It’s easy to make a to-do list, but not so easy to follow through with it. Is the problem with our list or with us or with both? We all need to know how to manage a to-do list, because we all have things we need to get done. There are three basic steps you need to take to manage your to-do list: Make your list reasonable and prioritized. Look at your list every day. Revise your list once a … Read More
Have you ever been frustrated trying to use a planner? Have you ever worried that you spend more time making a plan than doing it? I have a quick planner hack that streamlines the process and keeps me focused on the most important things to do each day: a short daily to-do list. I know, planners are pretty. They’re fun. But a lot of the ones that we can buy pre-printed, packaged, ready to go are actually over kill. They … Read More
Transformation Tuesday is our answer to the complicated, overbearing cleaning and organizing checklists out there. You don’t need to clean by someone else’s schedule. Instead, see what needs to be done in your own home, and spend 10 minutes improving the order and organization there. Transformation Tuesday is one of my little homemaking mottos that helps me tackle housecleaning in small bites and tame my attitude at the same time. Cleaning and decluttering should just be a small piece of … Read More
My husband has worked from home for over 7 years now and we’ve been homeschooling – educating nearly entirely at home, being home all day – for 12 years. When your family is home-based like this – by choice or suddenly and out of necessity – everyone will need to offer one another grace and mercy and kindness. A single person’s selfish ambition can’t control the situation, whether that’s the father’s desire for quiet, the mother’s desire for everyone to … Read More
This has been declutter month at Simply Convivial, and it’s not too late to join. Even a week is still time enough to make some great progress and gain skill and practice in decluttering. With the sudden upending of normal has come – for most of us – unexpected time at home, and so we can channel our energies and our time into small-scale decluttering progress. But decluttering the stuff is really the least important kind of decluttering we can … Read More
Is decluttering a project you’ll finish? Will you experience a magical happy-ever-after when decluttering is finally complete in your home Nope. Sorry. Won’t happen. Decluttering is a habit you need to build. I wanted to talk about the decluttering habit because there’s this rumor floating out there on decluttering (from experts and gurus) who say that “decluttering can be done once and for all.” That it’s a project you finish and check off and be done with (which is really … Read More
Every so often it’s good to stop and reflect and assess. Rather than continuing to barrel forward, we can pause and learn about our own needs, our own patterns, our own situations – then make choices and plans that are smarter and more effective. Here are some things I learned in February. 1. After multiple intense days with little sleep, I need to plan for a do-nothing week. In February I went to a speech & debate tournament in Portland … Read More
Clutter is a problem every family has to deal with. We can learn strategies of regular decluttering that keep our space useful and clear without falling into the trap of thinking that the goal is to eliminate all clutter once and for all. So, we talk a lot about needing to declutter, but part of what holds us back from just diving in and making some progress in decluttering is that even though we say that we are doing this … Read More
Decluttering is something we keep saying we need to do. Even when we do it, we still keep needing to do it. We hunt for better, faster ways to do it – and be done with it at last. Why is it such a big deal? Why do we keep trying to do it? And what is it that we keep trying to do? That’s the topic of today’s episode: How to declutter quickly and simply. Let’s dig in. So, … Read More
Today’s episode is an audio blog for one of my favorite posts: Life is like laundry. If you pop on over to the article on the blog, you’ll also find a follow-up 45-minute workshop on this topic. If you have some extra laundry to tackle and you need a pick me up to accompany the marathon folding session, it’ll be just the ticket to keep you company and keep your spirits lifted. So, let’s dig in. February is often a … Read More