An Easy Way to Store Tablecloths

    
My mom gave me this idea on storing tablecloths: hang them up on hangers! She keeps hers in her basement near her washer and dryer. As soon as they come out of the dryer, they go on hangers to avoid wrinkles.

I keep mine in my guest room closet. In the past, I've used an entry closet. Anywhere where you have a little extra closet space or space for a hanging rod can work. Stuffing them into drawers just creates wrinkles, and ironing is not my idea of a good time!

More on storing linens:

Preventing a Linen Closet Avalanche - Storing Sheets

Get Organized Month - Declutter Your Linen Closet

Three Steps to Organizing Your  Closet (Kindle version)

10 Green Organizing Solutions for Crafts

     
Craft supplies are messy aren't they? Becky Striepe of Crafting a Green World has compiled ten Do-It-Yourself Craft Organizer Projects, each with instructions and pictures. Great ways to upcycle, too!  

"Organizing your crafty space can make crafting so much easier, can’t it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to delay a project because I couldn’t find that vintage button that I knew was somewhere or the pretty wrapping paper I’d salvaged over the holidays and stashed – well, someplace! Where is it again?
 

No matter what your craft, chances are your space could use a little more organizational oomph, but organizers from the big box store come with a big impact. They’re often made with plastic and shipped all over the world. Boo on that! We craft green, and we want our spaces to be green too, right? Instead of heading to the store, check out these upcycled organizers for your craft room instead!

1. Show Caddy Organizer – Got an old shower caddy that’s past its prime? Give it a little scrub, paint it with some low-VOC spray paint, and you can re-use it for vertical crafty storage.

2. Hangers for Fabric – Raid your closet or the thrift store for those clippy pants hangers. They’re a great solution for storing your large pieces of fabric.

3. Make a Frame Thread Holder – Transform an old thrift store frame into a pretty solution for all of that thread.

4. Chalkboard Sign - Of course, you need to keep your thoughts organized as well. Jot down your important to-do’s on an upcycled chalkboard.

5. Recycled Can Wall Organizer – Arrange clean, salvaged cans into a wall organizers for your crafty knick knacks. They recommend Eco Glue, but I’d go with something stronger like E6000. You don’t want this falling apart on you!

6. Upcycled candle holder organizer – keep those teeny items like buttons and paper clips in check by repurposing old candle votives. You could use this same method to adorn thrifted glass ware, if you have bigger items to store.

7. Mason Jar Storage – Reuse some of your old Mason jars along with a thrifted cake or cupcake stand for some small-item storage.

8. Ribbon Storage – Spunky Junky bought hers new, but you can hit the thrift store for a slotted Tupperware bin – or really you could drill holes into any thrifted Tupperware container that’s the right side – and use it to make an upcycled ribbon dispenser.

9. Old Dresser for Fabric – Got a huge stash of fabric? Keep it neat and organized in an old dresser spruced up with a coat of paint.

10. Funnels for Twine – Wrangle those balls of twine with funnels! The ball rests in the top, and you dispense the thread through the bottom. Easy peasy!"

More on craft storage and organizing:

Organizing a Portable Craft Station

Organizing Art or Craft Space

Storage Ideas for Crafts and Art Supplies

Apps to Help You Go Paperless

    
Paper multiplies faster than rabbits! Do you have stacks of receipts for reimbursements or taxes? Business cards you need to be able to access?

Lisa Gerstner of Money Power offers a few suggestions for getting rid of paper clutter via your smartphone.

"If you have a smartphone, scanner and computer, you have all the tools you need to banish paper clutter from your life. The payoff: You can more easily organize your files, photos and miscellaneous pieces of paper, and you'll be able to access them with the click of a mouse or tap of an app. 

Scrap the small stuff. Get a handle on paper receipts with tools that save and categorize them. With the free Lemon app (available for Android phones, the iPhone and iPad, and Windows Phone), you just snap a photo of a receipt and add a label. You can view a breakdown of the information on the app and at Lemon.com.

Shoeboxed, which manages receipts as well as business cards, has applications for Android devices and the iPhone and iPad. Plus, it integrates with several outside accounts, such as Evernote and Google, so that you can export data into them.

Just looking to clear your desk of business cards? Get the free CamCard Lite app. Take a photo of a card and the app stores an image of the card and transfers the information to an address book (you can manually edit the info if the reader translates it incorrectly)." 

More apps to help you organize:

Wunderkit - An iPhone app for Collaborative Projects

Organize Your Christmas Shopping with New Gifts HD iPad App

Get Organized for Your Vacation with Trip Doc App

 

 
 

Disheartenig Findings from a UCLA Study on Clutter and the Middle Class

   
The following article by Meg Sullivan about clutter and the middle class is a sad commentary on our society. UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) photographed, videotaped, tracked family members with position-locating devices, and measured stress hormones in 32 families. It's amazing how many of the problems are related to clutter! Read on ...

"It's the place to look for the plumber's phone number, the date of the next doctor's appointment, that photo from your summer vacation and the spelling test your kid aced last week. 

Yet even for all these telling glimpses into the minutiae of daily life, your refrigerator door reveals much more about your middle-class family. 

The sheer volume of objects clinging to it may indicate how much clutter can be found throughout your home. Furthermore, that clutter provides a strong clue to how much stress Mom feels when she walks through the door at the end of a day at work. 

This is one of the juicy tidbits from "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors," the first book by researchers affiliated with UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF). 

Founded in 2001 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, CELF sent a team of professional archaeologists, anthropologists and other social scientists to conduct a systematic study of home life in 32 middle-class, dual-income families in Los Angeles. 

The resulting rigorously documented book presents a troubling picture: costly but virtually unused "master suites"; children who rarely go outside; stacks and stacks of clutter; entire walls devoted to displays of Barbie dolls, Beanie Babies and other toys; garages so packed with household overflow that cars have to be parked on the street.

'This is the very first study to step inside 21st-century family homes to discover the material surroundings and vast number of possessions that organize and give meaning to the everyday lives of middle-class parents and children,' said co-author Elinor Ochs, a UCLA anthropologist and director of CELF. 

Added lead author Jeanne E. Arnold: 'This is something that's never been done before in a modern society and may never be done again because it was an incredibly labor-intensive enterprise.'

"Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century," which will be published July 1 by UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, shows how these families are using their time, what they do with the stuff they buy, how much use different parts of their homes get and what aspects of home life cause stress. 

Findings include: 

• Managing the volume of possessions was such a crushing problem in many homes that it actually elevated levels of stress hormones for mothers. 
• Only 25 percent of garages could be used to store cars because they were so packed with stuff.  
• The rise of big-box stores such as Costco and Sam's Club has increased the tendency to stockpile food and cleaning supplies, making clutter that much harder to contain.  
• The addition of costly "master suites" for parents proved the most common renovation in the homes that were studied, yet the spaces were hardly used. 
• Consistent and troublesome bottlenecks emerged in the homes, yet families rarely devoted renovation dollars to remedying these obvious problems. 
• Even in a region with clement year-round weather, the families hardly used their yards, and this was the case even among those who had invested in outdoor improvements and furnishings. 
• Most of the families relied heavily on convenience foods like frozen meals and par-baked bread, yet they saved an average of only 10 to 12 minutes per meal in doing so.  
• Fragmented dinners — those in which family members eat sequentially or in different rooms — threaten to undermine a sacrosanct American tradition: the family dinner.  

The book focuses on the physical surroundings of the families and, in the parlance of anthropologists, their "material culture," a subject that includes everything from art and trophies to televisions and outdoor furnishings and actually is much less understood than one might think. 

'Marketers and credit card companies record and analyze every nuance of consumer purchasing patterns, but once people shuttle shopping bags into their homes, the information flow grinds to a halt,' said Arnold, a UCLA professor of anthropology. 'But the 32 families who threw open their doors to us allowed unfettered access to their busy homes and lives.'

The researchers doggedly videotaped the activities of family members, tracked their every move with position-locating devices and documented their homes, yards and activities with reams and reams of photographs. They asked family members to narrate videotaped tours of their homes and took measurements at regular intervals of stress hormones via saliva samples. 

The researchers then plotted, compared and correlated the mountains of data they had collected over the course of four years. The project generated almost 20,000 photographs, 47 hours of family-narrated video home tours and 1,540 hours of videotaped family interactions and interviews. 

'Most of the time, the average American cannot see that which is most deeply familiar,' said co-author Anthony P. Graesch, an assistant professor of anthropology at Connecticut College. 'But when you invite anthropologists into your home, they will force to you step out of the 'insider's' perspective and examine your house, your possessions, the ways that you use time.'

GALLERY: Seven Common Challenges Facing Middle-Class Families at Home"

More on clutter and stress:

9 Ways to Enhance Your Health by Being Organized

Reduce Your Stress by Organizing

Declutter Any Room in Three Weeks

 

Create No-Clutter Zones Where Clutter is Off-Limits

    
Yesterday I spent some time on the phone doing some virtual organizing talking about this very topic! It's universal, isn't it?

Do you have areas in your home that are clutter magnets - coffee tables, the entry table, the dining room table? Places where people drop their stuff instead of putting it away?

Declare certain places to be no-clutter zones, especially those that are visible when you enter your home. It's depressing to walk into your home after a long day and see a mess!

How to do this? First, solve the underlying problem of not having designated places for clutter, if applicable. Here are some ideas to reduce clutter coming into your house:

- Keep the mail in your hand until you dispose of it into various containers: recycling bin, trash, bills and items that need attention. This, of course, assumes you have such containers. 

Sort your mail while you're walking back from the mail box or as you enter your house. A few intentional moments will save a big pile of mail clutter! We have recycling containers in our garage, so some of our mail doesn't even enter the house.

- Create repositories for book bags, purses, briefcases, keys, coats and shoes. Hooks, shelves in an entry closet, a coat tree, a bench with storage, cubbies - whatever works with your space. If the entry point of your house looks like an explosion, spend some time figuring out a solution and train your family to use that solution!

- Don't buy things unless you need them. Avoid garage sales, thrift stores, and recreational shopping. Just because something is a great bargain doesn't mean you need to buy it!

The next step is to declare no-clutter zones. 

- Determine which surfaces will NOT collect clutter, no way, no how. That forces you to think through where that clutter should live. And it identifies those items that don't have a home. 

- Work on creating homes for everything. If you have too much stuff for everything to have a home, it's time to get rid of some stuff or get creative with additional storage.

- If need be, have a container for each family member in which their stuff can be deposited until they put it away. This is a short-term solution to clutter in common areas. At the end of the day, plan in a few minutes for everyone to empty their containers by putting their items away in the right place.

- If you are behind on clearing clutter, institute a 15-minute family clutter challenge one to three times a day until you get caught up. Set the timer for 15 minutes, put on some fun music, and have each person collect their own clutter and put it away. You may even want to give a prize for the most things put away. Is that rewarding the biggest clutter bug? Hmmm..... Oh well! You decide. :)

- Another option - leave the commercials on during your TV programs and declutter during those 2-3 minute periods. It breaks down a big job into bite-sized pieces. 

These are some ideas to help you get started. Here are some other ones:


Decluttering:

3 Tips to Staying Motivated While Downsizing or Decluttering

6 Ways to Prevent Yourself from Bringing Clutter Home

Teaching Kids How to Sort and Declutter

Refocus Each Morning - ADHD or Not

    
I have been doing some business coaching with a client who has ADHD. He likes to process verbally, so we meet together at the beginning of each day. This is what we do:

- Review what happened the previous day.

- Look at today's schedule to see what is coming up.

- Determine the priorities for the day.

- Prioritize the tasks: which is the most important and the most urgent, second most important and urgent, etc.

- Schedule less important and urgent tasks later during the week.

- We also evaluate to see if strategies are working.

- And at times, we brainstorm to solve problems and come up with new ideas. 

My client's busiest time is at the end of his day, so he likes to refocus in the morning during his less busy time. By going through this process, he is able to stay focused during the day. And knowing I'm going to show up each day motivates him to stay on task. :)

I absolutely LOVE helping him be more effective, and we're starting to see our efforts pay off. 

You can do the same thing, too! If you prefer, going through this process at the end of your day might be even more effective, as you'll be poised to jump start your day tomorrow. 


More on staying focused:

Foods That Help ADHD Focus

Do You Have a Mid-Afternoon Priority Check?

Five Ways to Prevent Procrastination from Zapping Your Energy and Productivity

Clutter Solutions

Here's an enlightening article from Jenny Coad that appeared in the London Daily Mail. Vocabulary: Car boot it = put it in your trunk. 

"Bikes in the hallway, breadboard in the oven, clothes draped over chairs. Storing even the most basic belongings can be a logistical challenge in a small home. 

My diminutive flat is constantly decorated with washing, like great, drippy wreaths of bunting. Bottles of wine share space with shoes and spare chairs sit about like chess pieces waiting for their next move. I am not alone. 

An Ipsos MORI report published last month, entitled The Way We Live Now, puts storage space at the top of the list of domestic worries. Anyone trying to de-clutter and sell their home will sympathise. But if you can’t afford a bigger property - and with mortgage requirements being extra tricky at the moment, few can - what sensible solutions are there to the storage crisis? 

sxc.hu  Shelves can go almost anywhere - in alcoves, below stairs, above doors. Put them in wherever you can and those piles of books, magazines and newspapers will melt away.

* Made to measure: Having cupboards fitted to suit your space might sound like a costly outlay, but it will make a big difference. Wardrobes, kitchen cupboards and bathroom cabinets should go up to the ceiling. This will make the room seem taller. 

* Don’t be shy of a shelf: They can go almost anywhere - in alcoves, below stairs, above doors. Put them in wherever you can and those piles of books, magazines and newspapers will melt away. 

* Hard-working furniture: Interior designer Kit Kemp recommends adding pockets to the sides of chairs using the same fabric.

They should be just large enough to hold the daily newspaper, she says. 

Cover it up: Plenty of us are avid recyclers, but no one wants to look at their empty wine bottles and discarded baked bean cans. Keep it in something with a lid. 

Cable chaos: We’re all wired up most of the time, so having enough power sockets is essential. But keeping them out of sight is a smart move. Cable tidiers are available from a number of retailers.Say no: When you move into a new home, parents will try to offload things they have been saving for you: old crockery, Seventies chairs, your old school photos. Be firm. 

Outsource it: Storage facilities can provide a useful interim if you can’t quite part with the goods. 

Bite the bullet: If you can bear to get rid of it, do so. You might even make some cash in the process. Car boot it, eBay it or give it away.

Grow up: In the garden, you can plant herbs up the wall to keep the ground space clear of pots or beds. These will cover up crumbling brickwork, too."

More on decluttering:
Three Steps to Decluttering 
Decluttering Any Room in Three Weeks 
Multi-Cord Organizers

 

Beat the Heat and Organize an Indoor Decathlon for Your Kids

      
Here's a great idea when you've run out of ideas for summer fun, especially when it's hot outside. I'm recycling a blog post from previous summers ...

An indoor decathlon is similar to the outdoor decathlon, but you do it indoors. It’s great for a snow day or a day when it’s 100 degrees!  

I like to alternate short and long games so people don't get bored. 

Examples of games: 
boggle
uno
skip-bo
bubble gum blowing
clothes pins in a bottle
pin the _____ on the _____
visible scavenger hunt 
pass the pigs
paper airplane flying contest
elimination jenga
paper balls into a waste basket
etc.

I keep the list of games a secret. Then it's a series of surprises.

Gather all the supplies needed for each game.

Create a box or bag of prizes.

Create a score sheet chart with each person listed and each game listed.

After each game, record the scores. If you have five people playing, the person who comes in first gets five points, 2nd place gets 4 points, etc.

After all 10 events are played, the person with the most points is first, etc. #1 gets to choose a prize first, #2 second, etc.


More organized fun:

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: Treasure Hunt Dinner

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: Guess the Theme Day

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: Water Spoons

 

Streamline Your Time in the Kitchen - Get Ready for Summertime Salads

      
Sorry I haven't written for a few days. My daughter, granddaughter and I took a few days to help my Mom celebrate her 80th birthday! I'll try to put some pictures up soon. What a special time it was to have four generations together! 

But back to reality now, and that means cooking dinner.

In planning my menus for this week, I selected a bunch of summer main-dish salads. To streamline the process, I baked a bunch of boneless skinless chicken tenderloins when I prepared dinner tonight. Just 15 minutes at 350 degrees in glass baking dishes, sprayed with cooking spray.

I'll be using all the chicken in the next few days, but it could be frozen in meal-size portions. I diced it all, so that step is done.

Here's what we had for dinner tonight - very quick and easy!

 Apple Chicken Slaw

1/2 cup poppy seed salad dressing
3 1/2 T. mayonnaise
4 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
8 cups coleslaw mix
2 medium apples, diced and dipped in orange juice
Lettuce leaves

1. In a small bowl, combine salad dressing and mayonnaise. 

2. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, coleslaw mix and apple. Drizzle with dressing and toss to coat. Serve on lettuce-lined plates if desired. Serve with fresh veggies and/or bread if you wish.

4 generous servings

Lately, I've been doubling up on portions, so I only have to cook every other night. This salad keeps nicely, but most of the other salads I plan to make don't lend themselves to serving twice. But at least the chicken is ready! 

More quick summertime meals:

Simple Summer Meal

Quick, Easy Summertime Meal - Steak Salad

Quick and Tasty Chicken with Artichokes, and Mushrooms

Three Steps to Planning Dinner

Surely SOMEONE Can Use Your Unwanted Stuff!

    
Decluttering and know SOMEONE must have use of those things you no longer want? Enter The Stuff Shop. 

The Stuff Shop helps you match your stuff with groups who can use it. You can search by location or by the kind of stuff you have. 


More on donating:

Donating Business Clothing for Job Interviews

Animal Shelters Accept What Other Charities Can't Use

Donate Your Bikes to Youth Bike-Refurbishing Programs

Declutter As If You Were Staging Your House

       
I found the following article by Pat Jeffries to be inspiring. How fun to pretend you're putting your house on the market and stage it accordingly! See what you think: 

"When you're preparing to put a house or condo on the market, you can find a slew of advice on how to make your home look its best for potential buyers. Most of the recommendations can be boiled down into a single word: Declutter. The idea is not just to make the home seem more spacious and inviting -- though streamlining certainly has that effect -- but also to clear out all the distractions and off-putting elements so that home shoppers can more easily picture themselves and their own possessions there.

Often, when a house is ready for sale, the owners realize it feels more beautiful and spacious than it's felt  for years. In fact, at least one couple in that situation (according to their home stager's account at MercuryNews.com) decided to pull their house off the market, just because it now looked so much more appealing.

 'When the job was done, they couldn't believe it was the same home they had been in for 20 years,' Toni Berry writes. 'They liked it so much that they backed out of the deal on the new place and decided to stay put.'

This suggests that one good way to approach decluttering is to look at your home as if you're staging it for sale. True, you'll want to keep it looking more personal than if it were really for sale, and there's a sharp line between serene and sterile (though any two of us may disagree on where that line runs). Still, when dealing with stuff, a change of perspective can help. And when you've finished staging, you can breathe a big sigh of relief that you're not really moving after all."
 
More on staging:

Tips for Staging Your Home for Sale

Realtor: Key to Selling Your Home

Three Steps to Decluttering (print or Kindle)

6 Ways to Prevent Yourself from Bringing Clutter Home

Hope you had a nice weekend. Ours was cold!! We even had snow on Saturday. Not exactly the June weather we were looking for! Here are some thoughts I had about preventing clutter from entering your house:

1. Don't order anything on eBay, Craig's List, infomercials, etc. at night. Wait until the next morning to see if you still love it.

2. Don't be pushed into buying because you have to act in the next ten minutes. The same deal will most likely come along again and again, with the same deadline. 

3. When you are shopping, ask yourself if you love it and if you need it. Just because it's on sale and is a great deal doesn't mean you need to bring it home with you.

4. Don't ever buy a high-ticket item without talking to your spouse, if applicable. I've known more than one person who has bought a car without consulting the spouse!

5. If you have a serious impulse-control problem, put a "want to buy" list on your fridge. Your item must stay at the top of the list for 30 days before buying it. If something comes along that you want more than #1 on your list, replace it with your new love. But it must stay #1 for 30 days before you buy it.

6. Don't do recreational shopping. Shop when you need to, with specific items in mind. When you shop recreationally, you inevitably find something you can't live without that you wouldn't have known existed otherwise. :)

Do you have ways to avoid bringing home clutter? 


More on avoiding clutter:

A Dozen Tips for Staying Clutter-Free in 2011

Beware - Stores Increase Clutter to Promote Impulse Buying

The Psychology Behind Hoarding

 

Get Organized for Your Vacation with Trip Doc App

           
My daughter, granddaughter and I will be traveling next month to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday! Four generations together - priceless! Speaking of traveling, here's a post to help you get organized for your vacation this summer.  
     

The following review by Jen Leo published in the LA Times describes an app that can store travel recommendations which can be viewed on a map or list. 

"This app offers a simple, no-frills way to store, sort and map places you want to visit on your next trip.

Name: Trip Doc

Available for: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

What it does: Gives you a place to store travel recommendations for restaurants, hotels, activities, airports, museum, bus, train locations, information and more. Views as a map and a list, with directions and easy access to sharing via email.

Cost: $2.99

What's hot: This app was just what I needed, as family members and friends were emailing me suggestions for our upcoming family reunion in Oahu, Hawaii. I usually use Travel Muse for a day-by-day itinerary, but in this case, we weren't going to decide what to do until after we arrived. I found the quickest and easiest way to load our sightseeing and restaurant suggestions was to add them into Trip Doc on the website (after a free signup). Then, I could sign in to the app on my smartphone or iPad to view our options on the map and get directions. There was even a feature to keep notes so I could jot down who gave us the travel tip so I could thank them later.

What's not: As I was loading the suggestions via the website (and using the restaurant, activity and other categories), they showed up on the map as the same red pin. It would be nice if each category had its own color or themed icon. I got around this by adding a description, such as 'Boots & Kimo's Homestyle Kitchen | Breakfast.'

Worth it: I'll use this one again. It's great for planning must-see spots."

More on organizing for your vacation:

Peace-of-Mind Vacation Check List - What to Do Before You Leave

Organize Your Family Vacation

Helping Your Kids Pack for Vacation

 

Organize Inexpensive Summer Activities for Your Kids

  
Summer is looming! I know for many of you, school is already out. We have another week or so here in Montana, and others have almost a month to go. To help you get organized for summer activities with your kids, here's a blog post I'm recycling from last summer:

What to do when money is scarce and time is long? Trisha Navotny over at 24/7 Moms was kind enough to let me use some of her ideas for summer fun on a budget. I've added some of my own ideas, as well.

- "Movies  at Regal and AMC.  Be sure to check your  local movie theatres to see if they have summer special s going on.

- Free Reading programs – Chuck e Cheese, Barnes and Noble, Half Price books." Libraries also offer reading programs, competitions, and story times.
 

- "Go to a fast food restaurant ... for an Ice Cream or French Fries or other dollar menu treats.

- Make your own playdoh.

- Factory tours - You can find local factory tours in your area by visiting Factory Tours USA.

- Lowe's offers monthly free grow and build workshops for kids.  Click here for more information.

- Target FREE Museum Days.  Click here for Museums near you.

- Free Tours of local places like your Radio station, TV stations,  Newspaper or Fire station.

- Free Vacation Bible Schools.  Call your local church for dates and times.

- Kids Bowl Free pay for shoes only - Sign up at Kids Bowl Free 

- Kids Eat FREE - Find local restaurants where your kids can eat free when you purchase an adult meal. Theses two websites are a great resource: My Kids Eat Free and Kids Meal Deals."

- Memberships are a bit costly at first, but provide free trips for a year. Check out memberships at the zoo, historical societies, science museums, children's museums and more. Most of these memberships have reciprocal members across the country. So you can use these memberships to get into the zoo near where you vacation, for example. 

More on fun in the summertime:

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: Outdoor Decathlon

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: Treasure Hunt Dinner

Organizing Summer Fun When Everyone is Bored: A Random Act of Kindness

 

Doubling Your Time - Work While You Exercise

      
We know that stand-up meetings are more efficient and shorter than sit-down meetings. But how about meetings on treadmills? 

This picture from the New York Times shows managers at Salo, a financial staffing firm in Minneapolis, conducting business on treadmills in a conference room. 

According to Wikipedia, Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, came up with the idea of a treadmill desk as an alternative to sitting while doing computer work. Mayo Clinic studies found that if computer users worked while walking on the treadmill at less than 2 miles per hour, they could burn 100-130 calories an hour. A great alternative to sedentary computer work!  

You might see if your workplace would incorporate such an innovative, efficient, and healthy idea.

If that's not a possibility, you can still work and exercise at the same time, especially if you work from home. By walking slowly (1-2 mph), you are able to type on your computer, watch videos for work, read materials or email, and do other tasks. 

You can buy treadmills already equipped with a desk for up to $4500. The one below is around $1300. 

If you already have exercise equipment, you can attach this $39 device to many machines to hold your laptop or iPad.

Or, if you're a do-it-yourselfer and your treadmill has side bars that are parallel to the ground, you can simply place a board over the bars as a work space.

Doubling your time by exercising while you work could cut out that trip to the gym! 



More on exercise and efficiency:

The Best Time of Day to Do Your Cardio Workout

9 Ways to Enhance Your Health by Being Organized

10 Ways to Double Your Time