Many give up on getting organized,

then a light goes on in a blessed AHA moment!

 

Over the next three weeks, I’m going to share with you a major key to having an organized home. You won’t want to miss any of them. Each key has a simple assignment, I hope you’ll follow. Each assignment will prepare you for the next key and in the process you will have that AHA moment

In 42 years helping women who were desperately disorganized, there has been a common thread that connects them. It’s a thread of love, caring, compassion and desire to have an organized home and a happy family. Many have told me personally they didn’t think they could get organized. Many had given up, until a light went on in a blessed AHA moment. Flylady was one of those women.

They were moms carrying the burden of being disorganized, and having low self-esteem because of it.

 

With the 3 elements to success in this series of blogs, you will have that AHA moment. These women I’ve met over the years who suddenly realized it was possible to have a clean, cozy organized home, were stay-at-home moms, moms who worked outside of their homes as doctors, attorneys, writers, bankers, artists, teachers, nurses, singers, computer geeks, ministers and a thousand other vocations. These were moms who were successful at jobs outside their homes and successful at being wonderful mothers. But they were also moms carrying the burden of being disorganized, and having feelings of low self-esteem, desperation and worry.

Key # 1 Make the Decision

With a decision to have an organized home, it’s good to know what you think that means to you. If you want perfection, you already know that’s not going to work for you, so give it up! If you want immediate change, you know that’s not going to happen either. So how about a decision to gradually get organized just to please you?

"I don’t know where to start!"

This cooking video shows you how to make low carb tortillas. Enjoy!

 

6 Romantic Ways to Spark up Your Marriage (Part II)

To me romance is all about creating magical moments in your relationship that will take little time out of your busy schedule. Stop thinking you’re too busy for romance. Remember you chose to spend your life with your husband, so enjoy him.

 

Here are 6 more ideas I’ve collected from some very happy couples as well as some tried and true ideas from yours truly. (Please note: I’m on my second marriage.)

1     Crockpot sex

I use my crockpot a lot in February letting it’s savory scents waft throughout the house. The aroma goes straight to a primitive part of my husband’s brain that tells him all is well. Remember that old saying, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? I’ve found it’s true and the kitchen has proven to be a very romantic room to most men. (Not that they want to “do it” in that room necessarily, but they appreciate good cooking.)

2    Be selfish

6 Romantic Ways to Spark up Your Marriage (Part I)

Romance is not just about sex. My mom cracked me up, after reading some article in a woman’s magazine about sex being the main reason for a happy marriage, when she said, “If sex was the cause of happiness, then hookers would be the happiest people in the world.” 

 

To me romance is not just about sex. It’s all about creating magical moments in your relationship that will take little time out of your busy schedule. Stop thinking you’re too busy for romance.

 Here are 6 ideas I’ve collected from some very happy couples as well as some tried and true ideas from yours truly. (Please note: I’m on my second marriage.)

1.   Use your calendar

I know Flylady would agree with me that most of us SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) are romantics at least in the literary sense of the word. We both advise having a date night once a week. We love books and movies about romance and we both know that being organized helps in the romance department. (If you don’t shave your legs regularly, you’re not going to want to be romantic and your mate probably won’t be either.)    

Just a little bit of planning will pay off. Plan a romantic rendezvous during the month. You can get a room at a local hotel or plan to have the house all to yourselves. Just the anticipation of being together in this way will add spark to your romantic life.

As you read the ideas in this blog, write the ones you like on your calendar and don’t plan on doing all of these in one month. Spread out the ideas throughout the year.

Maybe you’ve thought, ‘how can romance be put on a calendar?’ Well, you’ve got four Saturdays this February and one of them is Valentine’s Day, so go get your calendar and put a heart on every Saturday this month and let your creative mind come up with some great ideas for each one of them. If date night has sort of fallen off your radar, now’s a good time to start over and reinstate it.

2    Let the pros help

 

Don't let your anger

rob you of your peace and joy

 

How would you like it if everyone in your life could read your mind? Would your family and friends like what you sometimes think of them and about them? Would you like to know what they think about you? Yikes! This is getting to be a scary thought. Would you want to know?

I was furious!

I thought about this today when I got mad at a person who will remain anonymous. Have you ever been so mad your lips press white, your teeth clench, your eyebrows wrinkle into a frown as your nostrils flare out like Louis Armstrong’s did when he’d play the trumpet? And the thoughts! Well, today mine made me wonder if clairvoyant people ever stay married.

We would really have to monitor our thoughts if our friends and family could read our minds! Does just thinking about that make you want to be nicer with what goes on behind your mouth?

For now, let’s just be grateful our thoughts are ours and they don’t get out without our permission. Oprah said, or maybe it was President Trump, “Count to ten.” That really does help, but maybe counting backwards from fifty would be better. That way the mind will get distracted from thinking mean thoughts and by the time it gets to the number one, it can think nice thoughts again.

But what can we do when someone makes us mad? We have to acknowledge it. We’ve read so much psychobabble to know stuffing our feelings isn’t healthy and most of us don’t want to hold a grudge and carry our grievances around forever. The sooner we can get over our bouts with anger the better. Here are five things to do when you get mad.

1. Admit you’re angry

There's nothing wrong with being angry. So give yourself a break. Have you ever had someone ask you, “What’s wrong?” If you answer, “Oh nothing,” you’re missing an opportunity to get your anger out in the open and resolve it. Don’t be an oh nothing martyr. 

 

My mouth gets me into more trouble than any other hole in my body.

That’s the very first line in my book The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! Thank goodness we only have one mouth. How many times have you wished that you didn’t say that, or didn’t eat or drink that?

I’m sure there’s a legitimate reason why we were made with one mouth and two ears, instead of the other way around. Maybe there’s a clue here to the ratio of use. What if, just for today, we listen more than we speak? How do you think you’d feel tonight when you go to bed?

We’ve been blessed with the precious gift of speech, but this gift (as with every gift) can be abused and come back to bite us. Balancing speaking and listening will serve you in great ways. I’m suggesting we use our mouths half as much as we use our ears (just for today).

Here are 6 benefits to speaking less and listening more. At the end of my blog, I’ll share how I stopped nagging as a young, single mom of three children ages 4, 9 and 12.

     1.   Accomplish more

 As long as your goal is to make your world a better place, doing will always beat speaking unless you’re Oprah. When your focus switches from talking to doing a household chore, you’ll accomplish so much more. When you speak less, you naturally do more. If you could hush up for five minutes a day, in a month you’ll have given yourself two and a half hours of quiet action time. Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, so is a hug, a home-cooked dinner, a clean bathroom, fresh laundry and a hundred other acts of love.

      2.   What’s important shows up

You’ve got a smart phone, so who’s the smartest, you or the phone? You’re the smart one if you limit your use to what serves you and uplifts you. Information overload created by the Internet is a choice. You get to decide how much of your time is going to be spent on the Internet or yakking on the phone. The next time you start to call someone, ask yourself, “Is this really important or will I be talking just to hear my own voice?” If it isn’t important or you miss hearing your voice, hang up and write a thank you note to someone you love and as you write, say the words out loud.

      3.   Reduces stress

Think of something you can do with your family, in silence. See what happens if you and your mate go for a walk without talking or watch the sunset without comment or eat a speechless meal. Terry and I play a card game with friends that involves dealing many different hands starting with each person getting one card up to one hand where each person gets 13 cards. One of the hands is declared a silent hand and no one is allowed to speak until the next deal. It always ends up in laughter and it’s usually a woman who breaks the silence!

Terry and I love to watch professional football and I love to snack while I watch! So I’ve always made sure we have “football watching snacks.” Our snacks used to always include what the advertisers were able to entice Nelly (my inner child) into buying i.e. chips, dips, beer, pizza AND PLENTY OF IT!

I ask myself why? Why do I have to eat while I watch football? The answer was impressive: Just because we do. Now I’ve known Nelly long enough to know when she’s in the room. An answer like that is obviously one from a child.

I love it when Nelly has my attention because that’s when I get the most wonderful ideas! So I said,

 

My experiment during the game was most enlightening. Terry got his chips, but I also made deviled eggs and had a lot of fresh vegetables cut up for him too. Nelly and I just had celery. (My surprise was a train ticket to Seattle to see my grandchildren who live up there.) I chose, just celery because I wanted this experiment to be drastic and I wanted to keep my attention on Nelly.

Beware of sharks when you shop for Kale!

Just kidding, but come along with me to the market as I pick out something I used to be really scared of buying....kale! I even had to sing the theme song from Jaws as I threw a bunch into the cart and swam it...I mean drove it home. Kale is one of those vegetables that looks pretty and scary at the same time when you don't know what to do with it. But it's a super food! Packed with vitamins and nutrients that can't be found in that chocolate bar you have up in the cupboard or under the bed (the House Fairy visits adults too!) So together we’ll conquer the kale by making a classic Caesar salad with a twist and you won't believe how much you'll love it! Kale Caesar!

  

Men love hors d’oeuvres!

That’s because hors d'oeuvres send a chemical message to the male brain that tells the animal there’s food ready to eat, NOW. My husband Terry told me that when he smells the aroma of food cooking, his nose is unable to decipher when that food will be ready to eat. A plate of hors d’oeuvres, on the other hand, goes straight into the blood stream, assuring the organism that everything is going to be alright. Now you might ask, “Why do you think men like hors d’oeuvres more than women do?” Well, women like hors d’oeuvres too, but they don’t need them like men do. When I fix dinner I’m hors d’oeuvring through the entire cooking process. Many times I’ve hors d’oeuvred myself into a bloated stupor before I’ve sat down to the dinner table.

Have you noticed men are weird when they’re hungry (especially tall ones)? I learned that early in my marriage to Terry. When 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!

He didn’t act mean or cranky like some men do; he just acted like he’d skipped his meds. 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 think to 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 are youngsters; we spend more time in the kitchen and therefore have more access to food than men do. If we work outside of our homes we carry with us a snacking pattern gleaned from generations of female snackers. I would bet that more business women have snacks in their drawers at work than men do. And men don’t have purses (a natural snack sack) to tuck treats.