Labor Day should be for women who've been in labor. Come to think of it, labor doesn't really describe what we go through to bring a baby into this world. The word "labor" must have been posed by a man who, after watching a woman go from one centimeter to nine said, "Whoa, that looks like a lot of work, let's call it labor." The real words to describe the birth process could be, organic torture, or natural agony, or biological warfare. Let's stick with the word labor with collective smirks and let's start celebrating! 

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.

An off-the-wall closet organizing project. It just might work for you.

When you see a photo like this, are you inspired to declutter and have an organized closet? 

What you wear takes up a lot of your energy and when your closet is constipated with stuff you don’t wear (for whatever reason), it becomes a gigantic IPOD (Important Pile of Decisions). Your closet is just like your garage if your car is parked in the drive-way.

What might surprise you is the pile of decisions isn’t a bunch of various decisions like when you have to file papers into a filing cabinet, because 90% of the stuff you’re not making a decision about just needs to go! Good-bye, ciao, ta ta, Cheerio, farewell! How to de-junk is that simple! Let it go!

I’ve been helping people get the spark and motivation to declutter for 43 years and have come up with some very creative and fun ways to give you that spark. This one I’ll call Operation Pity Trip to Freedom.

My daughter Joanna has found her calling. At 46 she’s finally starting to admit that she’s an artist. With no formal training she started painting on some our beautiful river rocks that are so abundant here in the pacific northwest. 

Joanna is an animal lover. Right now she has four happy dogs living in her home, along with a big red parrot and a very noisy cockatiel. In her spare time (she has 30 clients she cleans their homes for) she has combined her love of animals and a gift to paint and created memorial pieces for those who have lost a beloved pet. Here are some samples of her work.

5 Decluttering Questions!

Imagine this: You fill a big suitcase (the one that always weighs more like 55 pounds when you check it at the airport) and, while it's still summer, you cram it with all the fall and winter clothes you didn't wear last year. Probably many of the garments haven’t been worn in several years. If you haven’t worn a garment in the last year, what makes you think a year from now you will?  

If you did this, you'd lose 55 pounds of clothing that was otherwise clogging your closet and if the suitcase is an old one that's probably seen its last flight, you could drop the whole, thing off at Goodwill, You'll feel 55 pounds lighter spiritually! Clutter is the biggest destroyer of peace and decluttering closets, cupboards and drawers brings a peace that money can’t buy!

Three questions to ask yourself about                           yesterday.

1. How much time did I take for myself?
2. How many times did I ask for help?
3. Did I get enough rest last night?

If you don’t plan for time for yourself, to meditate, play, and create, you won’t get that time and at the end of the day you'll wonder where the time went and why you're exhausted. If you don’t learn how to delegate, you’ll always be playing the martyr in your home. If you don’t insist on going to bed and getting eight hours of sleep each night, you’ll pay for it in your energy level the next day.

That’s why my sister and I wrote the Happiness File. We are both fun-loving, creative people and when we figured out how to get our homes organized, we discovered more free time to figure out other ways to use the 3x5 card file system we created.

“The Sidetracked Sister’s Happiness File” was published in 1985. It was a labor of love. "Sidetracked Home Executives: from pigpen to paradise" was a best-seller and women were getting their homes organized all over the country. With its success, our publisher was hounding us to write about organizing other things besides when to fix dinner, scrub the toilet and make the bed. We chose being happy and having fun. I said to our editor, “If the 3x5 cards can organize a household, it can organize fun too.”

It was summertime when I got organized. I was 34 years old and I'd hit bottom. Someone said, “The bottom is a great place to be because there’s nowhere to go but up.” Not until I hit bottom did I surrender to my situation and ask for the guidance that’s available 24/7. That’s when miracles happen. In that moment of surrender I was reminded that even though I was in a mess, I was in the right place with the right people, I was just fine and the only element I really lacked was direction. Following a direction is a spiritual issue.

In my 43-year career helping moms get organized I’ve come to one big conclusion about being organized: it’s about mind management, not time management. There are thousands of books giving you direction, but until your mind is changed the direction won’t be followed.

Before you read the 7 things to think about when it comes to getting organized, I’d like you to pretend I’m one of your guardian angels and you've prayed to get organized and I’ve been assigned to work your case. I love the assignment because I’ve always loved you and to work with you personally is exciting to me!

So, I’m sitting on your chest when you wake up in the morning and I can’t wait to see you open your beautiful eyes so we can start our fabulous day together. But you’re so tired, you miss the joy before you. I should have known that’s how it’d be because you played on the computer until 2:00 am and every time I tried to get you to go to bed, you ignored me. 

When you finally went to bed, I wished you a wonderful night’s sleep, but you didn’t hear me because you conked out before I was finished talking to you. Anyway, now it’s morning and you stagger to the bathroom, tripping over shoes you left in the pathway to the toilet. (I was able to block your fall.) By the way, I love to hear you swear! We don’t get to do it here in heaven, so it’s fun to hear (sort of like when you first tried out a swear word when your mom wasn’t close enough to hear).

As your days progress I try to get a few words in edgewise. Little suggestions like, “Look at your calendar Love,” “Get a drink of water Sweet One,” “That job won’t be that bad, put your timer on for 15 minutes and start Darling,” “Don’t take that comment personally, what he thinks of you is none of your business,” oh and “God loves you,” “I love you,” and “Please be kind to yourself Blessed One.” 

Sometimes you listen and take my guidance, but most times you just don’t hear me or you say, “I’m too busy, too tired or I don’t have time. (I really get a kick out of that last one!  I wish you knew how funny you are when you say, “I don’t have time.” LOL My Adorable One, you have all the time in the world.)

All day, every day I am there and I’ve watched you struggle with this lack of direction for years and years. Your team of angels has led you to the House Fairy and Club Organized and it’s because of us you read, if or when you read Sidetracked Home Executives, and The Joy of Being Disorganized. But I can’t really help you until you let me. Until then I just have to wait, but remember I have all the time in the world too and there is no pressure. 

Mind you, while I wait, I keep myself busy. I’m here to love you and surround you with light which is a fulltime job. Oh, and I’m constantly on the lookout for things that’ll make you laugh, get you to dance, sing and play because when you’re busy enjoying your life you are one with God and that joyful energy lights up the planet.

By the way, you are here to enjoy the ride and I’m like your personal tour guide with wings. Now you can read Pam’s 7 things to think about.

Love,

Your Angel

Young people don’t have bucket lists.There’s just too much they want to do to bother making a list. Besides, young people are too busy with NOW to think much about TOMORROWS. They’ll also discover as they age, they could never imagine some of the stuff they’ll do, without it ever appearing on a list. Like this duck who never dreamed he'd swim with the flamingos, and ended up doing it without it being on his bucket list.

My bucket list is getting shorter (like that duck's legs), but it’s a good thing. I’m finding out, I cross off been-there-done-that stuff faster than I’m adding more to do.  

Then there are those desires that gradually fade in time. For example, I carried around a wish for fifty years that I’m “happily” crossing off my bucket list, not because I did it, but because now I don’t want to. With just a little thought I got to the bottom of why it’s been such a perennial desire. ADVERTISING & MARKETING!

Shhhhcuckshhhh! That’s the sound when a faucet turns on and no water comes out.

The good news was our well had water, the bad news was the pump that brings that delicious material to us had to be replaced. The pump died Monday morning, and Terry and I managed quite well, only occasionally turning on an impotent faucet or flushing a dehydrated toilet. The pump people came Monday afternoon and gave us the report. We'd have no water until Wednesday.

I managed to cook dinner Monday night using two eight oz. bottles of Aquafina. Moving around my kitchen in bot mode, I realized I waste a lot of water while I’m cooking. I probably rinse my hands 30 times during meal prep. With a Walmart bag over the kitchen faucet to intercept my habit of turning it on, I put a washcloth soaked with water on the counter by the sink, along with a finger bowl for all finger rinsing. It worked great throughout my food prep and I’m going to do that from now on to conserve water.

Keep reading this because I have a gift for you at the end.

I asked. You answered! Thank you to all who took their valuable time to respond with such fun ideas!

I'll have to do this more! Here are some of the best ideas I received in answer to my request for off-the-wall summer ideas for kids. I'll be taking some of them on television on Friday and I will share that video with you down the road. I couldn't include all your creative ideas in this blog (it's already longer than the tech elfs say a blog should be. Some of the ideas made me want to go live with the fun-loving mom who shared. 

It's really worth your time to read these ideas if you have young kids or grandkids. 

Hi Pam!
My kids actually came up with the following activity on their own, but boy did it keep them busy during the summer.

My three children would get many neighborhood friends together to re-enact a scene from a movie such as Harry Potter. They could spend all day at it.  They had to decide who was going to be playing each character and then they had to plan the scene, collect props, collect costumes, run rehearsals and then they would have someone record it.

Not only did it keep everyone occupied for hours or days, it was essentially a no cost activity and they all had to use many skills including how to work through setbacks and disagreements and they used their imaginations!

I recommend this to all parents, especially ones who have children ages 5-15.

Love,
Kelly

There are a whole lot more!