Owie.

I. Am. In. So. Much. Pain.  It's not even funny.  For about the past 6 months I have been dealing with the seemingly never ending saga of getting my teeth fixed.  Fillings. Root canals.  Extractions.  Not fun. But, that's what happens when you don't have dental insurance and earn poverty-level wages.  I only have a few things left to get worked on, but at the moment my most pressing issues are two back molars that have already been worked on, but to no avail.  The fillings are  very deep and the nerves are very agitated.  I could get them root-canaled, but that costs about $1,000 each.  Not really an option.  Instead, I am going to have them pulled, but after having nearly gone into shock from the trauma the last time I had one pulled, I am insisting I be knocked-the-hell-out this time.  (Note: I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth pulled with only local-anesthetic, and I did just fine, so when the oral surgeon wanted to pull my #15 molar local-only, I didn't think it would be a big deal.  I was wrong.  I left the office shaking, dizzy, sweating, and crying.  Never again.)  Because I want to be asleep with no memory of the event this time around, I have to go to a consult appointment with the oral surgeon first.  That appointment is for Monday.  If all goes according to plan, they will be pulled Friday, and Friday can't come fast enough.  In the mean time I am hurting.  Bad.  Normally for tooth pain I just take Ibuprofen  and that does the trick nicely.  If I need more help, I add on some Oragel and ice packs.  If that doesn't help, I try warm salt-water rinses.  If THAT doesn't help, it's time to call in the big guns.  My dentist gave me a prescription for Vicodin last week, and she knows that if I ask for pain meds, I must REALLY be hurting.  I almost couldn't take my first dose fast enough.  The problem is, even Vicodin isn't working.  It get a small amount of relief for about 2 hours, and then the pain is back to full-intensity.  It's miserable.  I'm miserable.  I fall asleep with ice packs on my face, and the moment I wake up in the morning the entire right side of my face starts to throb.  Plus, the pain meds make me really sleepy and wonky-feeling, so it's very hard to feel motivated to do anything.  All I want to do is lay in bed and watch Law and Order: SVU on Netflix.  I told you all of this to explain the next part of the story:

Yesterday I was in the drugstore waiting in the pharmacy line to pick up my prescription refill, looking like a hot mess.  I had no makeup on, my hair was in a messy ponytail, and I was wearing scrubby yet comfy clothes. I had big dark circles under my eyes.  The Tall Cute Guy said that he can actually tell how much pain I'm in because he can see it on my face, and it was showing in full view as I stood in that line. As I was waiting, I hear a woman in line behind me chatting on her cell phone about "if you want to wear nude eye shadow, you really need to wear fake lashes so your eyes will pop" and other such beauty-related topics.  After a few minutes I turned around to sneak a peek at her, and realized it was a girl I had gone to high school with. I immediately whipped my head back in the other direction, hoping she didn't spot me looking like such a wreck.  I mentally kicked myself for not following the FlyLady "rule" of getting dressed to shoes, including fixing my hair and makeup.  Now, there I was, looking like death warmed over in front of one of my old classmates, who of course looked completely put together and worthy of being seen in public.  I did not.  It was embarrassing.  I'm pretty sure it was situations like this that the rule was invented in the first place.  I felt like such a loser.

Normally, I DO fix my hair and makeup before going out, and I really enjoy having that confidence of looking put together while I'm out and about.  I felt like I had failed myself big time, and that pain or no pain, I should have sucked it up and put my best face forward.  But then again, maybe this kind of thinking is just my perfectionism getting in the way and I should cut myself some slack?  I don't know.  All I do know is that I'm in pain, and I feel embarrassed.  So, I'm asking you- should I have sucked it up and cleaned myself up before heading out to the pharmacy, or should I cut myself some slack?   

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Ugh, I Have to Think of a Post Title?

Hello my lovelies- I just wanted to pop in and say that after another looooong hiatus, I'm planning another attempt at getting back on the FlyLady program/posting on this blog. I am so very, very glad that I named this blog FlyLady Flunky, as I completely live up to the name! I'm heading to bed in a few, I just wanted to make a few changes to the sidebar before I crash for the night. 

I've removed a few things, added some others, and am undecided about keeping/canning the Meez I have had there for years. Back in the day I thought it was cute, but now it comes across as a little archaic and creepy.  Thoughts?

Real "back on the bandwagon" catch-up post to come later, maybe tomorrow, maybe not!

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Reality Check Photo Op

So once again I have been a bad blogger AND a bad FlyBaby.  It's a good thing I named this blog "FlyLady Flunky" and not "Tales of the Bestest FlyLady Follower EVER" or I think the other FlyBabies would show up at my house brandishing pitchforks and torches. (Or perhaps timers and Rags in a Bag?)

To sum things up since I last posted, I left my job.  That's the big highlight in my life.  And yes I quit and wasn't fired, but it wasn't a planned quitting.  It was a  "I can no longer allow them to treat me this way and still claim to have any shreds of self respect left." type of situation.  That's all I really want to say about that.

So here I am, unemployed, bored, with no new job prospects on the horizon.  That gets really depressing really fast.  You would think that with all this time on my hands I would have the cleanest house ever, but depression doesn't work like that.  Instead things seem so much harder than they really are and you move in slow motion.  Procrastination is now my middle name.  I really need to get back into the swing of things, starting with my living quarters.

I logged onto Facebook tonight and saw that FlyLady had put out a challenge for everyone to post pictures of their messy houses online as motivation to get things cleaned up.  I've decided to take that challenge but post them here on Ye 'Ol Blog to help motivate me to write again.  Two birds with one stone if you will...

Here are the before pictures of my current state of living, no excuses made.  (Except the aforementioned depressing unemployment situation.)

(above) Bedroom.  Clean laundry dumped onto the floor.  Bed unmade.  Collection of 20 (yes 20!) pop cans hiding behind my laptop screen on the nightstand.  Oh. The. Shame.

(above) Closet.  Mostly the Ex's stuff he still needs to come and get, but I used to have it all neatly stacked and awaiting his arrival.  Now it's been rummaged through and prohibiting easy access to anything else in there.

(above) Bathroom.  More pop cans.  Dirty clothes on the floor.  Everything needs a good scrubbing.  (I did clean the bathtub tonight- go me!)

(above) Sewing room.  MORE pop cans, unfinished projects, dirty socks and dust bunnies.

There you have it.  My pathetic mess of a life manifesting itself as a pathetic mess of a house.  Hopefully the public humiliation will help motivate me to get back into gear, out of this slump and have, as my Dad once said "an abnormally clean room" once again.  Words of encouragement and swift kicks in the rear will be appreciated.

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Getting Things Done (Or Not)

I got a promotion! (Sort of.)  The real story is that on paper, I am still a historic interpreter for the living history museum where I work. (Actually, all our titles recently changed to "Museum Educators", but that's just semantics.)  The "promotion" I am speaking of is really just making the additional duties of acting as the museum costumer slightly more official. To be clear- the museum doesn't actually have a "Costumer" with a capital-C.  They haven't for years.  They have regular employees such as myself who have some skill and knowledge in this department doing their darnedest to keep everyone looking decent and as period-correct as possible.  For the past year, they didn't even have anyone doing that.  The costume department became a free-for-all with no one accounting for who was wearing what or maintaining the costumes we have, let alone producing anything new.  I took some of these duties upon myself trying to keep things from going totally chaotic, such as sewing on buttons for those who lost them, or altering a petticoat so no one tripped on the hem.  I was doing these things on a completely unofficial basis as favors to the wearers of costumes in need of mending, mainly on my own time with my own supplies.

This year things have started off with the pleasant surprise of management making my completely unofficial title of costumer slightly more official.  Like I said, they don't have an open position for a capital-C Costumer, and haven't for a decade.  What I am now is the costumer, lower-case-c.  (I hope this makes sense.) Basically I fulfill the duties that a Costumer would, which is mainly running the costume department, but since the official position doesn't exist, I can't even hope to be the official Costumer.  I didn't get a raise, I don't get cool business cards with my name on them, but it does give me more hours which I desperately need, so for now, I'm happy.

I spent weeks just trying to get the costume rooms cleaned up and organized enough to function within, and now we are well into the beginning of our programming season.  For part of the day I play a roll in our Underground Railroad program like everyone else, but after they leave in the afternoon you can find me sitting in the basement costume office trying to keep my head from spinning with everything that needs to be done around there.  Some things are very long term or low-priority tasks, such as neatly winding up the bags of ribbon that were donated to us so they don't get all knotted up, but other things are last-minute yet high-priority such as replacing 4 buttons on a pair of man's trousers that all popped off on the same say so he has the ability to wear them the next morning.  I'm pretty sure the employee wearing those trousers thanks me that I at least recognize the difference in priority levels. ;)

The only problem I am having with this priority-level thing is that it often leaves me with tasks sitting on my to-do list that I really really want the satisfaction of crossing off, but when other things pop up (or pop off, as in the case of the buttons) they get moved to the back burner.  A good example of this would be (ironically) the case of another set of buttons.

This coming weekend we will be starting another program for which a few staff members need additional costumes outside of what they usually wear.  One of these items is a wool over-shirt from the Ohio Pioneer era of 1810-1815ish.  The employee who is to wear this shirt apparently has much smaller wrists than the last guy who wore it, so the cuff openings just slip right down over his hands.  Not a problem- all I need to do is add another button to each cuff about 2 inches over so he can tighten them to his size.  This should take me 15 minutes, tops.  However, even though I put this task on my to-do list a week ago, I still haven't been able to get around to doing it.  Other things have taken priority over the shirt buttons because their due-dates have fallen in a more-immediate time frame, such as RIGHT NOW, or the following morning.  Tasks like these crop up every day and I must fit them in with the other items that are more on-going projects.

I realize this is life, and how I should be handling things. The problem is, the shirt-button due-date is this coming Thursday, here it is Sunday, and this 15-minute-tops project still isn't completed.  I know with the way things have been going I will probably get the chance to put them on sometime like late-Wednesday afternoon, and to me, this feels like procrastination.  It's not, I know that, but I am the kind of girl that likes to get things done, cross it off the list, and forget about it.  Not,  let them sit festering on the list for over a week where it taunts me with it's approaching due-date.  I'm sure this is just another way my perfectionism is manifesting itself and I will just have to adjust and grow accustomed to this way of prioritizing projects, but can't someone make the little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me I have somehow failed go away? Please?

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Frugality Bit Me In The Butt

I have one of those debit cards that earns points with my everyday purchases, which can then be cashed in for an array of products available through an online catalog.  I started accumulating points a few years ago when I changed banks, but had never bothered to cash them in.  They just kept adding up, forgotten, until last week when it occurred to me to check the balance.

To my pleasant surprise I actually had enough to get a product or gift cards that would retail for around $100.00 in the "real" world. I decided to go ahead and pick something out, as there wasn't really anything in the catalog I wanted to "save up" for.  After awhile I settled on a small wet/dry hand vac by Hoover.  It had good reviews online and was cordless, which to me is kind of the point when looking at a hand vac.  I really wanted something just to pick up the kitty litter that gets tracked by the box, and the odd bit off fluff or crumbs that would drive me crazy in between regular vacuuming.  It retails for about $25.00.

I was just about to place my order when a thought occurred to me- I also had the option to cash in my points for gift cards to restaurants or stores, such as Target.  I wondered how the points-to-prize conversion would work out if I were to first purchase Target gift cards with my points, then turn around and buy the vac from them vs. getting the vac outright.  I did all the math, and it turned out my points were stretched further if I turned them into Target gift cards rather than getting the vac directly from the bank.  Sold.  I did the transaction, ordering 4- $25.00 Target gift cards, almost emptying out my points bank since there is nothing else in the catalog I want and I don't think I'll have any problem spending the rest at Target.

A week went by, and then finally the gift cards showed up in the mail this afternoon.  Score! Look how pretty they are:

I hopped right online to Target.com to place my order, but to my horror, it now says the item is out of stock!  There is no mention of whether or not they intend on getting more. Now I am thoroughly bummed, not to mention a little ticked.  If I had just ordered the vac outright from the bank I would have it in hand, sucking up kitty litter and dust bunnies right now.  Instead, I tried to be frugal and "stretch" my points, leaving me with  4 pieces of plastic that have the ability to buy me a vac, but there doesn't seem to be any others carried by Target that I want.  Sooo frustrating!  Here are what seem to be my options:

The Dirt Devil 15.6V Gator Series Hand Vac

This one has really good reviews on Target.com, but when checking Amazon.com they, um, suck. It also costs $41.99, a little more than I really want to spend on a hand vac, but am willing to since it's technically "free" money I'm spending.

The Bissell Pet Hair Eraser Corded Hand Vac

This one has excellent reviews on both Target and Amazon, but the features have me a little wary.  It is corded, which is something I'm trying to get away from.  I really want this vac to be a really quick "grab and go" appliance, and a cord defeats that purpose.  It also was designed more for picking up pet hair off of couches and the like, not the reason I'd mainly be using it.  It has a shorter "snout", which makes it harder to get under furniture where fluff balls love to hide.  The replacement filters have to be purchased from Bissell directly, as they don't seem to be carried in stores. The price is good at $28.79, but still leaves me wanting the original Hoover vac I'd set out for.

Those are the leading contenders, but nothing is making me itch to make the purchase now.  I think I'm going to go to my local brick and mortar Target to see what the options are, but I know they don't carry the Hoover I want in-store.  I'm not really sure what I should do if I have no luck there, do I sit and wait hoping Target.com gets more in stock, or does Target operate more on the "once it's gone, it's gone" system?  If I choose to just move ahead and pick one of the other two, which one?  Am I giving this too much thought?  My head hurts.  Advice please!

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Driving Myself Crazy

I feel all over the place, I don't know where to start, therefore nothing is being done.  I don't like this feeling.  I have so many little things and a few big things that I want/have to do, but I can't seem to focus and actually complete any of those items.  You could say I feel overwhelmed.

A big part of my problem is my perfectionism.  A perfect example of my perfectionism is that of my new sewing room- formally living room.  I previously wrote about how my ex took the living room furniture leaving me with a room full of randomness.  I hate randomness.  It's hard to re-do a room if it has no designated function.  Luckily my friend TJ suggested that I turn it into a sewing room. I really liked the idea and immediately started bringing my sewing supplies up the two floors from where it was previously housed in the chilly basement.

My Dad helped me carry up an eight-foot-long folding table which will serve as my sewing work space. My ironing board, boxes of fabric, organizational drawer cabinet, and of course  sewing machine all also occupy this room.  All this in addition to the stuff that was already in there, like my desk, coffee table, TV stand, and my ex's remaining saltwater reef tanks.  I had my work cut out for me.

Before I began, the room looked something like this:

The desk was the only "completed" part of the room.  Everything else was sort of pushed to the edges. I started arranging and rearranging sometime around 7:00 last night.  I took this picture about 10:00:

At this point, I was still surprisingly upbeat.  It was fun trying to figure out where everything would go, and when I was done I was going to have my cute little sewing room right there next to my bedroom.  No more cold lonely basement for me!  Then, around 11:00, things took a wrong turn...

I'm going to try and walk you through my thought process during all this, but I'm warning you now- we're about to get inside my head and it ain't pretty.  Here goes:

OK.  Desk is already set up and looking cute on the north wall and I want it to stay there, fish tanks are taking up half the west wall, so that leaves  the east wall to put the sewing table.  No problem.  But wait, that is a shared wall with my sister's room, I hope she won't be annoyed by the sound of the machine through the wall.  Better go check.  (Did a test run of machine noise.)  Nope, she said she can't hear it, we're good to go.  Now I need to set up the ironing board.  I want the ironing board to come off the table like an "L" on my right hand side like I had it in the basement. I'm left handed and it's the most comfortable place for me to have it, all I need to do is swivel my chair to the side and it's in the perfect spot.  But, if I do that in this room, it blocks the door.  I could just put it up when I need it and take it down when I don't, but I use it so much during a project to iron seam allowances that doing that would be a huge pain in the butt. No, better just to leave it up. If I put it on the other side it blocks the desk.  Obviously the table needs to be on a different wall.  The north wall, where the desk is now,  That way it will be the focal point in the room.  But I like the desk there. No, it's the only other good spot for it, I can deal with moving the desk.  OK, table is on the north wall.  It looks kind of nice there.  Now back to to the ironing board. It can now go on my right side where I want it. But if I put it on that side, that means the desk has to go on the opposite side and there really isn't room over there. Maybe I could move it to the other side of the room and just get used to it being on my left?  Sure.  Let's do that.  Hmmm. If I have it on that side the tray part where the iron sits is to my left, and that means the pointed end of the board is the end closest to the table, and that looks weird.  Plus, it's harder to iron my work dresses that way.  If I turn the table around, now the iron spot is on my right side, and I'd have to keep reaching across for it.  No way.  The ironing board has to be on the right.  Now to deal with the desk.  I like things centered, even, balanced, etc.  I want the desk in the center of that wall. No problem.  Wait-problem.  There is an air vent that protrudes from the baseboard a couple inches keeping me from putting the desk where I want it.  I can either center the desk and just have it pulled out away from the wall a few inches, or just have it off centered by about six inches and push it up against the wall.  Nope, neither are to my liking.  It will drive me nuts to do either.  The desk has to go on the other side of the room.  Which means the ironing board has to move again, back to the other side.  We've been though this.  Ugh!...

Anyone still there?  I totally wouldn't blame you if you all just un-subscribed from my feed right now after having read that.  I'm not kidding when I say this is only a small portion of my thought process last night. There were several other issues that came up, but if I went into further detail I'm afraid I'd make your eyes bleed.  I also moved that desk back and forth across the room no less than five times.  I finally gave up around 2:00 AM.  I'm still not happy with it. I even got my sister involved as a fresh set of eyes, and she has concluded that I am a psychopath...

I've always been able to take take whatever furnishings and decor I have to work with and somehow bring the room together in a way where it seems as though  it was meant to be that way.  Everything belongs.  I can't stand it when a space appears as though the things within it are only where they are because it's the only place they would fit.  In this case, it's the truth.  And it's driving me nuts.  Here's what it looks like now- I know to you this will look just fine, but to me, it's still all wrong:

I know it's crazy to have spent that much time agonizing over something so trivial.  I really can't help it.  If I'm going to be spending a lot of time in there I want it to feel right, and it doesn't.  Plus, this was only one example of how my perfectionism takes over.  I do this kind of thing all the time with the most mundane of tasks and over-analyze them to the point I have a "freak-out".  Somebody take pity and shoot me, please?

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Shedding Some Light On My Perfectionism

Working in a living history museum where modern conveniences like light switches and flashlights are non existent, we must go the period appropriate throw-back route and use things like oil lamps and candles. For portability we put candles in lanterns kinda like the one in the picture, only not with  big honkin' pillar candles as shown. We use and abuse these candle lanterns, especially during the Christmas season program called Lantern Tours.  They end up absolutely covered in wax and soot, the glass sides are broken, etc.  It's quite the hot mess.

Anyway, a charity group is renting our establishment this weekend for an event and they requested to use some of our lanterns, i.e. someone needs to clean them beforehand.  That someone would be me...

Day 1 of cleaning lanterns I did have help, a co-worker took the job of cleaning the metal frames themselves by scraping the melted wax off the bottom with a putty knife then giving them a bath in industrial strength degreaser to remove the soot residue.  We might have gotten a little high off the fumes.  I set to task getting the wax off the glass panes themselves.  To do this I modified a little trick I learned years ago to get wax out of clothing: Pick off any big hunks of wax, then place a paper bag over what remains and iron the spot.  The wax will instantly melt and absorb into the bag.  Ta da!  For the lantern glass I didn't have paper bags so I just found an old thin cloth rag and laid that over the panes, ironed, and ta da again, clean glass!

Day 2 of lantern cleaning was me alone scrubbing more frames. More getting high. At the end of this day, there were 21 totally clean lanterns ready for the event.  My boss said that should be enough, and I breathed a sigh of relief thinking I was done.

Yesterday was Day 3.  My boss texted me around noon and said that the co-worker in charge the rental had just informed her that the renters wanted a total of 50 lanterns for their event.  50.  5-0.  As in, more than double what I had already finished.  Oh boy.  I drove on down there and got back to work, but this time I knew I wouldn't be able to be as thorough as we had been before.  Working alone I had time to de-wax, but not to de-soot.  By the end of the day I had chipped the wax off the 29 additional lantern frames, but still had to go in today to de-wax the glass.

Day 4- (Today) I de-waxed the glass and was able to leave with 50 completed lanterns ready for use this weekend.  The only thorn in my side was that the final 29 never got de-sooted (is that a word?)  In my mind I had a mini-fail because I couldn't get them as clean as they could be (and the first batch was) due to the time constraints I was under.

Later this afternoon my boss texted me again, and part of our convo went like this (she is white and I am green):

Apparently even my boss knows I'm a FlyLady Flunky/perfectionist at heart...

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When Laziness Takes Over: A Pictorial

The past few days I've allowed laziness to set in and have totally neglected my routines.  I have even neglected basic things like throwing away the packaging from my Ramen noodles or empty pop cans.  The place is a wreck.

There is no real reason for this, I just don't feel like doing much of anything right now.  Aren't I allowed a couple days of having zero responsibilities? (OK, not zero, I have been feeding the cats.  Only because if I didn't, they would eat me while I slept.)

I don't feel as though I have fallen off the FlyLady bandwagon, I'm simply taking a brief hiatus from anything chore-related.  It's actually kind of nice not constantly thinking about what cleaning task I have to do next, or if I remembered to set my timer for the laundry. What hasn't been nice is the fact that if someone walked into the apartment right now I would be mortified, even though picking up the mess would take maybe 45 minutes tops. Me no likey this feeling.

All is well though, since tomorrow it's back to business and I will be getting the place in order so I can have an easy-go of it come Wednesday when I go back to work.  Photographic evidence of the current state of the place has been taken however so I can share my embarrassing lapse in housekeeping with all of you.  Reader beware...

Un-shiny sink.

Cluttered counter tops.

Clean laundry not being put away on top of the dishwasher full of clean dishes also not being put away.

Un-made bed/couch.

Close-up of my end table.

Binx lying amongst dirty laundry on the bathroom floor.

Emily asleep on the chair.  This one was just for the cuteness factor.

Well, those were the highlights.  Just keeping it real people, just keeping it real.  There was a reason I named this blog FlyLady Flunky- I tend to have little lapses like this, some just longer than others.  In my defense, I warned my roommate before he came home from dog sitting today that the place was a wreck.  When he walked in he looked confused and said "I thought you said the house was a mess!" I guess like beauty, a mess is in the eyes of the beholder.

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BabyStep 25: It Ain't Gonna Happen Overnight

OK, enough fartin' around. I've been flying for over a month and I still haven't finished the BabySteps. I haven't fallen off the wagon, but life gets in the way, you know?  It's time to knock the last of these puppies out.

Today's BabyStep is to learn how FlyLady's routines developed.  She wrote a personal testimonial about how this was done, one step at a time.  The gist of it was this:  It didn't happen overnight.  I need to remember this.  I still have days where I just feel too tired or lazy to do every single thing in one of my routines, and then I beat myself up the next morning and feel like a failure. 

The funny thing is, none of these things are that important.  If they aren't done the world will not come to end.  I need to recognize that I have done so much already and made several life-style changes in such a short amount of time, and anything I do in my day is benefiting me, even if it all isn't completed by the end of the night.  Not doing one thing does not erase all the other good things I did that day.

Sorry for the short (and not well thought out post), but it's time for bed.  So tired.  It's that funny life thing getting in the way again.

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BabyStep 17: Go To Bed!

OK, confession time:  I totally lied to you in yesterday's post.  Well, maybe not lied because that would be an intentional act.  Let's call this "speaking too soon", shall we?  See, I stated that I hadn't gotten around to doing BabyStep 17 which involves setting a specific bedtime and sticking to it.  I swore that I was going to do it last night, but it just didn't happen.  By the time I finished writing that post it was already pretty late, and I still had my Before Bed Routine do to.  I did the routine and got in bed, but by this point I was only going to get about 6 hours of sleep.  I've gone with less, but I prefer more. 

Fast forward to this morning- I slept through my alarm!  Actually, I slept through 4 of them!  I always set multiple alarms because I have a history of shutting them off in my sleep if my body is too tired.  I never remember doing it; in fact, I once had an entire conversation with my boyfriend when he tried to wake me up because he saw me turn my alarm off and go back to sleep.  He asked why I wasn't getting up, and I told him my boss had called the night before and told me I didn't need to go in that day, so naturally he let me go back to sleep.  None of that was true- I was talking in my sleep and he thought I was wide awake! I don't remember any of this, and it's safe to say I was late to work that  morning and my boss was NOT happy...

Anyway, I slept through all my alarms this morning and woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to be walking out the door.  I usually get up at least an hour before I am supposed to leave.  Thank goodness I had done my routine the night before!  Doing this allowed me to only have to put my clothes on, feed the cats, and take care of bathroom necessities.  I wasn't scrambling around to pack food, look for my keys, etc.  Everything was where it needed to be already and I managed to get out the door right on time.  Phew!

I'm still having a little trouble figuring out how to set my bedtime.  First off, what is the recommended amount of sleep for adults these days?  8 hours?  7?  According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults should be getting between 7-9 hours per night.  Should I choose the middle ground, or play with it a little and see what works best for me?  And what do I do on days where I don't work?  What do I do on days when my work schedule strays from the norm a bit?   Stay with the bedtime, or let it vary? Am I over thinking this? Ugh. 

With my current work schedule I need to be getting up around 7:30. This means to get enough sleep I need to go to bed at 11:30.  Totally doable, but there's something about putting a number on it that seems so limiting. We'll see how this goes.

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Odds and Ends and Poofy Hair

I have a little catching up to do!  I have not moved on to the next BabyStep yet, as it involves setting a specific bedtime and I did not want to do that on the weekend where I was free to stay up late/sleep in a bit.  I start back to my regular work week tomorrow so I will be establishing the bedtime starting tonight and will report back on this tomorrow.

In other news:

1.)  I fell a little behind with my routines over the weekend.  I am noticing this is becoming a pattern.  It's just a lot harder to complete my morning routine when I don't have a certain time I need to have it completed by.  When I am working I find it easy to set myself to task and get it all done before I leave the house in the morning.  On my days off there isn't that cut-off point, and I tend to get lax and not do everything.  I could create a self-imposed deadline, but I just don't wanna.

I did get right back on track last night, and I realized how much smoother things go now that these routines are taking shape.  I no longer have to worry that I'm forgetting to take something I need with me to work, because now it was pre-packed the night before.  I no longer have to sit on my couch/bed with the sheets all a muss because I made it that morning.  I'm finally seeing enough improvement around here to feel a little more motivated to do my routines regularly. 

2.)  Although I haven't officially begun Zone work yet, I did feel a little ambitious the other day and took a crack at the bathroom.  Since I moved in this apartment the shower curtains have been driving me batty; they were covered in soap scum that rubbed off on my hands anytime I touched them.  They belong to my roommate so I couldn't just toss them and buy new ones, so instead I decided to wash them in the washing machine. 

Before I did so I Googled around for info, and found that people have actually had good luck with washing plastic shower curtains in the washer and have used several methods to do so.  Some use hot water (theory being it relaxes the plastic so it doesn't shred in the machine), some use cold (they are afraid hot will melt the plastic.)  Some used bleach, some used white vinegar, and some used plain old laundry detergent.  Some combined these one way or another.

I ended up using warm water with laundry detergent and bleach. I also threw in some some white kitchen towels and washcloths to act as "scrubbers". There was no damage to the curtain, and it came out looking a million times better.  Here is the before:

Yuck.  Soap scum city.  Now here is the after:

Much better!

3.)  This has absolutely nothing to do with FlyLady or housekeeping, but I want to share anyway.  I work for a living history museum, which means I dress in 19th Century Costumes and portray life in Ohio for that era.  Mainly I do the Civil War (1860's), sometimes the Ohio pioneer era (1815ish), and only a few times have I done late Victorian (1890's.)  Today I had to do 1890s for a Victorian Tea we hosted, which meant I had to put my hair up into what is called a "Gibson Girl" style.  This is not easy, as my hair is only just past chin length.  I practiced for hours yesterday trying to get it right, and it still took me over an hour to do it again this morning.  Luckily, I found a hairspray that made this all possible, called Freeze It.

To give you an idea of the look I was going for, here are a few pics of an original Gibson Girl, Evelyn Nesbit:

There are many variations to this style, but the key factor is the poof, or "cloud" of hair piled on top of your head.  This is my problem; some of my hair at the nape of my neck isn't even long enough to each that far up the back of my head to be gathered into the knot on top.  The Freeze It took care of that no problem and just held it in place with no bobby pins or anything.  It also has "brighteners" in it that actually made my hair look healthier than it really is instead of giving me that hairspray-dulled look.  I actually found this by accident at WalMart while I was looking for something else, and almost passed it up.  It comes in a gold can and only cost $3.00, so I figured it couldn't be much good.  Luckily I pulled out my iPhone and looked up some reviews, and everyone said they loved it.  I agree!  For this amount of hold and the low price, it can't be beat.  I go through a lot of hairspray doing my hair for work and this will not only get the job done, but not break my budget as well.  I beats the expensive salon spray I used to use for over $10.00 a can!  Here's a pic:

FYI: This shows the Original formula, but I am using the Mega Hold version.  To wrap this up, here are some pics of me with the Gibson Girl hairstyle.  The back loops were done partially with my own hair, and only one small hairpiece.  Sorry for the yuck quality on most of these, they were taken with cell phones:

Setting out the lemonade.

Working with the cast iron stove.

Being silly and wearing a gentleman's hat on top my my Gibson Girl hair poof.

12 hours and a hard day's work later, the hair hasn't moved! (God, I look tired!)

The back.  I'm sorry I have to go brush this out now!  Good night!

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BabyStep 9: Decluttering (And Some Other Stuff)

Today's BabyStep teaches us that the key to a calm, collected, clean home is to declutter.  FlyLady says that you can't organize clutter, you can only organize the things that you love.  This makes sense- the less you have the easier it is to keep it all neat and tidy. When I did FlyLady before I did this step, and it really did help.  Only this time around, there really isn't going to be much decluttering going on.

When I moved from Indiana back into my parents' home a year ago, I did a major decluttering job.  I didn't want to pack and move any more than I had to, so a lot of things were either sold off, donated, or thrown away.  I only took what I actually needed into my parent's house, such as my clothing, bathroom toiletries, some office supplies, and very few books and movies.  All of my kitchen supplies, the majority of my books and movies, and some furniture went into a storage unit my sister was renting. 

Then I moved out of my parents' house to my current shared apartment this fast February.  In this current situation, there are two of us living in a small one bedroom apartment.  There is no room here for me to even bring in a bed, so I sleep on the couch.  Literally all I have here is the bare minimum.   I have clothing, but only the in-season items are in the apartment.  The rest goes into boxes in the basement.  I have my bathroom stuff.  I have my bed sheets.  I have 5 framed pictures that sit on some shelves in the living room just to put a touch of "me" in the place.  That's about it.  If you were to walk in here and glance around, you would have no clue a girl also lived here, that's how little I have in the place.

In a way, this will work for me by allowing me to get into the deep cleaning portion of the FlyLady program sooner, but I do imagine there will be a few decluttering posts coming in the future.  But for now, the best I can offer you is FlyLady's Decluttering Instructions.

I would also like to point out that at the bottom of the Day 9 BabyStep page there is the instruction to add a 5 minute Room Rescue to my morning routine.  Nowhere does it say what exactly this is, nor does she link to it.  I have taken the liberty of digging through FlyLady's cluttered hard to navigate website and included that link here.

Now on the the "Other Stuff".  I would consider last night another fail.  10:30 rolled around and I had not done any of my before bed routine, and I had a funny feeling that wasn't going to change.  I had another headache that had persisted all day and I just felt drained.  I also felt bogged down by some pressing financial problems I am facing. I know this are just excuses, because I have not felt well before and still managed to do my routines.  This time something else was missing that played into the situation.  I lost my motivation. 

Here is how the apartment looked when I went to bed last night (as how it still looks now, 13 hours later.):

Sink with dirty dishes, Hot Spot uncleared.  The cat box didn't get scooped, nor did I bother to take my makeup off.  Ugh. I will pay for that last one in a few days when my skin yells at me. I realize that this is all hardly the end of the world, but it was a definite lapse in establishing my routines.

I really don't really have an answer as to why I lost my motivation, nor do I know what to do to change it.  Is the FlyLady system flawed in that not enough has visibly changed in the house to keep me motivated?  Am I flawed and truly lazy at heart?  Or was this just a fluke?  Even now, I reeeeeally don't want to get up and take care of these things, even though it wouldn't take much of an effort.

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Day 2: Epic Fail

OK, so today I was supposed to do Day 2 of FlyLady's BabySteps.  My instructions were to get dressed, fix my hair and makeup, etc.  as soon as I got out of bed.  This is supposed to help you be motivated to keep moving and get things done throughout the day. 

This sooooo did not happen!  As soon as I got up I began working on my new blog layout and header.  I don't have to work until 5:15 tonight, so it was really easy to just keep working away on the computer than to bother getting dressed.  And here I am, still working on the computer, in my bathrobe.  I really do need to go get dressed now, my real job will be starting soon.  I'll try again tomorrow.

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