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14 March 2012

How do you use: Home Maintenance ('Fly Lady')

Continuing with our series of how you use for your Filofax for specific tasks.

So this week, how have you set up your Filofax to keeping track of your Home Maintenance Tasks, cleaning, renewals, kitchen equipment maintenance, cleaning filters on dishwashers, washing machines etc.

Are there any specific inserts you use, or require? If they don't exist already I'm sure we can create them and make them available for you.

Do you have a home Filofax dedicated to running your home combined with Family planner. Tell us in the comments.

If you can share pictures on Flickr or your own blog post then please post links in the comments.

There are some great ideas on Simple Ideas on How to Organise Your Home here.

20 comments:

  1. I love Philofaxy... After months of not having access to the internet I came on here today with the sole purpose of finding info about a home/family organizer, which I intend to use my A5 Vintage Rose Finchley for. Me and DH are finally getting cracking with moving in together for the first time :D SO EXCITED! And once again Philofaxy is amazingly on par with my train of thought! Thank you Steve, I look forward to everyone's posts here - for now I'm off to look in the Files section!

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  2. I've found through trial and error that cleaning and general home maintenance really is not something that lends itself to planning in detail. Now it is probably because I'm a "clean enough" person, who tend to things when they start to bother me or I must but otherwise tend to let cleaning be.

    With that said, I do have a few important reminders written in my calendar. Such as the fire alarm and extinguisher checks, but only things that I am prone to forget entirely about if not written down.

    I also do write down any "musts" at the top of my journal page every evening. So I am sure to get them done the next day. Such as making sure the extra nice shirt is washed and dry for the presentation by the end of the week, and to put on another loaf of bread in the bread machine.

    For all the rest, the routine things that are not vital, they don't need planning since they remind you themselves (such as dust bunnies multiplying). All you need to do, and all I do, is to make sure there is time in the day to tend to those routine things. No lists or fancy sections in the world will help you keep a nice home if you don't allocate time for the home. So, boxed in pink, I set aside an hour a day for everything that needs doing in my home from cleaning the kitchen to sorting through the socks.

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    1. @Onutter - I love the idea of just boxing an hour off in the diary to get this done - I always run out of time so this would work well for me. However I also need some lists / checklists / daily priorities as it would be easy for me to get sidetracked.

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    2. I do like FlyLady, but also found that the cleaning just gets done & don't feel the need for in-depth planning. Some times I'll add 'clean bathroom' etc. to my to-do lists if I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, but don't have a separate home filo.

      I will also box time off & find cleaning is a great antidote to some thing like studying/brain stuff.

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  3. I don't follow the fly lady method but I have an entire section in my filofax set up for home management, just to make sure I remember when I have done things. I have pages for meal planning, food I have in the house, cleaning schedule, budgetting.
    I have made quite a few of these pages myself (some to be filled in and printed and some for printing then filling in) which I am more than happy for anyone to have a copy of.
    xx

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    1. Hello! I have emailed you as well. Would love to see your creations!

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    2. I was unable to email you for some reason. but I would love to see the pages you came up with. I have a section in my filo for household as well, but can't find any good printables for it. Really interested in the meal planning, food inventory and budgeting. you can send me an email if you would like. stephanie dot jm @ live dot ca or the one attached to this message.

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    3. I would love to see the household pages that you have created.

      quinton42503@gmail.com

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    4. Bit late to the party on this one, but i too would be interested in these. I've just this week received my A5 Domino which i have assigned as my Home Binder - to log anything & everything - Cleaning Scheudles a la Flylady, finances, Meal Planning, My daughter/school info etc.
      I know what my dividers will be... I just haven't commited to actually starting the set up.

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  4. What a great idea to have a home task question. I have set up a 1 page cleaning rota to try and track tasks each day. Just started, so I'll see how it goes. My kind of mini fly lady. Miss Oakden, I would love to see your household inserts. Do you mind sharing them and sending by e. mail attachment?? If so, my e. mail address is je.mccourt@virgin.net.I'd be ever so grateful.I will only use anything just for my individual use, but I am badly needing to get a household system back in place.Being unemployed throws all usual routines out of synch.Re- balance is needed!!

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  5. Another Flylady-fan here! In my Filofax, I have colour-coded the weeks on the year-overview so that I always know what zone I'm currently in. Behind that I have one page that lists chores that get repeated weekly (e.g. Monday: pay bills, water plants; Tuesday: mob kitchen floor, make menu-list from wednesday to saturday; etc etc). Here I also keep a list of the Quick Cleaning that I do on Saturday (Flylady calls this "Home Blessing").
    I transfer the weekly and Quick Cleaning items to the appropriate date. I like to have it in front of me every day.
    Behind one of my tabs I have the Zone's activities all written out. I check them off with Frixion pens, so that I can erase the checkmarks once I move on to the next zone. I also block out an hour a day to work on my zones.

    I no longer write down my morning and evening routines, because I have now done them a million times and know them by heart. Morning routines get done when I get up, and the rest after I have gotten the kids to school. Evening routines after dinner and before I go to bed. Routines are life-savers IMO!

    I have my dinner plans written at the bottom of the day on my weekly pages. In lime-green frixion pens, so that I can move it around, should anything unforseen happen. Or maybe just because nobody felt like eating spinach, I'm really not the meanest of all mums ... he he.

    To answer the original question, of whether I need preprinted sheets: nope, I'm just fine with what I have. With household chores you have to make sure that the strive for perfection isn't blocking the actual process!

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    1. Wow, Judith, that's inspiring! I have just picked up my Filofax again, so I may use your system as a guideline!

      I did a post on plannerisms about Filofax and the Flylady system: http://www.plannerisms.com/2011/09/philofaxy-all-stars-guest-post-femke.html (though I fell off the bandwagon right after that post!). Still think it's a fabulous system.

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    2. Do you have images to go with this? I'd love to see your layout for this to see exactly how it works. I'm still trying to perfect not being a perfectionist! lol.

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    3. I saw how you set this up in the video further down the blog, very, very inspiring. I'm going to be pretty much copying it!
      I'm not totally on the ball with the smaller elements of the flylady system, ie. shiny sinks and found I've gotten 'bogged down' in those first steps which stopped me progressing on the bigger picture elements ie. doing zones, by taking the flylady system out of the pink fluffy website and cheesy emails it should be doable.

      I'd been wondering how to fit daily/routine things that I need to work at into a sort of GTD system and have settled on a daily checklist to include things like taking the rubbish out, taking vitamins, practicing things I'm working on etc. So not all housework, but included.
      Looking forward to my frixion pens arriving!

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  6. Not sure what's happened but I've not recieved any emails.

    Anyone whose interested still please email. Louise.oakden28(at)btinternet(dot)com

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  7. I found this blog about a month after buying my first filofax ever. I bought a pocket butterfly and my plan with the planner is to be more focused/organized both personally and in my professional life.
    This blog has given me so much start help with my filofax.... A big thank you, from me to you :)

    The home maintenance idea is a great idea. I think a kind of system can make my home maintenance much more efficient. Im so new to filofax... i have just started to see all the possibilities this plannner gives me.

    What i clearly see is that my planner is to small..... :)

    Kari

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  8. I am not familiar with flylady but I do have a sub section "Home and Garden" under my Projects tab. General cleaning gets done and I do not need to make notes for that. I wrote down the dimensions of areas in our apartment, like kitchen countertops, patio door height and length, etc. These are areas I am planning to improve one day and it is great to have the information handy. Also some paint samples. So no real planning happening here. Just random notes.

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  9. I have two transparent envelopes with coloured notepaper in to help me remember my routines. I have written out my morning, afternoon and bedtime routines on one and my weekly home blessing and the weekly task list on another. I tear out and throw away (recycle) my old diary pages once I finish a week, so that my routine sheet is always next to this weeks diary.

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