For many families, the focal point of Thanksgiving Day is a table laden with delicious food. As nice as it is to dive into these foods, getting them to the table often requires a lot of work and can be stressful. Last year, for example, we spent the entire day before Thanksgiving preparing various dishes. Then I was up and cooking again … [Read more...] about Simple Ways to Streamline Thanksgiving Dinner Preparation
organized living
Tips for Meal Planning While Moving
I didn’t post a menu this month because there is absolutely no way we would be able to stick with it! We are moving in the middle of the month. I’ve already started packing up the kitchen, and eventually it will all be in boxes. Even though we can’t adhere closely to a menu, we still must eat! Though we are making some impromptu choices … [Read more...] about Tips for Meal Planning While Moving
11 Tips for a Successful Garage Sale
We had a garage sale earlier this spring. The sale was more successful than I imagined it would be! We started with a driveway full of furniture items, clothing, toys, housewares, etc. and ended with a single box of items that didn’t sell. We owe a lot of our success to my parents. We strategically planned to have the sale while they … [Read more...] about 11 Tips for a Successful Garage Sale
Essential Items for Your Disaster Preparedness Kit
You can’t go but a day or two without turning on the news and hearing about a disaster. Sometimes these are natural disasters such as floods and wildfires, and other times they are man-made disasters such as hazardous material spills and industrial accidents. Because disasters are common and no geographic location is immune to them, it is … [Read more...] about Essential Items for Your Disaster Preparedness Kit
How to Get Up the First Time Your Alarm Sounds
I frequently find myself reexamining content contained in blog posts I wrote years ago. During the past few weeks, the post I’ve been considering is about getting up the first time your alarm goes off. I wish I could say that I mastered this after writing about it seven years ago. It seemed that I had—I did quite well for years. … [Read more...] about How to Get Up the First Time Your Alarm Sounds
Printable Vacation Packing List
When I begin preparing for a trip, the first thing I do is print a copy of my packing list. You can see my old packing list in a post I published eight years ago. That list is perfectly functional, but I decided to create one that is less colorful and that has slightly different categories. These are the categories I’ve included in my … [Read more...] about Printable Vacation Packing List
Multitasking: Constructive or Destructive?
Whether it is in the workplace or the home, multitasking is something we all feel the need to do on occasion. Sometimes it’s even a necessity! With so much to do, why wouldn’t we benefit from completing more than one task at once? In recent years, many researchers have studied multitasking. Their findings are interesting and are … [Read more...] about Multitasking: Constructive or Destructive?
5 Strategies for Creating Effective To-Do Lists
I wrote about workload paralysis a couple of weeks ago. Workload paralysis is when the weight of having so much to do leaves us feeling powerless to act. When we feel this way, we tend to freeze and avoid getting started on tasks. As I noted in that post, one of the reasons we sometimes feel workload paralysis is because we have far too much … [Read more...] about 5 Strategies for Creating Effective To-Do Lists
