I used to use FlyLady as well. It helped. What I do now has changed my life! I sat down and made a list of EVERYTHING that needs to be done in my house. I went room by room. For example, in the kitchen there are the dishes, counters, table, appliances, sweeping, mopping, etc. I even put laundry on the list. Next I went down the list and decided how frequently each item needed to be done. Some items like dishes and a load of laundry are daily. Some items like mopping and taking the garbage out are weekly.
The next step was to create an index card for each day of the week for two weeks (mine is two weeks because the least frequent chore needs to be done once every two weeks). Now put the daily chores on each days card. Then put down things that need to be done on certain days, like the garbage has to be taken out the night before the garbage man comes. Take the remainder of the chores and decide which days you want to do them on and put them on the corresponding cards. When doing this try to make logical choices. For example, sweep the day or day before you mop, dust the day or day before you vacuum, etc. Also try to spread the chores out equally among the days of the week so that each day you only have a few items to do. Be sure that if you have decided that a chore needs to be done twice a week that you put it down on two different days each week and try to make them equally spaced throughout the week. It sounds kind of complicated, but it really isn't. Once all of the chores have been assigned to their days, place all of the index cards inside a photo album. I used one of those where the pages flip up. You can see the very bottom of each index card when the pages are all down. I put "Monday - Week One" "Tuesday - Week One" etc. on the part that you can see. That way I can easily see which day to flip to. As each day's chores get done they get checked off with a dry erase marker. When the entire rotation is complete I wipe the book clean and am ready to start a new rotation. If a chore gets missed I usually just skip it until the next time it shoes up. This system makes it easy for everyone in the family to know what needs to be done each day and it it has been done or not. With my husband and I working together (the kids help too, but they are still very small and don't yet actually result in any time savings) it usually only takes us 15 - 20 minutes a day.
Hope this system helps somebody!
I have started doing something quite similar to you! I tried flylady about a year ago and I HATED all those emails! It wasn't long before I was just automatically deleting them!
I work full time and go to school full time (LOTS of homework!).
DH works a full time job plus a part time job during the school months (an additional 25 hours a week) plus school (full time in the summer and part time during the school months). He's ALWAYS burned out, but we have to push through the next year so he can finish school and (hopefully) we will get jobs that will pay enough that he can work just one job. So I don't ask much of him as far as cleaning goes, because the little time he does have on weekends is spent doing his online class.
We have two dogs that shed A LOT! I have it written on my schedule to brush them often, even just a little bit every few nights, because it's something that I really hate to do, but it really cuts down on the amount of vacuuming that needs to be done. DS12 helps out a bit, he pretty much does all the vacuuming and dusting, about twice a week.
For about the first four months of me being back in school, NOTHING got done on a regular basis - it was awful and I hated it! My first semester was filled with very busy classes. This semester is a little better, so I had time to catch up a little, and I came up with a system similar to the one I quoted above, with a slight variation.
I use a weekly planner for my daily lists, and I plan out my next 1-2 weeks. I try very hard to do at least one load of laundry a night, so I don't have to spend all weekend doing it. I schedule chores to be done on certain days, balancing them out as evenly as possible, so one day isn't totally overwhelming.
If I don't get something done on a certain day, I try to tackle that first the next day, unless it's something that really can wait. I try to do a combination of light cleaning and just one or two deep cleaning jobs that rarely done get each day, or maybe even spread the deep cleaning out to every other day.
One thing I do that might seem strange, but I swear I have {self-diagnosed} ADD when it comes to cleaning... can't stick to just one room to save my life!
So what I do, I call it "rounds". I start in the laundry room and go through each room, taking care of just five things in each room. Might be just five little things at first, but eventually you have to get to those bigger things. When I get to the point where I only have big stuff left in a room, I count each of the bigger jobs (cleaning the bathtub or emptying the dishwasher) as one "set" of five and that counts for that round. It's not long before you start to see progress, not just in one room, but throughout the whole house!
Last week I dusted all my ceiling fans, can you believe that!
Anyway, I schedule a certain amount of rounds each day - just 1 or 2 on a night I have class, 3-4 on regular weeknights, and as many as 10 on weekend days, if I don't have other stuff going on.
Also, for the paper mess, I recently purchased a four drawer file cabinet on Craigslist and I've got
absolutely everything filed in there alphabetically, with one whole drawer being only bill stuff, and each bill having it's own file. I am now MUCH more comfortable that I will be able to find the papers I need when I need them! Next step is to go through those files and get rid of the stuff that's old.
It might seem complicated, but right now, it's really working for me. For the first time since May, my house is under control (as much as it ever was, anyway...
) and I actually have time to relax a little bit once in a while.
However, no money changed hands.
I don't get it, but for whatever reason my dsis won't follow through, so she always ends up cleaning up the stuff that gets picked up. My house is by no means sparkling, and neither are my kiddos rooms, but I've always made my kiddos pick up their own toys/stuff and had to put it away as soon as they were done playing with it ect. My ds knows that he's not allowed to leave anything on the floor of his room, it needs to be put away before he goes to bed. Now, his dresser's and drawer's can sometimes be a little messy, but I can deal with that. As far as the rest of the house, I usually try to clean one or two rooms per day and I try not to let things pile up. -While I'm making dinner, I empty the dishwasher and make sure to rinse and put all the pans ect. in the dishwasher as I'm done with them. That way, after dinner, ppl. just need to rinse their plates, put them in the dishwasher and I do a wipe down of the kitchen. Good luck Op.
