Time Savers

Now that the summer season has arrived, practially every minute of every day is jam-packed with activity.  The Gershwins wrote ”Summertime and the living is easy….” George and Ira must have had maids and gardeners because the additional outside duties, added to the regular inside chores make any opportunity to free up even a few minutes worthwhile.
Cooking obviously eat up chunks [...]

Day of Reckoning

Call it an obsession.  To be kinder, call it a point of pride or the manifestation of an orderly mind, but for some reason, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to balance my checkbook–to the penny, if possible.  The closest $10.00 is good enough if the penny thing goes out the window, but last month, it [...]

80% vs 20%

This morning, as I was talking to my friend who is in the middle of organizing and cleaning closets in anticipation of new carpeting being installed in the too near future, I was reminded of the 80% vs 20% rule of home clutter:  We use 20% of what we own 80% of the time. 
That also means [...]

Work Party Rules

Read about this recently and it sounds really cool.  In the middle of endless yardwork, this sounds like a dream come true.  Here’s the gist of what this group of friends do to help each other and themselves. 
A core group of 10 people from 6 households meet one Saturday a month from September to June, holding [...]

Time Management Tip of the Day

The 3-Minute rule.  Never ever spend moe than three minutes looking for something.  Instead, do what you would do if you had searched for an hour and still couldn’t find what you were looking for.  Grab the spare set of car keys, borrow your daughter’s belt or wear another pair of earrings.  The missing item will [...]

Time-Saving Strategy #1

The Barter System.  If you find a chore inconvenient, distasteful, or unmanageable, consider bartering. It can be a one-shot or systemic arrangement.
One Shot.  Need help moving your serviceable and attractive bedroom furniture to the spare room so the furniture company can deliver and set-up your new bedroom furniture?  Enlist the muscle-bound neighbor for help in exchange for [...]

Disposing of Drugs and Medications

As the world becomes more crowded and more environmentally savvy, the long term effects of what was once seen as a simple common sense solution to the disposal of old pills and other medicines is now recognized as creating issues all of us need to heed.   Drugs that weren’t available two or three generations ago are now part of everyday [...]

Note to Self

Organizing the closets feels really good when it’s all done.  Clean, fresh, neat–what else could possibly be done to tweak such a satisfying experience?  Well, going forward, all closet and organizing projects are going to include a shorthand list of where the things that used to be on that shelf have been moved to.  (My high [...]

Righteous Decluttering

Multiply the good vibes of spring cleaning by donating the extraneous fluff of your life to good causes.  www.Soles4Souls.org is a branch of www.GiveShoes.org.  Either website will provide the details on how to donate your old shoes to those in need in more than 40 countries around the world.  www.letmeplay.com/reuseashoe is a program sponsored by Nike [...]

Quick Time Savers

The house is always messy.  The porch needs to be painted.  The grass is getting close to your knees.  The chore list is getting ahead of you and the job jar is full again.  It could take you several  hours to accomplish something that a professional can do for free or at a charge worth paying.  [...]