You can also use a variation on this technique and go it alone, with a free dice app, a glint in your eye and a determination to get things done.

This is an excellent way of attacking tasks that are one-offs, or that perhaps got missed in their regularly scheduled programming and kind of need looking at now, before they are next “due,” or before anyone asks to use your bathroom.

Playing on the Flylady Bingo Page:

1. Make yourself a numbered list of six tasks, and on the Flylady Bingo facebook page one of the fans will be calling out a number.  Usually they start a game on the “top of the hour” (I think that means on the o’clocks, when the big hand is pointing to the 12)
2. Set your timer for 15 minutes, and complete the task that is assigned to that number on your list.
3. After 3 tasks, you all take a 15 minute break.
4. Do the other three tasks, again as the number is “called.”
5. When you’re done you have a margarita yell BINGO! and feel suitably proud of yourself.

Here are the official instructions.

You can use the HomeRoutines To Do list to make your list of six. I used the Emoji keyboard to put the numbers in, but you know, regular numbers would do. I also put in a task for my tea-break, and one for when I’ve finished. For this one I’ve put the “¡We did it!” song from Dora the Explorer, because I am both a parent of preschoolers and a massive nerd.

Dice Game for your To Do List

Alternatively, you can play all by yourself.  I’m not being totally antisocial; I live on the upside-down part of the world and my time zone is all out of alignment with yours.

If you want to play by yourself, you can either work through your tasks in order (fine, but boring) or you could download yourself a free dice app to add a little surprise to things.  I downloaded a few, and my favourite was this one, simply called Dice.

I just wanted to say, goodness gracious me.  There are certainly some interesting dice apps in the app store.

This one does what it says on the tin. You shake your phone, or tap it, and a dice falls in from the side of the screen with a pleasing dice noise.  I cropped out the advertisements on this screenshot.

1. Make yourself a numbered list of six tasks, plus extra tasks for your tea break and your “Bingo” moment.
2. Roll your dice.
3. Set your timer for 15 minutes, and complete the task that is assigned to that number on your list.
4. Roll your dice again for a new task.  If you get a number you’ve already rolled, roll it again until you get a new one.
5. After 3 tasks, take a 15 minute break.
6. Do 3 more tasks as dictated by the Dice Who Knows All.
7. When you’re done you have a margarita yell BINGO! and feel suitably proud of yourself.

Some useful links:

• The lovely folks on the Stepping Out of Squalor board have an ongoing thread where they use dice for their to do lists and report back.
• A good page on Squidoo about Flylady Bingo
• Roll dice to decide next task – an experiment is a slightly more elaborate version of this idea, with some very thoughtful comments about using this idea with the Pomodoro Technique (using your timer, except in 25 minute chunks)

Since I started working on HomeRoutines (two years ago!) I’ve discovered so many wonderful blogs that have useful and encouraging information, hints and tips, and the latest news from the science behind productivity of all sorts.  And I’ve read about them and sometimes posted them on Facebook and I haven’t put them here. Why, Rosie, Why?

I had an epiphany this morning while I was putting on the slow cooker for dinner.  I’ve been doing the perfectionist thing about posting links – I didn’t want to post one at a time, but I thought that if I was going to post links I had to make it “Monday Morning Link Fest!” or “Wonderful Weekend Links!” or something similar with a snappy name and a publishing schedule. And then I’d have to go back and post every.single.link I’d every found on the Entire Internet! This was resulting in me not posting links at all, which is an epic fail on my part as I want to link up to all the awesomeness out there, without exposing you to all my crazy angst. Anyway, I promise not to post anything about country music.

So be it.  With a small amount of Winnie-the-Pooh inspired further procrastination to create a graphic, here are some Useful Links.

Useful Links (and a Useful Pot to Keep Them In)

• Good Tools Have Verb-Based Interfaces
  Gina Trapani on Smarterware suggests giving your app folders friendly, verby names, rather than the generic ones that iTunes gives them. For instance, Watch, Listen, Read, Play.
• How to Put Newsstand in a Folder
  From The Cult of Mac, a nice hack I found in Gina’s article above – so you can hide the Newsstand app away if you don’t actually use it.

• Getting More Organized is Not the Goal
  Rachel from Small Notebook writes about finding the sweet spot in your organisation process where it is of most benefit to you, and stopping there.
• How To Stay Motivated
  Marilyn from Marilyn’s Way (previously called The FLylady Way) talks about how to stay motivated working on the mundane routine tasks of life.
• Read It Later
  If you ever have cascading layers of distraction because of opening Twitter or Facebook for “just a minute” and then seeing some awesome link that lo0ks the best thing ever, then Read It Later is very useful indeed. It’s an app/Firefox add-on/magic thing that lets you send off all those tempting articles and entertaining videos that might not be suitable for right this minute, so you can look at them later on.  The app works with twitter apps to directly send the links to it, and then puts them in an easily-readable mobile format for you. I like it, and it’s free.

Break down your house into five stations and assign one station to one week (there are usually five weeks in a month).

Let’s say that:

• Station One/Week One includes your entry, living and dining room,
• Station Two/Week Two is your kitchen,
• Station Three/Week Three the main bathroom, your office, a 1/2 bath and the laundry room,
• Station Four/Week Four the master bedroom and guest room and
• Station Five/Week Five is the basement.

Begin de-junking at the entrance of the station. You’ll work clockwise each day, cleaning out a closet, cupboard or drawer (sometimes for as little as ten minutes) and when the week ends on Sunday, you’ll move to the next station and do the same thing.

Granted, it will take several rotations (months) to get the whole house de-junked, but you will see progress in every room, you won’t kill yourself and life as you like it will go on as usual. Eventually every station will be streamlined!

Pam Young and Peggy Jones, Fall 1998 newsletter

Sounds familiar?  The Flylady adapted the idea of Stations, only she works from top to bottom instead of clockwise and called them Zones instead.

I really like the idea of calling them stations, though, because I can imagine a little train track going around my house, stopping at each room to move out clutter.

With a small boy in the house, half the time I have a small “train” hurtling around the house shouting CHOO CHOO.  Only he seems to be spreading things around, rather than picking them up.  Note how the sticky fingerprints reflect the camera flash on that photo!  (PS: He is also obsessed with helping himself to fruit from the fruitbowl, and playing builders.  Yesterday I found him trying to bash in a small nail in the wall using a piece of fruit, leading to me having to tell him “A plum is not a hammer!” Yeah.  So that’s one of the reason’s I’ve not been blogging much)

Stations and Zones

What can I take from the SideTracked Home Executives’ idea of Stations and apply it to my personalised list of tasks in each of the rooms in HomeRoutines’ Zones:

• I can put the list of tasks in a clockwise order around the room.  I’m actually starting to imagine an additional rail loop going clockwise around each room.  It’s like the Island of Sodor round here with the unexpected complexity of our rail network.  Having the tasks based in an order that is based on the physical layout of the room helps me keep track of where I’m up to.

• Decluttering is a continual task. It’s worth taking a quick look at each storage area each month or so, because “you can’t CLEAN surfaces unless you HAVE them” so you need to clear the crap off your shelves before you can wipe them down.  I have been decluttering recently and it feels good, but it just keeps going on.
• Pause after every station for a cup of tea. It’s good for the soul.
• Sometimes you can get stuck in a plateau with any system or challenge; maybe all it takes is mixing up your lists again (and an imaginary train) to get back on track.

Soundtrack:  Peace Train by Cat Stevens

Here is how you can fix this by switching notifications back on for HomeRoutines.

1. Open the Settings app
2. Select “Notifications”.
3. Scroll down to the “Not in Notification Center” section.
   You’ll probably see HomeRoutines in there.
4. Tap the HomeRoutines line to enter its settings.
   • Turn on “Notification Center”
   • Set the Alert Style to “Alerts”
   • Turn on “Sounds”
   • Turn on “View in Lock Screen”

Sorry for the hassle – but it seems like there’s nothing we can do to correct this for existing customers who upgrade to iOS 5.0 at the moment except ask them to manually fix it. Apple are working on a fix, though.

Please let us know if we can help with anything else.

I remembered reading on Life As Mom about the idea of a Morning High Five for her kids. Picking the five most important chores, she made for them a colourful chart, like this:

Morning High Five chart from Life As Mom (click through for a printable and other awesomeness)

I decided to be creative and/or mysterious, so I mysteriously traced around the girls’ hands on coloured paper before school this morning, and whipped up my own version of the chart while they were away:

This is Lilly

This is a list for the girls, but there are kind of two lists in it for me.

The early morning list

So, there is literally nothing more important for me in the morning than making sure these things happen before 8:30am, for not only Lill but for Bella, Henry and myself. We all need to get through the full cycle of toilet, breakfast, dress’edness, teeth and hair, and the girls backpacks need to be packed. It’s nice if more things get done (a la breakfast dishes, made beds and so forth) but those can wait until after the school run. We must be realistic about these things. So I’ve split my school-morning routine into two. One is my own “High Five” list, and the other is all the entertaining (ha!) “extra” tasks that aren’t as mission critical as those that Get The Kids Out The Door.

The School Night Preparedness List

This is the most important, because nothing, nothing ruins the feng shui of a morning like the echoing cries of “Mum, I don’t have any clean knickers!” and frantic washing of yesterday’s lunchbox in order to fill it with today’s lunch. Horrible, stressful way to start the day, rummaging through the un-folded washing to find a uniform top and the right kind of undies and socks.

Well worth the effort, even when Bejewelled is calling to me.

What’s on your Next Day Preparedness List?

Do you have one little thing that would make a big difference if you got it done? We often have these little things on our “quality of life” to do list! I have a giant toddler handprint on my living room window – I think I will get to it because it is terribly distracting!

and then kept on sitting on my butt reading through my feeds and stuff.

And then I Dream of Clean popped up on my page and asked

Nice!!! Should we hold you to it? Maybe, let us know when it’s complete?

Ohhhh busted.

So I got up and took a photo of my toddler besmudge’d window:

and got out my window cleaner and cleaned that window, and the other window.

And then, since I was standing up without my laptop, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a few…other…. issues with my living room. Seriously.

This is pretty typical – laundry baskets, neary-finished folded washing, train track to nowhere, cushions off the sofa, and books every-which way.  What can I say, I have preschoolers!

But getting up and cleaning that one spot on one window totally gave me a burst of energy!

So I went with it.  I set my  timer for 11 minutes… turned on Dora The Explorer to distract wee Hank from further destruction… and by the time it went off, the living room was looking much better.  I kicked some cleaning butt!

For reals, Tim just came upstairs and said “So clean!!!

Sure, the floor could use a vacuum and I have still got a planter box of weeds outside the window.

But it’s a heck of a lot better, and that is just fine with me.

Here are some relevant blog posts I’ve come across this week.  I usually post cool links straight to the HomeRoutines Facebook page when I find ‘em, so Like us there to read them first!

On Routines and Schedules

• Bookend Your Day: The Power of Morning and Evening Routines at The Art of Manliness
  • Imagine a string with a series of beads on it. The beads represent your goals, relationships, and priorities. Tip the string this way or that way, and the beads easily slide off and onto the floor. But tie a knot on each end of the string, and the beads stay put. Those knots are your morning and evening routines. They keep the priorities of your life from falling apart and thus help you progress and become a better man.
• Reassess your Schedules and Routines at Productivity Your Way
  • … our daily routines and schedules have a huge impact on not just our productivity, but also our mood and relationships. Being over-committed, wasting time and misprioritizing all lead to stress and chaos.
• Cleaning: Is it Better to Create a Schedule or Not? at Simplify 101
  • Scheduling tasks like cleaning can give you a tremendous sense of  freedom…and even room for spontonaeity! What works for you? Do you prefer to have a cleaning schedule…or does your life work better with out one?
    
• Housekeeping Schedules and Daily Home Management at Home Sanctuary
  
  • Far and away, my most searched posts are the ones on setting up a housekeeping schedule. I imagine women stumbling across my easy system, and I can hear them saying, “FINALLY! A schedule that doesn’t make me feel like a failure before I even start!”

On Rocking your Timer

• When you don’t have time to get organized at Creative Organising
  • Fifteen minutes of organizing in any home won’t get the job done forever.
    But when you’re feeling overwhelmed by your clutter the goal isn’t to get the job done…it is to get the job started!
• Stop Procrastinating and Dash Through Tasks with a Timer at LifeHacker
  • Get a timer. Pick a task. OBLITERATE YOUR TASK

Kids’ Stuff

• Homework without Tears (I mean you, Mom!) at The Happiest Mom
  • One place I’m working on this especially hard right now is establishing a new homework routine at our house.
• Leafy Crafts at Kids Craft Weekly
  • This week, consider making the time to accompany the kids on a leisurely walk around your local area. Grab the hats, pack some drinks, choose a walking stick and get the kids to carry a basket or bag in which to keep any leaves that happen to take their fancy.

Added Syncing for users of old iPod Touches and iPhones running  iOS 3.1

When we released syncing in HomeRoutines 2.0, we only made that feature available to people whose devices were running iOS 4 or later. iOS 4 is a free upgrade for all devices, except for the iPod (1st Generation) and the original iPhone.

While we were testing the 2.0 update,  we felt that on these older devices, syncing was too slow. We were also concerned  that the app could not automatically sync when you exited, only when the app opened and when it was running.

However, we have received quite a few messages from people who want syncing to work on their older devices, so we have changed our mind and enabled syncing for these devices in HomeRoutines 2.02.

iPad users aren’t affected by this change, because HomeRoutines for iPad 2.0 and later requires the free the iOS 4.2 update. If you’re still running iOS 3.2 on your iPad 1, please do upgrade. iOS 4 fixes many bugs, and runs great on the iPad 1.

Fixed Bug: Saving Problems on 2nd Gen iPod Touch, and iPhone 3G

We’ve discovered a bug which specifically affects users with the iPod touch (2nd generation) and the iPhone 3G, who have registered for My.HomeRoutines. This bug can prevent recent changes being saved if you exit the app by pressing your device’s home button. We’ve fixed this bug in HomeRoutines 2.0.2.

In the meantime, press the power/lock button at the top of your iPod touch (2nd generation) or iPhone 3G when you’re done making changes in HomeRoutines, and your changes should be saved correctly.

We’d like to apologize to anyone affected by this bug.

Other Improvements

Version 2.0.2 also makes syncing faster, makes star reset when using syncing more reliable, and fixes a bunch of other bugs.

If you do have any problems with the app, please contact us at support@homeroutines.com. We’re happy to help.

We have become aware of a bug that occurs when you move rooms between zones in the app. Because of an error in the way that the syncing works, you can end up with unexpectedly duplicated or deleted rooms, and this can also cause HomeRoutines to crash.

We apologize for this bug, and recommend that you avoid moving rooms between zones for the time being.  We are working on the code on the syncing website to fix the bug, today, and will keep you posted.

Thanks to everyone who reports bugs to us – it helps us track them down and fix them as quickly as possible.

• My.HomeRoutines website
  This morning we’ve updated the software on the My.HomeRoutines website. If you were having trouble editing data online when you first registered, try again.
• HomeRoutines app
  If you’ve registered for My.HomeRoutines, and then add several lists in one go using the app, it can cause the app to crash. This sucks.  We have identified and fixed this bug and are submitting an update to Apple today, which will hopefully go through quickly. What’s more, a few people won’t be able to register for My.HomeRoutines at all. If you’re one of these people, hang tight, and the update should fix the problem within a few days.
• iPad version of HomeRoutines only
  There is a bug in how HomeRoutines detects the version of iOS that your iPad is running, and this is causing the My.Homeroutines button to not appear on some devices. If you’ve updated HomeRoutines on your iPad and you can’t see the My.HomeRoutines button, please update to the latest version of iOS.  (Plug your iPad into iTunes and click Check for Updates)  Alternatively, wait until our next update is approved, as this will fix it.

As always, if you have any further questions or issues, please email us on support@homeroutines.com