The only way to establish a new habit is to put the action you want to become a habit into a daily routine so that you’ll do it enough times for it to become automatic. Before an action is a habit and part of your daily routine, just think of all the options you have. Options are what pull you away from doing something you've decided to do to change the status quo. In other words, you have to learn to be an option stopper, whereby you don’t give yourself the option of not doing the action you want to have become a habit. 

For example, if you want exercise to be part of your daily routine, then you have to stop giving yourself options out of exercise. Until exercise is a habit, your options will always look better than exercise. But if you’ll be an option stopper, one day you’ll realize you have a new habit, you're happier and life is better! 

Have you ever stopped to think that right now your life as it is, is the result of your daily routine? It is. For most SHEs, we have such a developed sense of spontaneity that we're not all that excited about consciously creating a routine...until we get a taste of the freedom a good routine gives us in addition to more free time to play.

The following is correspondence between one of our Club Organized “elite” members and me. If you owe thank you notes, this conversation will inspire you to write them now. 

      Hi Pam,                                                                   June 13, 2015

Today is my granddaughter Brooklyn's (my son's daughter) birthday. She's the girl on the right with her friend Paige. This photo was taken in Positano, Italy last summer. They were both 16 years old. They graduate this spring and Brooklyn has been accepted to Berkeley. 

She was three years old in this video and she froze as soon as she looked up and saw the huge audience of at least a thousand parents and grandparents. We think she was looking for her mom and dad. I remember leaning over and whispering in my son’s ear, “I hope you didn’t spend too much on these lessons.”

Experts claim romantic love lasts from 18 months to three years. Mother Nature must know this, so once she makes a connection, she has to work fast if she wants more babies!

In 18 months she can put out one baby and one on the way (giving the mother a little recoup time) and in three years she can produce three. Done!

That’s what happened to me anyway and I blame it all on Mother Nature. 

This will date me, but I have three children thanks to Johnny Mathis. When he sang Misty and those luscious tones flowed from his lips, “Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree,” bang…I was pregnant with Michael and wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d come out bi-racial I was so in love with Johnny. Chances Are (one of Johnny’s biggest hits) rang in Peggy Ann and Wild is the Wind pulled Joanna from her non-physical place in the Universe to a place in our home. 

A few years ago, we took a vacation I’ll never forget.

          During that vacation, I took the six days off from the 21st century and never once looked at a computer. I didn’t answer anyone’s emails or write my weekly blogs for the last week of the month we were in. I just lived in what I’ll call a techless world. Yes, I was party to using the GPS while we “Yelped” our way around San Diego and yeah, once I talked on Terry’s cell phone. Oh and yes, I used the computer timer on the oven in our condo we lived in for a week, but the rest of the time I enjoyed the real world right in front of me

          One of the highlights of the respite was having lunch with one of Terry’s professors from WSU. Mr. Mott made a profound and lasting impression on my husband. (Thank you Mr. Mott.) Terry has so much respect for the man he can’t bring himself to call him Robert or, God forbid, Bob. Mr. Mott and his wife Edie are in their nineties and both sharp mentally, mobile and healthy.

Guests of Marla and Robert

We spent that vacation as guests of Flylady and her husband Robert. There were times when I felt a little like a beloved family dog. Marla, Robert and Terry spent a great deal of our living room time on their thingamajigs of choice, while I sat and talked to myself, read a little, wrote on a yellow pad and played "retro" Solitaire. (That’s a game you play with a standard deck of real playing cards, dealt onto a real table.)

Wanting What Others Have Hurts You

“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.” That quote is by Vernon Howard and he was probably never dazzled by brochures for fancy vacations or a catalogue from William Sonoma. We are continually tempted to buy what we don’t need. 

There was a recent ad on the Internet hawking the latest autumn purses (referred to as bags). It said in the email subject line: 9 Bags You Must Own This Fall. With suggestions like this, it’s no wonder we can hardly move in our closets!

Really the only thing we need to buy regularly is food and gas. Vernon would not be happy with some of my purchases. Like this crab hat my granddaughter Sophia is wearing. What was I thinking? I know, ‘I’ve gotta have it!’

Vernon’s quote resonates with SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) because we’ve experienced the clutter and resulting chaos that comes with not learning when enough is enough and being tempted by advertising. Yeah, we have duplicates of many items but that’s only because we lose an item and have to buy another. And yeah, we have more babies than BOs (Born Organized) because we never pay much attention to a calendar.

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. 

It's hard to ignore the fact that the holidays are here! We’re flashed with tons of emails squawking about Holiday Sales on everything from food and kitchen appliances to fake Christmas trees and yard decorations. We get inundated with sparkly catalogs hyping the urge to get new furniture (for holiday entertaining) and glossy pages advising us to consider getting new china for that holiday table and maybe even a new car (red or green of course).

We complain about the commercialism and materialism of the holidays, but put us in our local Starbucks slurping a yummy Caramel Brulee Latte from that festive red and green cup and we brim with excitement and anticipation about spending time with family and friends. Love is really what the holidays are all about.   

Starting with Thanksgiving, a holiday that marks our gratitude, to Christmas with its message of peace, love and joy, it’s a magical time and love is behind it all. The 5 words to remember are:

My kind of plan!

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, we could stay in our pajamas all day, eat over the sink and lounge around and do nothing if we wanted to. I still have that day only I call it My Day. I do what I want and don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I pretend it’s my birthday to get into the mood.

The interesting thing I’ve discovered over the years of enjoying My Day is that I accomplish so much in the name of being selfish about doing what I want to do! It continues to amaze me that what I’ve been preaching about for 40 years is profoundly true.

Your attitude is way more important than fact,

We've Got to Get Organized 

My blog took a typical, SHE (Sidetracked Home Executive) turn with an email from a Flybaby and it prompted me to find a very funny article written by a columnist for the Seattle Times who in turn went on to become a very famous food critic in the Northwest. His article gives you the man’s view of a SHE. The article follows this email.

Here’s my letter to Barb,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I love hearing from SHEs like you because it just confirms to me that we are one huge, happy family, loving our homes and loving order, but careful not to take life too seriously. I purposely approached getting organized with a sense of humor and joy and that book was the first book on the market written from a reformed “slob’s” point of view.  (Remember SLOB stands for Spontaneous, Lighthearted, Optimistic and Beloved.)

Love,

Pam

Here’s the article, written by John Hinterberger  Seattle Times.