Days Seven & Eight - One Not So Great

If you're following along with our Fly Lady Beginner Baby Step challenge day by day, you might have noticed I didn't write a posting last night. Day 7 on our 31 day challenge was to pick out your clothes for the next day. Easy enough, right? Welll, around 9:20pm last night, I went upstairs to tackle my challenge when I saw that my bedroom light was already out and my hubby was fast asleep (he's a hunter and it's hunting season, which means he was up at 4:30am). Needless to say, I didn't feel right about turning on the light and rummaging through my closet to find an outfit for today. So I 'mentally' picked out what I was going to wear, hoping Fly Lady would forgive me. I have, however, already picked out my clothes for tomorrow and they're hanging on my closet door. Although it's hard to explain, I have to say there's a nice feeling about having already made that decision. One less for tomorrow. I'm starting to feel like a well planned woman.

Today's task was to start the beginnings of our control journal. Simply to get a 3 ring binder and put some paper in it. On one sheet we had to write "Morning Routine" at the top, on the other "Before Bed Routine" and fill in the simple routines we've learned so far in her program. She insists to write in pencil (which I hate) and to not let our perfectionism get in the way (I have a real problem with this). I attempted this challenge several years ago and didn't follow her advice. Of course I drafted a long list of things I thought would make my life easier by implementing them into my morning and bedtime routines. I neatly typed them up, printed them out and placed them in clear plastic sleeves before putting them in my binder. The result? Burnout. I became overwhelmed with all these new routines and gave up. Her process is designed to implement routines slowly so you're more likely to keep with them.

This time, I followed her recommendations. I took loose leaf paper and used pencil.  Here's what she has us doing and here's where I stand so far...

Morning Routine

- Get up and get dressed to lace up shoes; fixing your hair and face - having big challenges getting dressed before having to go downstairs. I end up feeding my daughter her bottle and heading back up to shower/get dressed etc. I am however, getting dressed and ready for my day much earlier than I did before this program. But will have an ultimate goal by end of the month to be dressed to the shoes before my kids get up. Anyone else struggling with this one?
- Looking at your posted reminders in the kitchen and bathroom- the one above my sink is definitely working. A visual reminder to keep my sink shining (ie. empty of dishes and other crap). The one in my bedroom reminding me to get dressed to the shoes isn't helping much. I don't know if that's because it's not in a noticeable enough place or if it's because I do what I have to do (like feed by daughter), regardless of the reminder. I think it's the later.
- Reading 2 minutes of reminders - I have been logging on to my email and reading Fly Lady's flight plan (I get the daily digests as getting the emails individually would be annoying to me). I don't read all the testimonials, mostly just the flight plan and anything else that grabs my interest. It's helped in that it inspired me to do a complete meal plan for the upcoming week because it reminded me that the habit of the month is menu planning.
- Recognizing the negative voices and changing them; YOU ARE FLYing NOW! - I didn't really write this in my routine...it's just in hers. ;-). I haven't needed to pull out by dusty pom poms yet.
- Put out your Hot Spots for 2 minutes - this goes by quickly and works!

Before Bed Routine

- Keep your sink shining - doing well on this. yay!
- Lay out your clothes for tomorrow - check!
- Put out your Hot Spots - I'm finding that I leave this until right before I head up to bed and have no mental energy for it and sort of half-ass it. I think I need to move it a bit earlier in the night.

Thanks for sharing in this journey with me. If nothing else, it's motivating me to keep at it. If Fly Lady and her program have changed the lives of thousands, I'm hopeful she can change mine too. If you're missing my regular posts on tips I've found that save time, money and sanity, don't worry! I'll be aiming to post one per week while I'm tackling the baby step program. Gosh, that sounds like I'm in rehab. Good thing we're all friends.