If you’re a mom you have the most valuable job in the world.  

You are raising citizens of the United States of America (or put in the name of the country where you live). Unfortunately being a mom is not held in as high regard as it should be.

With just a little creativity, you can put together a gift basket that'll save you money. 

Why buy whole chickens, instead of chicken parts? First, you save a lot of money. Second, you don't waste our valuable resources because you can use the whole chicken. Watch this video and you'll be a whole-chicken-buying convert.

What's the OMSI voice? OMSI stands for Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The voice is a voice you hear women use with their young children, in public (at museums, in grocery stores, in the park), to elicit admiration from those in earshot. The Slob Sisters demonstrate the voice on a popular Portland, Oregon television show. 

When you get mole hills in your yard it means you have good soil. Moles are carnivores and they're after worms and worms love good soil. Connect the dots. This video will show you how to take advantage of those little hill makers.

In the mood to spring clean? This video of the Slob Sisters with Regis Philbin will have you inspired to get organized and welcome spring into your home.

This video shows how to make a very rich and delicious custard dessert. If you're interested in trying out some low-carb recipes, I share my concoctions in my cooking videos.

Are you following a weekly plan that helps you run a cozy, organized home? When my sister Peggy and I developed the infamous, get organized 3x5 card file system outlined in our book “Sidetracked Home Executives: from pigpen to paradise,” we created a weekly plan that included a “free day.”

On that special day, if we wanted to, we’d stay in our pajamas all day, eat over the sink, keep the day free of appointments if at all possible and keep household chores to a minimum. We kept laundry to towels and linens which are easy to fold. We ate on paper plates or in restaurants. Our aim was to do nothing but enjoy the day free of the relentless parade of chores a mom encounters. I still have that day only I call it My Day. I do what I want and I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I pretend it’s my birthday to get into the mood.

 Set Priorities Learn to Say No!  

Life is really, really busy for all of us. Whether you’re running a business, going to school, dealing with keeping the house clean and enjoying family, friends and loved ones, it’s important to learn how to prioritize. That’s why being organized, just enough to please you, starts with knowing what’s important to you.

Prioritizing can be difficult because it requires you to be aware of what you really want out of life. It requires you to be mindful of what’s important and have the ability to say no.

In Sidetracked Home Executives: from pigpen to paradise, I wrote:

We were afraid to say no for fear of being stamped uncooperative. We needed the approval of others, and saying yes was one way to get it. In that first week of soul-searching, we made the astonishing discovery that we needed to give others the opportunity to be praised. By leaving some of the work for others, we also were leaving them a chance to get the credit. So, charitably, we posted a sign by our phones that read, in capital letter, “SAY NO!” and from that day on, we rejoiced in our freedom to decline.

Personally, I still dislike saying no. I want to help everyone. I want to be everywhere. I don’t want to miss out on something that could be a really good opportunity. But in order to be a loving wife, mother and friend and an inspired writer, I HAVE to say no.

Are you aware that more money won’t solve your money problems?

If you aren’t, you’ll be interested in what this woman had to say about it.

Dear Pam,

I don’t know how to thank you for writing the GOOD Book, except to say THANK YOU!!!!!!  My DH lost his job about a year after I bought the book and we had changed our thinking and behavior so much that during the six months that he was unemployed we were able to keep our heads above the water and now he has a much better job with more money than before! We still have a ways to go to get out of debt, but what we’ve learned about ourselves through this awakening is priceless.  When you said in the book that if you can’t take care of the money you make now, if you get more you won’t take care of that either, was a real light bulb moment.

When you’re in a horrible mess and you feel overwhelmed with your circumstances, if you attempted to get organized from that place, you’d be like a person drowning in a lake, begging for someone to throw you a rope, or an inner tube, or a book on “How to Swim.” (If you know how to swim, then you know that flailing person is, at the moment, helpless and will probably drown if someone doesn’t rescue him. And you also know, since you know how to swim, that if that person would just calm down and relax into floating and treading water for a little while, he’d move into a better place not to drown.)

So how does this analogy relate to you? Do you feel you need to be rescued or do you have an intuitive notion that you can get organized with just a little nudge?

Maybe you were organized once and you know how liberating it is. Maybe you had an organized mother and you remember how much fun and easy it was to live with order. Maybe you know people who are organized and you envy the ease at which they go about life, never late, always prepared, wearing matching shoes, having cash in their wallets, gas in their cars, toting kids that are fully dressed and they’re never in a rush.

Every single day we're given opportunities to grow and enjoy life more!

A woman wrote that she'd been married for 25 years. Her husband had cheated on her more than once and she'd “lost” herself and hardly recognized her home or her person.

It's never too late to change your life! This woman had successfully raised two happy sons and worrying about what her husband did and not focusing on the important job she was doing, could very well have given him (in his dishonest mind) a good excuse for the affairs. Focusing on getting her act together and not worrying about him, could have erased that excuse he probably used; "My wife's fat and the house is a pigsty." 

When someone is unfaithful it's his/her problem. It’s only OUR problem if we make it ours.

It’s no secret that countless families are deluged by household clutter.

Flylady says; The most common clutter hot spots are children's bedrooms, home offices, attics, and garages. What does it take to stop clutter? Here are my 10 best home organization strategies straight from my book, The Joy of Being Disorganized.

http://www.cluborganized.com/the-joy-of-being-disorganized

1. Stop Homelessness

One of the main reasons stuff piles up on counters, dining tables, coffee tables and floors is that it’s homeless. When an item has no "home," it gets added to an IPOD
 (Important Pile Of Decisions). The free chapter I'm giving you has great information about the IPODs in your home and how to eliminate them.

That’s why it’s important to make sure everything in your home lives somewhere. “Homing” items in the room where they're used, helps ensure that they get put away when you're finished. For example, I keep a sewing kit in a drawer of an end table in my living room, because I like to mend garments in that room and not in my sewing room in the basement.

2. Stop Clutter at the Cash Register

Use that, waiting-to-buy time when you’re standing in line at the cash register, to re-think what’s in your hands or cart. Imagine it as clutter. What you buy today can turn
into clutter tomorrow. The better you are about keeping things out of your home, the less likely you’ll be to create IPODs when you get home.

3. Baby Step your Way to Clutter-free

Start with the room that’s bothering you the most. (In my almost 40-year career helping moms get organized, the kitchen is the room most picked by baby-steppers.) Marla Cilley, the Flylady
says, “Start by shining your kitchen sink.” That’s so brilliant! In order to keep your sink shiny, you have to keep it empty. In order to keep it empty, you and your family have to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. In order to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, it has to be empty!

Turn dreary into fun!

Make memories you'll talk about for years to come.

We who live in the northwest, have had to learn early on, we can’t let the rain dowse our fun outdoors. The main advice is make sure you have play clothes, so you don’t have to worry about messing up your good clothes.

Whether it's just misting or pouring rats and hogs make the most of the wet weather and play with your kids or grandkids in the rain using these family-tested outdoor activities.

1. Puddle Play

Mom, you usually discourage your kids from jumping in puddles, so they’ll be shocked and excited when you suggest a splashing contest. Get your play clothes and rain boots on and head out looking for the biggest puddles you can find. Let your kids get soaking wet! Let the child who makes the biggest spray, get to pick the movie the family will watch or be freed from some chore. Give points for the one who gets the wettest. If you’ve got dancers in the family, have them practice some steps they’ve learned.

Mom, come on; get in the puddles with them! Motherhood is not a spectator sport. Let your kids splash you. All it takes is saying, “Don’t you splash me,” in a way they know you’re daring them to do it. Oh and just think how good a hot shower will feel after the fun!

When you take time every day to be alone with yourself, away from phones, the Internet and noise, you'll be giving yourself a loving gift.  Get selfish about making time. Insist on it, and don’t allow anyone, especially yourself, to talk you out of it.

Here are what I consider six benefits of quiet time.

1. Lighten Up

When we get stressed out, it’s so easy to lose touch with that sweet calm that's always there for us to tap into. In a relaxed state, your mind quiets down and then you can connect with a deeper sense of purpose and good. Meditation and medication are derived from the Latin word medicus, to care or to cure. So a time of quiet calmness is the most effective remedy for a busy and overworked person.

Anytime you feel stress rising, heart closing, mind going into overwhelm, just bring your focus to your breathing and quietly repeat with each in-and-out breath: Breathing in, I am here; breathing out, All is well. If you have a set of words that help you relax and can be in time with your inhalations and exhalations by all means use those words. These are the words I use right now. They may change down the road.

Pretend to be a guest at your own home

Usually when we think of spring cleaning we think of getting out the buckets, brushes, rags and cleaners and cleaning the inside of the house. If you want to learn more about that, Google it. My blog this week is about sprucing up the place just before you go inside your home. You’ll have to go outside for this spring cleaning.

Your entryway is the gateway to your domestic life. It gives guests their first impression of your home life and quite frankly a little peek into who you are. After your guest rings the doorbell there’s “wait time,” and it’s a rather private period of scrutiny and judging for him or her. Here are my 8 tips for spring cleaning your entryway.