Following FlyLady's BabySteps: Day 8 and Day 9

I have combined the hubs for Day 8 and Day 9 because after much musing last night I could not find anything interesting about putting paper in a three ring binder and writing down my routines. Oh, I could have possibly rambled on about how I almost put the information on a phone app I have for lists. I could have bored you with I how made the decision not to use the app since I had no idea what she was going to require me to put in that binder in the future. What if she wanted me to put my sticky notes in it? My Samsung Fascinate really would look quite ridiculous with sticky notes of various colors attached. So instead of writing 500 plus words of nothing about nothing I give you FlyLady BabySteps Day Eight and Day Nine.

For Day Nine, FlyLady asks us to do a 5 Minute Room Rescue.

According to Dictionary.com the definition of rescue is as follows:

Res-cue

1. To free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger or evil.
2. Law. To liberate or take by forcible or illegal means from lawful custody

I was pretty sure none of my rooms were evil, and I knew that I wasn’t about to use any kind of forcible or illegal means to liberate my room. So that leaves the question, what is a 5 Minute Room Rescue? Well its simple. It’s spending 5 minutes clearing a path in the worst room in your house. Most of us have at least one of these rooms. It’s the room that makes you cringe when you walk in the door, or the one that sits with its door always closed so that you can just pretend its not there. I’ll admit, I have so many rooms in need of rescuing it was hard to choose.

I had become quite jealous of the fact that my friend’s daughter was helping her, so I made the executive decision that my daughter would help me today. In all honesty, her room needs rescuing more than almost any place in the whole house. She groaned and fussed a little, but when I told her the options were for her to clean her whole room or spend 5 minutes clearing a path, she happily complied.

I chose to rescue my son’s room. Mostly because I could be upstairs with her as we hurriedly did some needed saving of these disastrous rooms. If I was being completely honest with myself, the room that needed rescuing the most would be our basement living room. I would never let a soul step foot in there. Heck, I won’t even go down there unless it’s absolutely necessary. My husband and I have affectionately deemed it “the bowels of hell,.” “the depths of despair,” and “the place where things go to die.” Over the years, It has become his domain though, since his computer is down there, and his workshop is adjacent to the room. Since its truly his man cave, in every aspect of the word, I let him deal with it. I obviously have enough trouble keeping house upstairs with out having that disaster to deal with.

After donning our cape and tights, my daughter and I set the timer for 5 minutes and entered our respective rooms. The theme from Mighty Mouse ensued in my head as I set to work in my son’s room. “Here I come to save the day….”

DAY EIGHT - GET A 3 RING BINDER AND PUT PAPER IN IT

There really is not much to say about Day Eight. My friend and I are getting used to our little routines that FlyLady is helping us establish. We both know what we have to do, and we do it. Even though the tasks may seem simple, they still give us a sense of accomplishment. We are both happy with our success and are becoming true FlyBabies.

I did forget to put my shoes on when I walked down the stairs…GASP. I didn’t even notice until a couple of hours after I got out of bed. But, believe it or not, I was still able to accomplish my Morning Routine without shoes on…GASP! I did put them on once I realized that I wasn’t wearing them, but I’m still not convinced they are a necessity.

Today we started what will eventually become our Control Journals. We both took our three ring binders, added paper, and wrote down our Morning Routine and our Before Bed Routine. Day Eight…complete!

DAY NINE - DECLUTTER A FEW MINUTES AT A TIME

It’s Saturday, so I rolled out of bed later than usual. I got up, got dressed and ready, and did all the things FlyLady wanted me to do for the day. I dragged my daughter upstairs around 9:30 to do our 5 Minute Room Rescue. Oh boy! I’m FLYing now.

My friend was not as lucky. She was up again at another un-godly hour. In both our minds, its really not even morning at 2:30 a.m. She had a busy day of retail therapy planned with her mom and sister, and was a bit worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with our new routines. She did awesome though. She got her first Hot Spot done. She even spruced it up with a flower arrangement to deter her from cluttering it up again.

The only blip in her FlyLady day was coming home to a dirty messy sink. We have both become a bit obsessive about our shiny sinks, and when I say a bit obsessive, I mean VERY obsessive. We are both completely aware that this may not be normal, but we have decided that there are much worse things we could be obsessive about.

I can just picture her…sauntering in the door after a long grueling day of shopping, putting the bags of all purchases down, walking to the sink in hopes that it would still be shining. BAH! I imagine to see the sink a mess would be a disheartening. When I got the text with the image of the sink she found when she got home, I wanted to give her a virtual hug. She didn’t miss a beat though. She didn’t fuss. She didn’t complain. She got right to work and cleaned her sink until it shined again.

Day Nine…Complete!

I’ve already snuck a peak at what FlyLady is going to ask of us on Day Ten. It’s quite a bit more than she has required of us to date. But I know we can do it. As each day passes we are both feeling more confident that we are going to be able to do all of the BabySteps.