My Afternoon Routine (AR) usually begins with lunch and finishes up after the kids go down for their naps.
2. Put kids down for naps
3. Clean up kitchen
4. Fill my water bottle
5. Empty/run dishwasher - if needed
6. Pick up toys (I find that if I do this now, when they get up from naps, they don't just add new toys on top of the ones already out)
7. Prepare any needed food items for dinner (this is a good time to cup up veggies, marinate meat, etc)
8. Empty the Humidifier/fill dehumidifiers (all depends on the season!)
9. Feed/water Strat (Our garage cat)
Finally, my Daily Routines. My daily routines are so far different than FlyLady's it isn't funny but what is the same is the concept. I think many people that look at FlyLady, read her routines and think they can't do what she does. Of course you can't, you aren't her! But you'll discover soon enough that you actually have things you do each day of the week.
1. Laundry - Towels (FlyLady believes in "a load a day keeps Mt. Washmore away" - I recently took this to heart instead of doing all laundry on one day and am SOOO glad I did! I wash a specific "type" each day)
2. Whole House Wrong Room Rescue (I don't know about you - by my house needs a rescue on Monday morning after the weekend. I take time to go into each room and put everything away, take stuff to the right wrong and put it away. This normally only takes about 15-20 minutes IF that)
3. Clean the inside Cat Litter
4. Cut out coupons
Tuesday
1. Laundry - Darryl and My Clothes
2. Weekly Home Blessing Hour (This is the hour you take to do some basic cleaning - this is not deep cleaning)
Mine Includes: Dusting, Swiffering floors, Mopping Floors, Vacuuming Floors, Washing the window Josh always touches, washing the patio window, washing the outside of the fridge, Cleaning the bathroom.
3. File Coupons
Wednesday
1. Laundry - Sheets
2. Change sheets on all the beds
3. Empty the trash (Our trash day is on Thursday so I make sure all trash cans throughout the whole house are emptied and in the bin by Wednesday evening)
4. Plan menu for following week
5. Run Errands
Thursday
1. Clean out my purse
2. Balance Checkbook
3. Pay bills
4. Update budget
5. Clean out refrigerator
6. Write Grocery list
7. Laundry - Josh and Nate's clothes
Friday
1. Laundry - Darryl and My clothes
2. Run Swiffer and Vacuum
3. Do Baking (I'm still working on this - I tend to bake on Saturday's since I go to the store on Friday's but I'm working towards keeping my Saturday and Sunday free to do things I want to do)
4. Grocery Store
5. Clean both cat litter boxes
So that's my basic plan. To see FlyLady's detailed Basic Weekly Plan and her weekly checklist click here. Even now as I was looking at her checklist, it made me realize that I need to make one of those to ensure I get stuff done each week. It's an on going process, that's for sure!
And to answer the question - no, I don't always get everything done no matter how hard I try. Usually if I don't get something done on one day, I'll move it to the next day on my to do list. But, I'll save my to do list and detailed cleaning lists for a different post.
I hope you take time to figure out your routines so that you can get the things done that you want to get done each day :-)
