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 create a clutter-free space? Here are my 10 best home organization strategies straight from my book, 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!

My husband, Terry and I took a road trip to the Oregon Coast for our anniversary a couple of years ago and while he was driving I suggested we play a gratitude game. 

“Is this gonna be some lady’s magazine deal?”  he asked with a sense of apprehension.

“No, I’ve been reading Deborah Norvel’s book on the power of being thankful.”

“So Deborah told you to do this?”

“Nope, I thought this game up all by myself. In fact it'd be a great family game.”

“Okay, what do I do?” 

“So, I’ll tell you something I’m grateful for about you and then it’ll be your turn and you have to tell me something you’re grateful for about me and the guy who can’t think of something loses and the other guy wins.”

“What’ll he win?”

“He’ll get taken out to dinner when we get to the beach.”

We probably traded 15 thankful comments with each other and what was very interesting to me was how much I loved hearing his comments for me and I couldn’t wait for the next one. 

I was telling Marla, the Flylady, about the game and she suggested we play it with our inner child. So I had a session with Nelly (she’s my inner child, in case you don’t know). Here’s what happened.

Enlightened Selfishness Means Taking Time for You

For starters, take time to read this blog, unless your house is on fire or your dog has a death grip on one of your children.

Most women are notorious for neglecting themselves in lieu of caring for others and you’re probably one of them. If you’re not, CONGRATULATIONS! When asked, “Are you selfish about taking care of yourself, most women cringe and say, “no.” The cringe comes from guilt knowing they should have free time for themselves but don't. There are two parts to this “enlightened selfishness: first you need to know what you’re going to do when you take time out and second, you need to make time for the time outs and get them to become a habit. There are two ways to do that. One is to cut corners wherever you can, and two is to delegate some of your work to the members of your family so you can take time for you. I'll give you some tips on delegating, but first here's a video that demonstrates how to drastically save time folding sheets.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I had one of those days today.”? I call “one of those days” a shell-stickin’ day. You know how some hard boiled eggs refuse to let go of the egg white? If you’re making deviled eggs and you need the white part to be intact as a nest for the egg yolk mixture, you know how aggravating one of those shell-stickin’ eggs can be. I’m sure you’ve had to give up on some eggs in the process, because invariably chunks of the egg white tear off and leave half nests that just won’t work.

I’m the stubborn sort and I’ll go to great lengths to fight a shell-sticker, searching for that crucial place where the thin membrane is holding onto its beloved egg white. In 50% of the cases the egg wins and I either eat the mutilated egg white and throw the yoke in with the batch of other yokes or, depending on how many shell-stickers in the batch, decide to make egg salad instead of deviled eggs. It’s sort of the egg version of when you have a lemon make lemonade. But what can you do when you have one of those shell-stickin' days?

If you gain weight easily, it most likely means you like sweets and all the white stuff; rice, pasta, bread and potatoes. It really is okay to have those foods once-in-awhile, but if you’re too liberal with that notion you’re in for weight gain. In the course of three months you can easily put on 15 pounds and here are the three main reasons why. 

My sister and I almost had our own television cooking show, but we would've had to be in LA four months out of the year and our six kids were young.

In cleaning out our warehouse I found the master tape of the opening for the show and thought you'd enjoy watching it. The show was going to be called, The Phony Gourmet and we would have share all our short-cut cooking recipes and ideas in the book of the same title. 

Start with a clean slate!

A garage sale sign read: Kid's Garage Sale. We couldn't resist. Each sign (obviously made by children) had a red balloon attached and upon arriving at the home, the children (a boy about 11 and a girl about 8) were sitting at a table with lemonade they'd made. Several adults with children were shopping and the mother of the garage salers was sitting on a lawn chair under a big maple tree.