroom.

Yesterday’s mission of shining the tub. I didn’t really make it shiny but I did clean it better than it’s probably been cleaned in longer than I really want to admit in writing.

Washed the bathmat/rug. It was dirty even with us usually laying a towel on top before our shower. I also washed another rug that was down in the basement. Between the dirt on both of them, I felt the need to run an empty hot water and bleach only cycle through the washer.

Swept and scrubbed the tile floor. Why on why did they put this tile on our floor?

Came up with a new idea for an invention. How about cleaning tools for small and awkward spaces? Mini mops/narrow Swifter wet jets. Did the best I could. The floor is probably as clean as it’s been in a while.

Random Thoughts

A few quick random thoughts before I go upstairs, clean out the sink and go to bed.

I’ve noticed the house is staying a bit (not a lot) cleaner with the Flylady tasks happening.

Did use a timer briefly today just to get my focus started.

Suddenly, I’ve started making up my own room missions when the ones listed don’t apply to me. Instead of the de-clutter in the bathroom, I cleaned a very neglected area between the sink and the tub (see above about needing tools for tiny and awkward spaces).

Scrubbing the floor wasn’t a mission but I decided to do it anyway.

Cleaning the rooms makes me think of a million home improvement projects to add to the never ending list.

Turns out, I don’t think I like cleaning the bathroom more than cleaning the kitchen after all…

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)

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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.