Flybaby

I am a flybaby. Although I have to admit, I haven't been as observant as maybe I should be (my morning routine springs to mind). But baby steps, right?

For those of you who are seriously confused, I'm talking about the techniques created by The Fly Lady for staying on top of housework and keeping your home organized.

Last week was my first week, and we were in Zone 5: Master Bedroom. Which turned out great because I had plans to clean up my bedroom, anyways.

But what most excites me about the Fly Lady system is the Control Journal. It's a place where you are to write down your daily/nightly routine, put detailed cleaning lists of the zones, record emergency numbers and stuff like that. So a lot of my time has actually been spent modifying the control journal to suit my needs and put one together.

Because I'm truly a geek, I have created several documents to go into my journal. I'll let you in on my geek-ness.

I am creating a Dinner Idea Master List. Sort of like a cook-book I guess. But it doesn't include recipes. I take recipes that I've found that we like, or that I'd like to try and put them all into a word doc by category (poultry, beef, fish, etc…) and I list their serving sizes and ingredients. I'm working on including general costs of the ingredients for each meal, but I still have to update my Grocery Price List before I do that.

The point of my Dinner Idea Master List is to help me plan dinners more efficiently. If I'm stuck for dinner ideas, I can consult this list and I'll see exactly what ingredients I'll need without having to go through the recipe books or web sites to get ingredients for each recipe. And when I include the price, I'll be able to have a better idea of how much we're spending on dinners, and I can adjust meals according to price when I have to.

I've been working on it all week. Oddly, I am actually having a good time doing this! It's so sick and crazy, I know. But I think about how much easier meal planning will be for me with this document. So far I've got over 35 recipes. Some we've tried, many we haven't. If we try one and don't like it, I can just delete it and move on. Of course, it will always be a work in progress as I find new recipes and get rid of others.

I created a document where I can list 3 weeks worth of menu's as a master reference of what we'll be having and I've created Weekly Dinner Menu's. As in, the meals for the week are presented on it with cute little clip art and funky type just like you would see in a restaurant. That goes on the fridge, so I have a pretty little display of the week's menu.

See that? Geek.