Family members don't pick up after themselves? This FREE game will stop that!

Have you heard about the SHE (Sidetracked Home Executive) 3x5 get organized system for your home and life?

It certainly has had resurgence in popularity in the last few months! It’s an amazing 3x5 cardfile system and millions have successfully set it up including Flylady.  

If you set up the SHE system and it worked for you and your family, but then you quit using it, YOU’RE NORMAL! Nobody sticks to anything forever; it’s just not possible unless you’re a librarian.Things happen. Life happens. And by your very nature, you get sidetracked by those “happenings,” and life presses you on and pulls you in many directions.

Here’s a video clip of Flylady telling about how successful she was with the SHE get organized system when her child was young and then what happened.

Many people have a hard time decluttering, even when their stuff doesn’t bring them joy.

Have you been holding onto stuff that you really don't care about, and it's cluttering up your life?

Would you love to have a turn-around about how you feel concerning your stash of stuff? Did you know it's easier to get organized when you don't have a lot of stuff?

Read what Emily York did that soothed her fear of letting go and gave her the courage to be free of it. All she did was change her mind and she saw her stuff with a new perspective.

Dear Pam,

As I was watching the S.H.E. De-Junking DVD and I heard you or Peggy say that people tell you all the time they are afraid to let go of their stuff because as soon as they do, they will need it. At that point I said to the television screen, "Amen sisters!" Because that is exactly how I felt. THEN one of you said, "You can let go of your stuff and never have to worry again, because it is at the Goodwill and you can go there and buy it back or just visit it!!"

      I realized I'd been running my own personal

                      version of a Goodwill Store!

You’re,

Probably in your jammies or you slept in workout clothes 

You’ve got “rooster” hair and raccoon eyes and you don’t smell like a rose 

You played Candy Crush Saga until midnight, or one

It’s amazing how the time just flies when you’re havin’ fun 

Does your mouth get you into trouble more than any other hole in your body?

Your mouth is pretty important. You use it to communicate and it’s really your means for survival! No wonder it’s such an important hole! How do you manage yours on a scale of one to ten? There are two indicators of your successful use; the number of friends you have and the size of your body (and I don’t mean tall or short).

When I lost 35 pounds six years ago, I set up elaborate ways to reward my good behavior. I knew my inner child Nelly had (she still does), a sweet tooth and unless I kept her happy, I
would not succeed with my goal of losing the 35 pounds. In The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! I give the reader ways to play with her inner child in a fun-loving way to get the results she wants with losing weight and this blog is a great resource: http://blog.makeitfunanditwillgetdone.com/lose-weight-fast 

You can’t get a person to do anything unless that person wants to do it and that includes yourself. How many times have you wanted to lose weight and then some part of you sabotaged that desire and you ate what you said you wouldn’t? If you’re like me, you’ve been on many diets and probably attended a few Weight Watcher meetings. But unless you commit to staying with a weight-loss program, you’ll gain it all back and then some.

I still dream about desserts and buffets loaded with delicious dishes high in carbohydrates.

How to REALLY clean the cabinet under the kitchen sink

Do you clean the cabinet under your kitchen sink once a month? Happiness is a clean kitchen, but the old saying, Out of sight out of mind can really be true when it comes to this cabnet. If your knees had eyes, they'd see under the sink when the cupboard was open and you’d be down on them with a bucket of sudsy water and a brush at least once a month to clean under there.

This is not an April Fool's joke, I really did this! I decided to show you how to clean under the sink and to prove to you how clean my cabinet was, I got into it! Actually when we shot this video Terry didn’t think I could fit in the cabinet, and I wasn’t about to let him think that! The rest is history. 

15 Negative Words to Ignore to Be Happy

So many of you resonated with my blog, (A Daily Routine to Deal with a Cranky Hubby) on living with a critical person, that I thought I should write a little more, since I lived with a very unhappy and critical man for 15 years and received advance studies in the field.

Aristotle said, “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”  Hmmm that sounds fun! Let’s all go into comas!

The truth is we women have been dealing with criticism most of our lives. We’ve been conditioned to not rock the boat. We want to be liked and throughout history a woman’s life depended on it. Many of us don’t voice our ideas or pursue our most important work because of our fear of criticism. We don’t take risks or speak our truth because we’re afraid of criticism and dependent on praise. The truth is, whenever we look outside of ourselves for validation, we’re looking in the wrong place and if we allow anyone to cause us to doubt our ability to succeed, it’s our own fault. That was the main reason I wrote The Joy of Being Disorganized. I wanted women to understand their value in spite of being disorganized. 

Turn a deaf ear to negative words

I decided to look up the negative words our society uses to describe women, especially in the workplace. For example, if a man forgets things easily he’s called an absent minded professor. If a woman is forgetful she’s called a ding bat. Here are the words used to describe women and what I came up with to describe men who exhibit the same characteristics.

Hormonal

Both men and women have hormones, so why don’t we ever hear someone say of a man who has just thrown a temper tantrum, “He’s hormonal.” But it’s commonly used to describe a woman’s outburst and especially in conjunction with PMS (which my sister’s husband thought was an airline). 

Running a clutter-free, efficient household requires energy and a consistent desire to follow some kind of simple plan. A plan that directs your days and establishes a routine and habits that serve you, not drag you down. But it’s very hard to follow any plan if you’re down in the dumps. So if you want to stay on top of things, being happy is crucial. 

What if you had a meter that measured whether you were flying high or sinking into despair? You really do. It’s just invisible to the eye, but you can always stop and “check in.”                     

For an example, where would you rate yourself right now. Are you more happy than sad? Are you more anxious than content? Are you more angry than loving?

There’s really little guesswork in knowing how you feel, because you’re wired to know in any given moment. Unfortunately it’s so easy to ignore the signals. We can get so busy we neglect taking time to check in with what’s going on inside.

Establishing a habit of checking in with yourself is such a powerful tool. Take a few minutes daily to be still. You can learn so much from your body. It’s constantly telling you what you need and what is or is not working. But if you don’t listen, if you don’t pause to hear those messages, you’ll be missing out on the most valuable information you’ll ever receive.

If you think you’re going to have a stressful day, checking in with yourself on the hour could really change how your day goes. It helps to talk to yourself and comment on the moods you catch yourself in. Often, I’ll say, “Well aren’t you a happy girl!” Or, “Hey little one, what’s wrong? What’s up with the sadness?”

You have the power to be mindful of how happy and content you are and when you feel yourself going down, there are four things to ask yourself before you head for the tavern, the chips, the candy or the pill bottle:

An important part of being organized is being prepared. BO (born organized) women are always thinking ahead, especially in the kitchen. They know the value of hors d’oeuvres when it comes to men.

Men are weird when they’re hungry (especially tall ones). I learned that truth early in my marriage to Terry and we’ve been married 26 years. When we were first married and it was dinner time he used to always be ravenous and, quite frankly, I didn’t like him when he was that way. He was six feet, three inches of uncontrollable hunger and he’d drive me nuts as I worked in the kitchen!

He didn’t act mean or cranky like some men do; he just acted like he’d skipped his meds if he were supposed to take some. He’d sort of be a combination of Kramer (in the sitcom Seinfeld) and Barney Fife (in The Andy Griffith Show) on speed. He’d dart around the kitchen trying to get closer to the pending meal. He’d find difficulty concentrating and our kitchen just wasn’t big enough for both of us, when he’d be famished.

A famished man definitely acts differently than a famished woman. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Swanson didn’t name their large-portioned TV dinner, Hungry Woman Dinner, even though an average lady can put one away with no problem. No one addresses the idea of a hungry woman because, quite frankly, we never are. That’s because we snack.

From the time we’re youngsters; we spend more time in the kitchen and therefore have more access to food than men do unless they’re cooks or chefs. If we women work outside of our homes, we carry with us snacking patterns gleaned from generations of female snackers. I’d bet that more business women have snacks in their drawers at work than men do. And men don’t have purses (a natural snack pouch) in which to tuck treats.

I think if Terry thought he could get away with it, he’d barge into the kitchen, from a snackless day at the office and head straight to the nearest open container of food. He’d wolf down the main course right over the frying pan and slop the sauce de jour all over the front of himself. He’d cool his burnt tongue in a stream of cold water from the kitchen faucet and continue his dishless forage leaning over the sink as he crammed. He’d stuff his already packed mouth with a variety of miscellaneous edibles within reach and wash the remaining side dishes down with a pot of soup he’d missed in his initial culinary attack on the kitchen. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t think, he wouldn’t even taste, but he’d be full. It would take about five minutes.

So what’s the answer? Hors d’oeuvres! That thought hit me right between bites one night while I was fixing dinner. I suddenly realized something that could ultimately save 75% of couples who think they want to divorce, from the agony of disillusionment. (It might have even salvaged my first marriage, but that was too long ago to even think about. I’d decided I was going to apply it to my new husband.)

Men love hors d’oeuvres!