My family came into town for a vacation last week.  My Mother was kind enough to put us all up in a hotel for a few days, even my sister and I who actually live here.  The hotel was literally 10 minutes from my house… and even more so… it was 1 minute from my …

Stephen Covey’s popular book on being effective has one habit I never forget: : Begin with the end in mind.  This not only applies to goal setting, but in Time management.  I’m not even talking about personal productivity here, I’m talking about managing actual time.  The problem: You are meeting with a co-worker in your …

My weekend project was supposed to be THIS monstrosity! What the weekend project ended up being was setting up the pool!  My husband had to work most of the weekend, which left me and the 5 year old to set it all up by ourselves.  We did a mighty fine job of it too, if I …

Ahh, no school, the sun, and back yard barbecues, I love summer time! For us nothing is as synonymous with summer as family vacations. We love going on family vacations to spend time with extended family and friends. The part I don’t love though is the packing. Back when we had our first son we …

So, you know how this weekend I was a little OCD about my flooring?  What I failed to mention is that my to do list for the weekend had many many many many things on it.  I had SO much I wanted/needed to do with my blogs and businesses.  First, I need to finish the …

I live in a pretty small town, but my husband and I are from Southern California. My sister will leave her door unlocked even when they go to the movies… I on the other hand, lock my door ALWAYS, even if we are inside. I definitely get concerned with the security of my home and …

Being productive is often easy as just getting started!  Why is getting started the hardest part in cleaning and getting things done?  When I’m struggling with motivation, I will often repeat the following phrase to myself: An object in motion, stays in motion.  An object at rest, stays at rest! Is that true, or what?  …

I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour conducted by Clever Girls Collective on behalf of Claritin®. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program. I’m not sure why I don’t ever connect the dots sooner, but it seriously happens every. single. year.  I start waking up every morning feeling …

With Halloween just around the corner, now is the perfect time to start thinking about fun and festive ways to celebrate the holiday with your family. If you’re looking for a unique and spooky take on the traditional Secret Santa gift exchange, look no further than “You’ve Been Booed!”, the Halloween version of Secret Santa! …

When it comes to organizing your kitchen, one of the biggest tasks can be organizing your pantry.  It is just one of those places we tend to shove things that don’t go anywhere else when it comes to food and snacks.  It’s also the last place we want to deal with after we have dragged …

So not to say that my daughter watches a lot of TV… but she does watch her share.  What can I say, I work from home, and sometimes it’s VERY necessary!  Anyway, we were at Target the other day and she saw on the wall of laundry detergent the Oxi Clean.  She immediately said “OxiClean, …

Because of my relationship with SC Johnson, I was able to interview the new spokesperson for Pledge Multi-Surface Cleaner.  She is the co-host of style networks “Clean House” Trish Surh.  She is one of television’s most popular cleaning and organizing experts.  I started out our conversation by asking her what made her passionate about cleaning …

The coupon organizer I talked about before is seriously the perfect tool for coupons, and here is why… I was recently running some errands, and knew there was no way I was going to be back to my house anytime soon.  I was starving.  The errands had taken much longer than I had anticipated (which …

So are you sick of me talking about Dave Ramsey yet?  I warned you that I was obsessed!  Snowflakes (not the kind that I hate in the winter), are small amounts of money that you make in excess of your current budget to put towards lowering your debt.  Even just 2 extra dollars a month …

For Relationship Saturday I’m going to go off the beaten path a bit.  An experience this week prompted this post.  I have a friend named Therese.  Therese texted me because her laptop wouldn’t boot, and wanted advice on how to fix it.  I asked her if she had been giving her laptop goodnight kisses.  She …

“Whatcha wanna do?”…. “I don’t know watcha wanna do?”…. (movie quote please?)  Is being indecisive stealing time from your day?  Have you ever spent 20 minutes trying to decide where to go for lunch?  Or have you spent 30 minutes staring at your DVD collection trying to decide what to watch?  (I swear I never …

My time-management advice today is totally counterintuitive (doesn’t make sense, seems backwards, going to make you think I’m crazy, etc.). I’ve said before that saying “no” to one thing or eliminating one thing from your schedule will make you feel more sane and give you more control over your schedule. That is all true – …

We’ve all heard the expression “I’ll get around to it” or “I need a round tuit.” And usually when we hear it, it’s in reference to something that we’re procrastinating on. But what if there was a way to turn this procrastination into motivation? Enter the round tuit. When we were growing up we had a …

Do you have a cleaning product you are particularly fond of? For me… it’s ZAP. It’s a fabulous product that for the life of me, I cannot find anymore. Does anyone know where I can find some ZAP? I used to be able to pick it up at the grocery store but no longer. ZAP …

There is a good rule of thumb when picking up your house, that my wonderful husband never seems to do.  His method for cleaning the kitchen is placing everything in the drawers or cupboard of the kitchen.  This rule is the “One Touch Rule”  This means that when something is on the floor the best …

I have a wonderful beautiful 2 year old daugher… who has a fun white board… who NEVER and I mean NEVER replaces the caps on her dry erase markers.  She is so anti-caps that she will take all the caps off of the markers and then line the markers up for whatever reason (it really couldn’t …

Did you know that spring is the best time to purchase asparagus?  I sure didn’t!  Apparently the spring’s first crop is the thinnest and most tender asparagus.  I do really like asparagus (it’s fruit that I don’t care for, veggies?  Bring ’em on!)  Some tips on choosing good asaparagus are that they should be crisp, …

From about 6th grade until college I wanted to be a lawyer.  During my Freshman year at college though I got kinda burnt out on school, so 7 years of it stopped sounding so good.  So what inspired such a strage occupation wish for a 6th grader?  My Grandma!  My Grandmother went to school, while …

      Many people have asked me what is the simplest way to get a family (especially a large one) organized.  My answer is always color coding!  There are so many things you can get organized, and create order in your home just by simply assigning colors and sticking to them.  If the children …

Laundry, the job that never ends… it just goes on and on, my friend.  So today lets tackle that laundry pile! I think the first mistake people make when setting up laundry for their family is putting hampers in every childs room.  I think this is a mistake because you never really get a feel …