How would you like to attend a funeral for the death of your credit cards? That was my goal in 2002, when I faced $26,000 in credit card debt. I’d fallen victim to the lure of fake ownership and the do-it-now-pay-later trap! I’d been having real financial difficulty because my sister was ill and I falsely looked at my credit cards as income, hoping she’d get better and we’d be back in business! I wrote all about it in "The GOOD Book: Get Out Of Debt."

It was during that time that I got real familiar with the “voice” behind my spending behavior. If you are suffering from credit card debt, ask yourself this question: "How old have I been acting to be in the predicament I'm in? My answer to that question was nine years old!

Please Attend an Official Credit Card Funeral

I actually had a funeral for my credit cards because I mourned their death and I wanted closure. They’d become friends that payed me when I didn’t have the money to get what I wanted. Flylady attended, joined by her husband, Robert, who is a real judge and who officiated. So not only did I get the funeral, it was official! And there’s more!

My husband videotaped it! I decided at the time, I should open the funeral up to other mourners and allow them to officially bury their credit cards and the rest is not only entertaining and enlightening it’s history! Don't miss this video.

This blog is brought to you by Sidetracked Home Executives: from pigpen to paradise! It explains why a SHE is called a SHE:

When my sister and I started teaching our system for getting organized, we knew we wanted to name it something catchy. We loved the thought of calling ourselves "Home Executives." We knew we'd never be home executives like our BO (Born Organized) mom who ironed Dad's underwear, baked everything from scratch, kept her high school figure and "freshened up" fifteen minutes before our dad came home from work every night. We didn't care to be THAT organized. We just wanted to be organized enough to have clean, cozy, happy homes.

We liked the sound of SHE and since we had the HE part, all we needed was the "S." The "S" would have to be an adjective to describe the kind of HEs we were. So what kind of Home Executives were we? Scummy didn't describe us; we weren't sloppy, shifty, sneaky, skittish, sassy or stupid either. (Great names for another clan of dwarfs, but not for us.)

One day we were on our way to teach our first class and we went under a railroad bridge and I squealed, "SIDETRACKED"! My sister was driving and she almost ran off the road!

"Sidetracked, where, what?"

"Our "S" word," I beamed.

"Our "S" word?"

"Yeah, for our company name."

"Oh, that "S" word! Hmm, sidetracked, I like that.

"Yeah it's a word that implies temporary."

"And fixable," she added.

Sidetracked: normal, temporary, fixable

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 this 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.

An email came in the other day challenging the notion to “Make it fun and it will get done,” and it caused me to pause. The woman had said something about fun not leading to happiness and since I think happiness is the most important goal we can ever have, (I think it’s more important to be happy than to be organized) I had to think seriously about my definition of fun.

The word fun can conger up vacations, yachts, fast cars, parties and any of the stuff of brochures that lure us to spend money. The "brochure" brand of fun is great and it can make us happy for a little while, but it's happiness based on a condition and that brand of happiness is not lasting.

For example, last summer Terry and I won tickets to a Wine and Jazz Festival in a park in Vancouver. The brochure was glitzy! The thought of a Wine and Jazz Festival made me happy, but in reality I only like a certain kind of jazz (much of it reminds me of when I was a young mother with the relentless and repetitious sound of young kids saying, “Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama”) and I’m not into expensive wines that you're expected to taste and then buy by the case. It was hot the day we went to the festival and we’d never heard of the person who was jamming up on the stage, so we walked through the park and went home. Wheeeeee! 

Were we happy? Yes, but not happy because of the festival, we were happy because we practice being happy because we're alive and conscious of it. 

In this how-to-clean video, the Cleaner Guy, Jeffrey Jones

and expert on toxic-free living, Kristi Marsh,

talk about the chemicals in our bodies that shouldn't be there. It's worth watching.

Don’t you just love the idea behind the rosary? My granny was Catholic and she taught me the rosary prayers and I loved hearing her recite them as she felt each bead. When she handled her sacred strand she did it with such humility and she treated it like it was a gift from God.

I’m not Catholic, but I’ve always loved the idea of using a tangible item to remind us to be thankful, to be joyful and to love and praise God for our blessings.

Who thought "this little piggy" could bring you thankfulness?

That’s how I came up with the idea to use my feet like a rosary! Why not? So combining the This Little Piggy Went to Market poem we perpetrated on our kids and really makes no sense when you think about it, I decided to start a new morning routine using my toes while I’m still snuggled under the covers.

Here’s what I came up with, and I’ll tell you what happened after I did my rosary toes.

Starting with my big toe of my right foot, I held each toe the same way Granny held her rosary beads, and said the following:

After I did the toes on my right foot, I did the same thing with my left ones. When I finished with them, the thought came, ‘Why stop there?’ So I took a hold of both my feet (I was still under the covers) and I thanked them for all the places they’ve taken me and where they’ll take me today. Then I moved my hands to my ankles and thanked God for the miracle of swivel. It made me be happy.

How to stop worrying and doubting.

When you doubt, you’ve stopped trusting the power that created the Universe. Such a silly thing to do when it’s put that way, don’t you think? If you plugged a lamp into the socket, and the light didn’t go on, you’d figure either the bulb was burned out or you hadn’t paid the electric bill. In other words it would be something on your end that caused the light not to work. You would never doubt that the power of electricity was no long effective.

So when you doubt yourself or have doubts about some event or another person, the problem is on your end, because the power that created the Universe has your back and there's nothing to worry about. So how do you fix your end of this deal? I’ve come up with 6 ways to be positive so you can stay hooked into the joyful source of your life and see the truth that all is well.

1. Put yourself first

The most important thing to do when you feel doubt is think something that makes you feel good. Sometimes it helps to go outside to summon happy thoughts or read spiritual material that fills you with positive energy, or look through a travel magazine and focus on a dream vacation. Only you, know what will cheer you up. It really helps to build a list of thoughts that lift your spirits, so when you get down in the dumps you can refer to it. I call it my First Aid Kit.

Can you think of some ways you've save money, because you're disorganized? We SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) are famous for leaving things to do until the last minute. Have you ever gone to Plan B because Plan A failed or there really wasn't any plan in place?

I was, always putting off getting a gift for someone until the day of the birthday or anniversary, or within the hour of the party or shower. That’s how I came up with more than 100 funny ways to give money. In the end, my disorganization saved me time shopping, money for driving to the mall and my sanity. I always knew I could come up with something I’d put off until the last minute and I always have.

This email came from Jill Bowen, one of my Club Organized charter members. (You can join the club if you can answer “YES” to at least five scenarios on the admissions exam.) To take the test click on the word "YES". 

Here's what Jill had to say:

Swamp Thing

When was the last time you thanked your big toes? If you haven’t thanked them lately then you’ve probably never thanked your pancreas. (Out of sight out of mind.) I really don’t know that much about the inner workings of our bodies, but I do know there are trillions of doings going on in them that we can be thankful for even though we don’t know what they are.

We sure don’t need more to add to our “to do” lists, but we can get in the habit of being thankful while we’re doing other tasks. For instance, while you’re in the shower as you wash each body part, love it and thank it. Then, while you dry off your parts thank them again. It’s fun to thank your feet as you put socks and shoes on them and as you dress and groom each part of you it’s fun to fill your awareness with thanksgiving. Thankfulness is a habit and it’s quite fun to mentally become aware of what a gift your body is.