Tami Fox

Mastering the Closet – Getting Organized

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

For many of us, the Master Bedroom closet becomes a dumping ground for stuff that does not have a home. We also tend to keep clothes in there that we no longer wear. By thinning down the amount of stuff and clothes in our Master Closet, it can become a place that bring us joy when we open it. If we open it and try to dodge falling items, we are not finding joy. If we start looking at our clothes, we are reminded of the amount of clothes that we have that does not fit. When we look down at the floor of our closet, can we really tell what is there? Doing a closet makeover is more than a 15-minute project. This is probably a project that needs to be tackled in small steps. Start with the shelves in your closet. Take them one at a time. Then go through your hanging clothes. A neat trick I read about was to turn your hangers around backward. Then hang things back correctly after you wear them and hang them back up. In 6 months, look at the hangers that are still backward. Evaluate whether you need them or not. Some things may be in the backwards position just because of the season, so I am not saying to declutter everything that you have not worn in 6 months, but I am saying to use this as a guide to help you decide what to declutter. There are women’s shelters who are always looking for clothing donations. Local domestic violence shelters seek donations of clothes and shoes year round. Use your excess to bless others. After you go through your hanging clothes, move on to decluttering the floor of your master closet. Just keep at it once a week. You will get it done.

Zone Mission: Master Closet – Declutter one area in your closet.

Grocery Shopping and Errand Day – Take your list, pack snacks, and water bottles.

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

School: Are you doing a read aloud book for the whole family? If not, pick one out and read at lunch time or in the evening. It will bring a new dimension to your school day.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water
Errand day: Make your plan for grocery shopping and errands. Pack water bottles and snacks for everyone. Pack up your library books that need to be turned in.

Family Fun: Plan a fun activity while you are out. I am in the habit of checking for free activities that are going on while we are out doing errands.

When you get home from doing errands, have everyone work together to unload and put away everything.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at the Launch Pad that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Dust Bunny Patrol – Getting Organized

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

What do you keep under your bed? I try to keep the area under our bed free from storage and clutter. For many with smaller homes and smaller rooms, you might use the area under your bed as storage. This means that you probably don’t clean under there very often. I try to use my FlyLady Rubba Sweepa under my bed once a month to pull those dust bunnies out. It only takes a couple of minutes to do this because I am not dragging a bunch of stuff out with it. My challenge to you this month is to clean out under your bed and declutter. Try to not put anything under your bed if at all possible. Then you can clean under there each month with ease. I will note that I have laminate flooring in my bedroom, and that makes cleaning with the Rubba Sweepa easier, but it also works on carpet. You can also use the attachment and hose on your vacuum cleaner to clean under there. Let’s see if we can keep the dust bunny colony from forming again.

Zone Mission: Clean under your bed. Have your children do the same in their rooms.

If you need more help with organizing your home and homeschool, you can download The FlyLady’s Homeschool Teacher and Homeschool Student Control Journals for free.

Set your timer for 15 minutes for the Home Assignment and 15 minutes for the School Assignment

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.
Clean out your refrigerator. Toss the science experiments.

School: How’s the weather where you are? Add some weather tracking to your school day for the rest of the month. Track high temperature and low temperature. Track precipitation. If it snows where you live, do some science experiments with snow. Make learning fun!

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water
Write up a menu plan for the next 7 days. Check your pantry and freezer and make a grocery list. This habit will save you time and money. Try out some new recipes with the slow cooker. It will save you time once you start back to your school schedule.

Family Fun: Take your children for a walk.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at the Launch Pad that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Master Bedroom and Kids’ Rooms – Getting Organized

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

This week we are going to work in the bedrooms in our homes. Our main focus is the Master Bedroom, but you can also give your children assignments to work 15 minutes a day on specific tasks in their bedrooms, too. This week is an excellent week to declutter and get rid of extra things that have been stored in our bedrooms. Walk to the door of your bedroom and take a good look. What do you feel? If you don’t feel peaceful, purpose that you will spend 15 minutes a day this week making your bedroom peaceful. Make a list of 5 areas you need to work on in your bedroom. They may not match up with the Zone assignments I give you, but that is okay. I want you to take ownership in your bedroom and how it looks. You can also do the same thing in your children’s rooms. If their rooms are really cluttered, you might have to help them break it down into small steps. Take a look at the floor, flat surfaces, bed, and closet.

Here are your Zone Missions for the week for Zone 4 – Master Bedroom (Kids’ Rooms)

Monday – Clear your flat surfaces and detail dust

Tuesday – Clean and sweep under your bed

Wednesday – Declutter for 15 minutes in your Master Closet

Thursday – Spend 15 minutes decluttering your dresser drawers

Friday – Take care of the Stash and Dash in your bedroom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

Weekly Home Blessing Hour:

Spread these out over the course of the week. Put a note on each day of the week with one or two of these per day.

7 Parts of the Weekly Home Blessing Hour from The FlyLady:

Quick Dust
Sweep/Mop
Purge Magazines or Paper Clutter
Change Bedding
Empty Trash
Clean Windows/Mirrors
Vacuum

School:

Plan one fun activity for this week.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water

Family Fun: Have some outdoor time with your children today. Play. Do some nature journaling. The point is to add some movement to your day.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Lay anything out that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Let’s Talk Scheduling – Getting Organized

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

How is your overall schedule? Are you finding yourself always trying to catch up with yourself? Do you have a long To Do List that never seems to get done? These are three deep questions. I want to take a few minutes to elaborate on each one. My prayer is that it helps you. I get lots of questions about schedules.

Do you have a schedule? I have a very loose schedule that we adhere to. Most of our day is structured around the daily Routines you see in most of my emails and posts. The boys and I follow the routines, but there are things on the list below that we do in a different order or different time of day. I use the Routines as a check-off to see that we cover these things. I just don’t let my perfectionism rear its ugly head if I don’t get things done in precisely the order below. It is a guide. Nothing more. It is not my master. What I recommend is that you take the Routines and write down a rough draft of what your daily schedule looks like. Then put the two together to make a custom schedule for your family. Remember to include the children, They need routines, too. Having routines keeps me from spinning my wheels. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment on those days when I feel like I haven’t accomplished a lot, I look over my Routine list. Then I review what I did on that list, and I feel better.

Are you so busy with stuff that you feel like you never catch up? For those of us who homeschool, it is so easy to fall into doing activities that we seem to run from thing to thing and try to squeeze in school and house duties. There have been school years where we were doing co-op, 4-H, and homeschool support group activities. While we enjoyed the activities and the learning that took place, it was very difficult to keep up with household routines and get our book learning done. My children were young at the time, and it did not hinder us academically. I just felt a lot of guilt that we did not complete my lesson plans like I wanted. I had to become more selective of our outside activities. Last year and this year, we have not done any co-ops or regular group activities. We have concentrated on our homeschool, and we go on field trips with our homeschool friends when it works in our schedule. Take a good look at your schedule. Are you too busy? Or do you need to add activities?

How long is your To Do List? I enjoy having a To Do List to keep me focused, but I have learned to not let it become an albatross around my neck. I have a Master To Do List. But for my daily activities, I write down 6 things I want to accomplish each day. I keep it simple. If I have a big project, I will write down one step of that project at a time. I found that trying to work from my big To Do List was self-defeating. I could never accomplish it all in one day. I never felt successful even when I marked things off because there were so many more things on the list. To further simplify my shorter To Do List, I use a sticky note to write it down. I can just toss it each day when I make the new list. I use Wednesdays to work on anything on my list that I have been procrastinating. I also delegate things from my list when I can. I don’t have to do it all. I just need to delegate those things that others should do.

If you have any questions or tips, please email me. I enjoy hearing from my readers.

Zone Mission: Zone 3 – Main Bathroom and One Extra Room – Do another 15 minute room rescue in a different room in the house, or you can go back to the room your started on Thursday, if you did not get it finished.

Routines:

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

School:

Schedule a field trip for this winter. If you can’t think of one, do some research. See what’s going on close to you.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at your launch pad
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Room Rescue Thursday – Getting Organized

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

Take a look around your house. Is there a room that needs a quick Room Rescue? Hopefully, you have the Holiday stuff put away now, but you could have some boxes and Holiday items that need to be put away. It’s getting cold in most areas of the country, you might have a pile of winter clothes and outer wear that needs attention. You might have school stuff that needs to be put away. Your children may have rooms that need rescuing. The point is that most of us have a room that gets neglected or is a high-use room. Today, I want you to set your timer and do a quick 15-minute room rescue. You will feel better once you do it. Include your children, and you get bonus time! Do the math, if one of you works for 15 minutes, you get 15 minutes of work. If two of you work together, you are getting 30 minutes’ worth of work in the same 15 minutes. When we have a team project in our home, we can have 4 to 6 people working at a time. That is like an hour or hour and a half for one person. Turn on some music to make it fun!

Zone Mission – Main Bathroom or One Extra Room – Your mission today is to do a Room Rescue!

Routines:

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

School:

Look at your bookshelves. Do you need to do some reorganizing or purging?

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at your launch pad
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Errand Wednesday – Getting Organized

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

Do you have a regular day each week that you do errands? It varies for all of us depending on our schedule. For the purpose of this newsletter, I picked Wednesday. There is not right or wrong errand day. This school year, my errand day is on Friday and sometimes Saturday. I try not to interrupt my school days if at all possible. We are usually done with school by lunch time on Friday, so that has worked well for me to make a menu plan and grocery list on Friday morning. The key for a smooth week for meals has been my regular meal planning and regular shopping day. Do you do both of these?

Zone Mission: Main Bathroom – wipe down the fixtures, baseboards, and vacuum the exhaust vent.

Grocery Shopping and Errand Day – Take your list, pack snacks, and water bottles.

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

School: Are you doing a read aloud book for the whole family? If not, pick one out and read at lunch time or in the evening. It will bring a new dimension to your school day.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water
Errand day: Make your plan for grocery shopping and errands. Pack water bottles and snacks for everyone. Pack up your library books that need to be turned in.

Family Fun: Plan a fun activity while you are out. I am in the habit of checking for free activities that are going on while we are out doing errands.

When you get home from doing errands, have everyone work together to unload and put away everything.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at the Launch Pad that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Tackle the Tub Tuesday – Getting Organized

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

How does your bathtub look? How about the tub in the children’s bathroom? Let’s spend 15 minutes detail cleaning the tub. Because I like to use as few chemicals as possible in my home, I wipe down my shower walls and inside my tub each morning after my shower. This takes about 1 minute. We have well water out in the country, and it is hard water with a lot of iron. If I don’t keep the shower/tub wiped down daily, I have iron stains that require chemicals to clean it. I use The FlyLady’s purple cloths to clean in the bathroom, so I start with the shower and tub, and then I use it on the counters and sinks and finally the toilet. Using the zone cleaning will also work with detail cleaning your tub if you don’t want to do it every day.

Zone Mission: Detail clean the tub/shower.

If you need more help with organizing your home and homeschool, you can download The FlyLady’s Homeschool Teacher and Homeschool Student Control Journals for free.

Set your timer for 15 minutes for the Home Assignment and 15 minutes for the School Assignment

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.
Clean out your refrigerator. Toss the science experiments.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water
Write up a menu plan for the next 7 days. Check your pantry and freezer and make a grocery list. This habit will save you time and money. Try out some new recipes with the slow cooker. It will save you time once you start back to your school schedule.

Family Fun: Take your children for a walk.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at the Launch Pad that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Does Zone Cleaning Work – Getting Organized

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

Does Zone Cleaning Work? Over the past several months, I have giving you Zone Missions that take you through your house each month. We start with the Front Porch, Entry Way, and Dining Room in Zone 1 the first week of the month. The second week of the month, we detail clean and declutter in the Kitchen. The third week of the month, we move to the Main Bathroom and One Extra Room. The fourth week of the month, we work on the Master Bedroom (kids work in their rooms). If a month has five weeks, we spend that week decluttering and detail cleaning in the Living Room. By consistently working in the Zones, you should not need to do a deep, “spring” cleaning or “fall” cleaning. You utilize the Extra Room in the third week of the month, to work in other areas, so you should be able to work your way around the house each month. I try to change some of the zone missions, but I realize that dealing with clutter on the flat surfaces in your kitchen will always be a need. Let me know how you are doing with Zone Cleaning.

Here are your Zone Missions for the week for Zone 3 – Main (Master) Bathroom and one Extra Room

Monday – Declutter the Bathroom cabinets, counter, and drawers (15 minutes)

Tuesday – Deep clean your tub/shower

Wednesday – Wipe the fixtures in the bathroom, baseboards, and vacuum the exhaust vent

Thursday – do a 15-Minute Room Rescue in the room of your choice

Friday – Finish decluttering in your bathroom or do a 15-Minute Room Rescue in the room of your choice or declutter your linen closet

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

Weekly Home Blessing Hour:

Spread these out over the course of the week. Put a note on each day of the week with one or two of these per day.

7 Parts of the Weekly Home Blessing Hour from The FlyLady:

Quick Dust
Sweep/Mop
Purge Magazines or Paper Clutter
Change Bedding
Empty Trash
Clean Windows/Mirrors
Vacuum

School:

Plan one fun activity for this week.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water

Family Fun: Have some outdoor time with your children today. Play. Do some nature journaling. The point is to add some movement to your day.

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Lay anything out that you will need first thing in the morning
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour

Helping Your Child Clean His or Her Bedroom

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Tami

Recently I participated in a Summit for Exceptional Learners. Here’s a link and information about it:

Helping Your Child Clean His or Her Bedroom Using Zones

Tami Fox is sharing her quick, easy strategies for getting rid of the chaos and clutter in your child’s bedroom! Imagine your child’s room being clean and tidy without taking hours of work. What if you were able to train your child to maintain their room without your help? Tami is going to teach you how to do just that in this interview! Let us know what your favourite part was.

Tami Fox is an author, speaker, and mentor. She has written the book, Giving Your Children Wings and speaks at conferences about organizing your home and teaching your children organization skills. She is a mentor with FlyLady Premium and has weekly coaching sessions to help people get organized in their home or office. She has homeschooled her six children since 2000, and she has three exceptional learners in her home. She has used routines and hands-on experience to help her children prepare for adulthood. Check out Tami’s website at www.TamiFox.net.

Listen to Tami’s Interview Here: http://iTeleseminar.com/78928572

Access Tami’s Free Gift Here: http://www.flylady.net/d/control-journals/.

Enjoy!

Julie Lewis and Dana D’Arville

The Parenting Your Learning Challenged Child Telesummit

Finish Strong Friday – Getting Organized

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Tami

Getting Organized:

In your home and homeschool

Friday is the last day of the school week and for many of us a work week. Let’s finish the week strong with school and work, including your work around the house. The benefit of getting your house stuff finished before Saturday is that you have time for Family Fun Day. How many of us remember spending the day on Saturday cleaning house? Do you still hold to that? By using the Zone Missions daily and doing the Weekly Home Blessings during the week, you free up a whole day that you can use for your family to have fun.

How is your school schedule? Are you on track with your plans for the year? Do you need to make adjustments? Remember that children do not progress at the same rate. If you child is struggling with a subject, there is nothing wrong with taking it slow. Sometimes a short break from a subject is helpful, too. You are in charge of your schedule. Don’t put pressure on yourself or your child to fit into a box on when he/she should finish a subject. In our homeschool, we take short breaks from math over Holidays, but we pretty much stick to doing math year round. That helps with their retention. I also assign reading to them all year long. That way, we have time to keep skills sharp and go slow when we need to go slow. Math has transition points, and you want to allow your child to master skills versus pushing them through. Don’t over schedule your child with school work and activities. Allow them some free time for creative play each day. They learn so much from this time. Provide them with things they can make or build or create from scratch.

If you have any questions or tips, please email me. I enjoy hearing from my readers.

Zone Mission: Zone 2 – The Kitchen: Get a damp cloth and wipe down the exhaust vent above your stove.

Routines:

Home:

Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
Swish and Swipe
Start Your Laundry
Decide on Dinner
Check Your Calendar
Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.

Afternoon Routine:

Eat Lunch
Clear off One Hot Spot
Reboot the Laundry
Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
Drink Your Water

Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)

Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
Put things at your launch pad
Shine Your Sink
Clean Off a Hot Spot
Go to Bed at Decent Hour