DrDeClutterBlog.com

Whoa! It’s Halloween time again! When did that happen!!

If you have kids that want Halloween to be fun, it’s time to plan ahead.

1. What will your kids be wearing? What do they want to dress up as?

2. Can you create it out of what you already have or will you be purchasing, renting or barrowing a costume and accessories?

3.  Where are they going?

4 . Who are they going with?

5. What’s happening in your neighborhood or area for trick-or-treating?

6. Safety is a must of course. Safety in regards to their costume for walking, skipping and running (because they will!) and safety if they are out and about on their own or with other little ones.

Help your kids have memorable fun this year!

7. Take lots of pictures.

8. Scrapbook those photos immediately!

DONE! Have a great Halloween!

Happy Furlough Day, Government Employees! Yipppeeeee!

I have a friend who works for the State of Colorado, she and several of her co-workers are making today, their Government Furlough Day (day off without pay) a great day! They’re calling it Craft Camp! They’re getting together and knitting, scrapbooking, painting and generally having a wonderful day of it.

What will you do?

Organize your “day off” around fun too!

It’s said that we don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan. Plan your fun, make it functional (not over-the-top and easily costly or disappointing) and see how much more you’ll enjoy it as something wonderful to share and remember when it’s over.

It’s not something normal to think that fun should be functional, or planned and thought through.

Fun should just happen, right? If you’re 2, maybe!

But as adults, it doesn’t matter what you do for the Labor Day Weekend, or any other holiday or “day off,” just make sure you’re taking the time to really “be here now” in it!

Why? Because it’s too easy to let holidays and time away from brain-crunching or back-breaking work go by and wish you’d had it to do over again, that somehow you missed it.

To “be here now” and have fun need some conscious planning and functional decision making to be what we truly want it to be.

Get out the calendar, and everyone involved in your upcoming weekend, and pre-plan everything with enough free time and fudge-room to change your mind too.

Need more help for the holidays? If you’ve had chaotic, unhappy, disappointing and frustrating holidays, big or small, I’d highly recommend my ebook Simplify Your Holidays: Your Guide to Coping with Holiday (and everyday) Stress ~ or ~ The Complete Self-Help Guide for Those with Less than Perfect Holiday Experiences. You’ll get ten times the help for the easy cost of this jam-packed full book of check lists, questions, creative options, thought inspiring stories and more.

The scarcest resource is no longer land,
capital, labor or information.
It’s attention.

Do you multitask?

Do you have multiple mobile, desk and other tech-gadgets vying for your attention each moment of the day? Add to that television, radio and more? Are you more – or less – productive? Really, tell the truth!

Researchers at Stanford University found that multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.

The big finding is that the more media people use, the worse they are at using any media!

If you’re not getting ahead with all of the best and brightest products on the market, it might be that you need to decide what really works best when and to isolate out your tasks by the hour of the day to stay mindful and focused on one at a time.

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”
~ William James

The Internet and mobile-mania has countless temptations and distractions, deciding how best to invest your time and attention when you’re online is particularly challenging.

Left to its own devices, your involuntary, “bottom-up” attention system asks, “What’s the most obvious, compelling thing to zero in on here? That e-mail prompt? This colorful ad?” Unfortunately, it’s right up there with “Oooo, that’s shiny! I’ll follow that!”

But, fortunately, we can also shake ourselves awake and use our “top-down” attention system that poses a different question: “What do you want to focus on right now? Ordering that new novel, writing the third chapter of that new novel, then checking the weather report, then making five phone calls, right?” 

It’s far more productive to focus on top-down targets you’ve selected to create the kind of experience you want to invite.

I highly recommend Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher for more ideas on bringing your attention back to what’s important, and what will be more productive.

Getting ready for “back to school” days can mean different things to different people. What does it mean to you? If you just responded with fear, anxiety, and stress over hearing the voices of your angels saying, “Mom, where’s my homework?” “Mom, where’s my lunch?” or “Dad, I can’t find my books and helmet,” you’re not alone!

I want to help you keep your vow to be more organized and less stressed this year by offering you some preventative medicine, rituals, time savers and other organizing tips to help you and your children enjoy the start of another glorious school year!

Ritual #1: The “Back to School” Declutter Appointment
Enlist the help of everyone and get the house in order before school starts. Too late? Do it ASAP or the weeks and months will get away from you.

On a weekly basis: A good deadline for everyone’s room to be spotless is the Sunday night before school starts Monday morning. Starting off with a clean house, rooms, porch, etc. creates a good sense that this is something new and positive and gives a baseline to how “clean” is supposed to look! Teach them how and help them out the first few times when necessary.

Ritual #2: Make a Fresh Start
No matter what your income, it’s nice for children to have some new clothes (even if they’re only new to them), new supplies, etc. with which to return to school. Sometimes it takes into week one or two to know what they need.

For some it can mean one or two new pieces of clothing or a pair of shoes, for another it’s a new backpack or office supply that helps them to enjoy studying more. This means organizing closets and drawers to sort out the old and decide on the new. If your child has outgrown last years clothes, again, and they are still nice and wearable, have a yard or porch sale – make some money selling them and use that money to get new ones! Take advantage of Back To School clothing and supply sales!

Ritual #3: Ask Questions, Find Out Answers
If schools already started you would have done this already, but if not . . .  ask your school and your child for a list of what they are going to need and the schedule for everything. Get off to a solid start with all of the right information the first time. This includes necessary supplies, equipment, lunch money, activities fees, sports and other schedules, etc.

Ritual #4: School Information Central
Take all of the information from your Q&A and write it on the Family Calendar. This calendar needs to be in the kitchen, by the phone and where everyone can see it and add to it as necessary. Make sure everyone checks it so that there are no double-bookings when they can be avoided. Don’t let the “I didn’t knows” create crises, anger, stress and hurt feelings. If you have room, use a bulletin board where you can post the calendar, schedules, announcements, and invitations where they will not get lost and everyone can see and comment on them. For daily notes, get a dry-erase board for your frig or wall for quick notes that can be wiped off and changed daily.

Ritual #5: Systems For Sanity
Teaching your children basic organizing skills and self-responsibility now will make them into much better children and adults. A lot of trees will be cut down just so that your child will be able to bring home lots of paper! One way to curb this chaos is to put a three-tiered wire or plastic basket by their bedroom door, or your kitchen counter.

Teach them to sort through their own backpacks and put papers that need “To Be Signed” by mom/dad in the top basket; another basket for “Important Stuff Mom/Dad Needs” (PTA info., fund-raisers, school policies, etc. Help your child know what these would be); and a basket for “Art & Awards” to be used as scrapbooking ideas and keepers. (Move these items to labeled plastic tubs for organized storage.) And, set some rules, like, “If it’s not in the top basket by bedtime, it doesn’t get signed that night!”

These tools and tips eliminate the last minute papers waving in your face, stress and bad feelings for the day and also gives you time to actually READ what you are signing! Also, make sure that you are on top of doing your part each night to check the files and go through them for your reading, approval and signature. Getting this system down will make a big difference.

Ritual #6: Family Meetings
If you haven’t started this tradition yet, it’s never too late. We make schedules and appointments for so many things and for others but often forget to actually sit down, meet with, talk to, listen to and enjoy our own children. Designate one night of the week when everyone can be there, plan an hour or more to discuss and plan the upcoming week and share how school is going so everyone’s on the same page.

Ritual #7: Fight-No-More Solutions
Sit down with your family and discuss what your routine arguments and hot spots are each year. Get out paper and pen and have each person help create solutions for pre-determining how to fix it. Here are some examples:
- Pre-Pick Daily Clothes: Stop morning delays and drama by laying out clothes on the bed or a chair the night before.
- Bed-Time Blues: Kids need their sleep for better health. So do parents! Stick to a schedule of lights out and up again as well as meal times when the kids are home.
- Sleep Routine: “B” above also means getting your child’s sleep-schedules and routines ready for the school year. If they’ve been up late all summer they’re going to need some practice going to bed earlier and getting their minds and bodies ready for the change. At least two weeks before school starts, re-introduce a school year bedtime. Get them started earlier and earlier, closer to the hour they’ll need to rise when school begins.
- Forgetting Things: No one forgets everything, but maybe certain things. Isolate out the problem areas and get ahead of it.

You will have a “Fight-No-More” list particular to your family, just make sure to sit down together and spend time listening to and helping them to better pre-plan their year; make better choices.

Ritual #8: Routine
There’s a general routine to adult jobs and children’s school. The first week’s routine can be made as close to a normal school week as possible so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming, or extra stressful, or a let down when it’s over and it’s “back the same grind.” This means committing to make the above 7 tips a reality so that the first week runs smoothly. This creates a great path for the following weeks, and less “grind!”

Good luck and have a great new Back to School Year!

For decades we’ve heard the phrase, “You have to keep up with ‘The Joneses!’”

What that has meant in the past is that you have to have the latest, greatest stuff: car, clothes, shoes, accessories, bling, the right school and college, the right job, the highest income, the party, the house, lawn, the yacht! And, let’s not forget a big dash of perfection!

Well, it’s way past time to rethink and debunk this old and undermining, stress and money crazed idea.

Keeping up with whoever your “Joneses” are might mean keeping up with people who live lives stressed, in fear and jumping hoops to please their “Joneses”.  A big game that’s very unnecessary.

Become your own “Joneses” and enjoy what is right for you. NO MATTER WHAT anyone else thinks.

Don’t compare yourself to anyone else.

Do what is best for you and your family.

If you want to watch TV shows about MORE MONEY and EASY MONEY and backstabbing and greed, feel free, but in your reality, keep it simple and sublime, out of debt and out of stress. No comparing. 

If you’re feeling like you’re not “keeping” up with someone else, step back and re-decide what you really want and just do your own doing towards it.

If there is more than one of you in your house, and that other one is in school, creating a calendar for all activities, upcoming and ongoing events and routines is crucial to stress, time management and sanity.

Everyone writes in their activities, and you write on the ones for children too small to do it themselves.

BENEFITS?

1. Get a positive flow and rhythm to your routines.

2. You’ll all get on the same page this way – all seeing the same picture and of all the puzzle pieces of your days and upcoming weeks and months.

3. You’ll be less likely to forget and miss events or be late for appointments.

4. You’ll also stop the too-easy-to-happen double and over booking of appointments, events and activities.

5. You might also notice that you have way too much going on and need a family meeting to discuss cutting back or out some things to keep some balance and time for family time, real meals and, well, sleep!

How many times would like NOT to say, “Have you done your homework?” this year?

No one is exempt from learning life-skills in youth. But, if children aren’t supported and taught how to do the doing of what you want them to learn the right way, how will they learn?!

Creating daily, on the clock and expected routines for schoolwork is a must to help your children win this year.

1. Establish a “tight schoolwork routine” as soon as school starts so that everyone knows what to expect and will feel great about getting homework done and relaxed for school the next day.

2. Create “homework time” that is met consistently by the student and by you the parent, should they need help.

3. Create a ”homework zone” where everything the child needs is available to sit and study: chair, desk or table, good lighting, quiet, undisturbed, materials needed.

4. Create your availability to help with any questions that arrise that they need help with. Make it easy and okay for them to ask questions about their homework. Even if you don’t know the answer, and say, “I don’t know,” it’s okay. Help them understand how to find the answer.

“Happiness is a choice,” said Abraham Lincoln, as have many more before and after his time.

Do people, circumstances and life bring you down?

One way to choose to be happier when you’re around Debbie Downer or others who may push your irritation buttons, or situations you are experiencing that are frustrating you is to ramp up your mental filters.

We are programmed by others and outer experiences throughout our lives to perceive events, situations, people, places, things and feelings as good or bad, happy or sad, energizing or depleting. These beliefs create mental filters through which we begin to see life most of the time. Most people don’t realize this process is happening as it is so unconscious, but moreover, they don’t realize that they have control over these filters.

You have control over these filters as soon as you realize a) that you have them, and b) that you can change them any time you please.

It’s not easy at first, but over time and practice you’ll strengthen your mental “filter muscles” and will be able to literally filter out conversations and situations that are not pleasing or are toxic and destructive to your mental health.

When someone is being negative – and you can’t immediately get out of the situation – selectively filter out the negativity by choosing to hear and see and feel only the positive.

An extreme example of this is being stuck in a prison. This can surely be a hard life and experience of course, but think what you can selectively filter for the positive that can bring light and joy into your mind, thoughts and experience? Is it colors or sunshine in the room, a hum that can be pleasing to your mind and body for relaxation purposes, or the feel of a fabric or other item you can touch.

The truth is that we are all prisoners in our own minds when we do not see the beauty and positive aspects of life all around us.

Look around your room or environment now and see only those things that bring you joy and peace.

Go outside and do the same.

On your next drive look for things that are lovely and make you feel good.

“Success is getting what you want;
happiness is wanting what you get.”
~ Anonymous

Real happiness is choosing to be happy, no matter what!