One Last Bloggy Giveaway - Office Ebooks

My final Bloggy Giveaway is a set of ebooks for the office: Three Steps to Organizing Your Office and Three Steps to Time Management at the Office. We'll close all entries at 5 pm (eastern) on Friday, August 1st. I'll announce the winners on Saturday, August 2 if not before. See Related Posts below to enter the other three giveaways.

Want to keep my organizing tips for your home, office, and time coming? The sign up for my blog is just under my picture on the left sidebar.

I'll be offering some sales next week, so stop by!! Thanks for entering my giveaways - it's been fun!

Related posts: Bloggy Giveaway Carnival, Another Bloggy Giveaway from 1-2-3...Get Organized, Bloggy Giveaway #3 - Three Organizing Ebooks

Get Organized for School (or life!) - A Family Calendar

A major aspect of getting ready for school (or life) is having a family calendar in a location where everyone can check in and see what's going on. This can be an organizing software program on your computer/laptop or a wall calendar. You'll want to have a personal calendar or organizer, but you'll also need a family calendar.



There are a number of great software programs that track several family members (some are free!). And there are several personal spiral/notebook type organizers - my favorite being the Planner Pad. I've done reviews of both software programs and notebook type organizers and will link the related posts below.



When my children were home, we used a huge calendar on the side of our refrigerator. My friend Carole, hangs hers inside one of her kitchen cabinets so it's not so unsightly. Now, with different foster children coming each week, it makes more sense for me to just post a weekly calendar from my Palm software. But if I still had kids at home, I would use something like Mom's Plan It Calendar. It's a 17-month calendar which can track up to 5 family members, with stickers, and more. Click the link on my sidebar to get a more detailed description.

Use a different color pen or marker for each person, and a separate color for family activities, and it's a breeze to decipher your daily activities!

Do you have a favorite family calendar or software program you use to organize your family?

Related posts: Product Review of Organizers - Daily Home Planner, Product Review of Organizers - The Planner Pad, Product Review of Organizers - PDAs, The Final Review of Organizers, Cozi 2.0, Oops

Bloggy Giveaway #3 - Three Organizing Ebooks

Let's do another giveaway! This time we'll make it ebooks. The three I've chosen are: Three Steps to Planning Dinner, Three Steps to Organizing Your Kitchen, and Three Steps to Clever Cleaning.





Three Steps to Planning Dinner is a smaller version of of the workbook by the same name (minus the grocery lists, recipes, recipe pages for your own recipes, and CD template of those pages), which helps you plan your menus and create shopping lists, so you only need to shop once a week!



Three Steps to Organizing your Kitchen helps you figure out how to make your kitchen most efficient and convenient.


And Three Steps to Clever Cleaning helps you identify your cleaning philosophy (bet you never heard of that one!) and determine how to keep your home clean in the quickest, most efficient way.


For more lengthy descriptions of each book, see my website.


Don't forget to enter by posting a comment below. And make sure you sign up for my other two giveaways!


Related posts: Bloggy Giveaway Carnival, Another Bloggy Giveaway from 1-2-3...Get Organized

Another Bloggy Giveaway from 1-2-3...Get Organized

I have decided to offer another giveaway in the Bloggy Giveaway Carnival - my downloadable Hassle Free Dinners. It's over 800 pages of weekly dinner menus (52 weeks), instructions, and weekly grocery lists. It takes all the planning out of cooking dinner. Pick a week's menu (they are arranged seasonally), and go grocery shopping!

The grocery lists are color-coded, so if you know you are not going to be eating at home on Wednesday, for example, you won't buy anything red. And the recipes are set up for 2, 4 or 6 servings, so you don't have to do the math. Even if you have picky eaters, you can substitute ingredients or double up on some meals you know your family will like.

Meals usually take 30 minutes or less (except on weekends when you might bake something, like a roast, that will be repurposed later in the week). Each meal includes a protein, a starch, and something red and something green - fruits and veggies. Recipes that have more than a couple of ingredients will have the nutritional values listed and the price per serving. Most meals run between 400-600 calories total, without being loaded with fat. Menus don't follow any particular eating plan (vegetarian, low carb, etc.) - they're just nutritious and tasty and quick!

Each week includes 1-2 chicken recipes, 1-2 beef recipes, 1-2 pork recipes, 1 fish recipe, and one meatless meal. A variety of cooking methods are used - crockpot, grilling, baking, microwaving, and sauteeing, but not deep frying. No entree is repeated for the entire year. Read some client testimonials. It's a marriage of professional organization and dinnertime!

To enter to win Hassle Free Dinners leave a comment below. To enter my other giveaway, scroll down to leave a comment on my July 28th blog. To go to the Bloggy Giveaway Carnival, click the title above.

Getting Organized for School - Backpack Checklist

With school starting next month for many next month, I want to run several blogs on getting organized for school. The inspiration for today's blog came from The Disney Dream Team's Tracy, who created a system for remembering what needed to go to school with each child.

While Tracy's system targeted her elementary school children, a backpack checklist would work for middle school, high school, and college students. This could even work as a briefcase reminder for work, too. This is how it works:

Create a chart listing the days of the week at the top. Under each day, make a column for each person who needs a checklist. On the far left, list possible items that might need to be included in the backpack that day: a band instrument, shoes for gym, signed paperwork, a folder or notebook for a particular class, library books, etc.

You can create your chart on your computer and reproduce it each week. Or you could use a dry erase board or laminate a poster board to re-use each week. Each person on the chart could be noted in a different color. Then items can be checked off on the appropriate day as a reminder to put those things in the backpack. Make sure you leave extra rows at the bottom for items that aren't necessarily needed each week.

To make life easier, have everyone pack their backpacks the night before. What a morning stress reliever!

What do you do to take the stress out of your mornings?

Related posts: Organizing for School - Papers, Get Organized for School - Clothing Inventory, Hope for Disorganized Students!, Getting Ready for School: Organizing Homework Papers

Shake the Salt Offers Time Management for the Stay-at-Home Mom Giveaway

Christy over at Shake the Salt has offered my Three Steps to Time Management for the Stay-at-Home Mom as her current giveaway. She has written a review (a very nice one, I might add) and has a code for a 25% discount on any order for my books. Check out her fabulous site while you're there - she has so many helpful and money-saving tips! Click the title to go directly to her giveaway sign-up.

Bloggy Giveaway Carnival

Bloggy Giveaway Carnival hosts a massive giveaway every quarter. There are already over 200 giveaways and it's just the beginning! I'm going to be giving away a package of organizing books (Decluttering, Cleaning, Kitchen, Planning Your Child's Parties, and the Time Management book of your choice) - over $50 in value. So click the title above to enter any or all of the giveaways. Hope you win!!

Just leave a comment to this post to enter.

Shake the Salt Launch Party

Christy over at Multitasking Mama has launched a new site called Shake the Salt - great reviews, freebies, deals and more! During her launch, which goes through August 25, she'll be giving away 40 items including one of my books. Click the title above and it will take you to her sign up page. Make sure you wander around her site - it's fabulous!

Help Mommy Meryl Win Blogging Idol

Mommy Meryl is trying to win Blogging Idol by getting the most new subscribers. She needs over 350 to beat the leader. Want to help? Click the title above to subscribe. The contest ends July 31st. Sign up for her newsletter and see my article each month. :-)

Organizing Your Pantry List

Jillian over at A Freckle for Every Moment blog had a great idea for creating a pantry list so you don't forget what you have and buy duplicate items. It's the July 20th entry.

Related posts: Get Organized Month - Declutter Your Pantry, Get Organized Month - Clean out the Freezer, Decluttering in 5 - Check out the Shelf Life of Your Spices

To Do List or Not To Do List - That is the Question!

I ran across an article today in MomSense, a newsletter put out by Christianity Today that I thought was extremely refreshing. It's about giving yourself permission to take things off your to-list that are good, but may not be good for you. It encourages you to determine what's important to you, and not compare yourself to others. It sings my theme song! And you don't need to be a mom to appreciate the message. For a wonderful, freeing read, click the title above.

Organizing for School - Papers

Yesterday I was walking through WalMart and I couldn't help but notice all the school supplies - in multiple places. It reminded me of an organizing system one of our foster children set up for herself. It's a 13-pocket expandable file.

She designated one pocket for each subject at school and kept homework assignments, finished assignments, study sheets, papers that needed to signed - anything pertaining to that class - in the appropriate pocket.

This system eliminated the bookbag stuffed with a multitude of random papers, lost homework, and the chaos such disorganization produced. At the end of the week, she would go through her expandable file and transfer noncurrent papers to her notebook.

I saw these expandable files at WalMat for $5.88. They come in multiple colors and are only a couple of inches thick.

If you want to get a much more sophisticated filing system, check out the Binder Buddies Multipocket Organizer by DocOA. Each pocket has three sections, so you could have three filing categories for each school subject. Just click the title to see more.

Either of these systems could work for elementary through college.

Related posts: Hope for Disorganized Students!, Getting Ready for School: Organizing Homework Papers

Organizing For College - Dorm Room

I really enjoyed helping my daughters get ready for college. Between the three of us, I'm sure we kept The Container Store in business! Now that I've moved to Ohio, the nearest Container Store is two hours away! Ugh! Maybe it's better that way. :-)

I just received an ad from The Container Store yesterday, showcasing six very cool rooms. If you or someone you know is getting ready for college, this is a great place to start - very fun ideas. And they are having a summer sale! Just click The Container Store image in the left side bar to see the six rooms.

One of my favorite products that both my daughters used was a folding crate. You can find it by clicking Summer Sale at the top of The Container Store page. On the first page in the second row you'll find folding crates. They come in several colors and can be used with or without wheels.

We packed up the girls' college items in the crates. And then when they moved into their dorm rooms, we turned them onto their sides and used them as shelves. You can stack several on top of each other. If you don't need to use all of them, they collapse to only a few inches and can be stored in very little space. And they're great for life after college, too!

Related posts: Packing for College, Check out CampusCalmU, Review of Three Steps to Time Management for the College Student

Recycling Cell Phones to Our Soldiers

When I posted my computer recycling blog last Friday, I got a comment that I want to pass on to you about recycling cell phones.

Qlubb-Andy said...
While you're at it, you probably have a bunch of old cell phones lying around in the closet.Here's a great service started by a 13 year old that helps you put them to good use.

I checked it out and found that you can recycle cell phones at locations in your community or get a postage-paid label to mail your cell phone. To help even more, you can pay the postage yourself.

The organization reconfigures the cell phones to be used with phone cards so our troops can call home for free.

What a wonderful idea and what creative kids to have started this service! Click the title above to find out how your old cell phone can be recycled for our soldiers.

Recycling Computer Components

Do you have old computer components you'd like to get rid of, but don't know what to do with them? The Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov) has created a list of possible options. Click the title above which will direct you to their list.


If you have a computer geek in the family who needs to declutter, you might suggest the following amusing article by Evan Goer, Decluttering for Computer Geeks: http://www.goer.org/Journal/2008/07/decluttering_for_geeks_computer_components.html