These quick tips will give you ideas to help you make your bathroom as romantic as you can stand it.

1. Soft finishes, in the form of soft rugs and fluffy towels, can take the edge off a bathroom filled with hard surfaces such as porcelain fixtures and ceramic tiles. Pick fabrics and rugs with soft pastel colors and patterns for a truly romantic feeling.

2. Intricate shelf brackets on bathroom shelves can give you a simple but effective way to increase the romanticism of your bathroom. Spray paint them in shiny chrome or soft white or cream and top with a delicate scalloped wood shelf painted in a soft creamy pastel.

3. Use fabric covered boxes in a stack of two or three for eye appeal. Make sure you use soft colors and ribbon or fabric trims. This is also good storage space for your bathroom supplies, like extra soaps, cotton balls ,and Q-Tips.

4. Hanging a glamorous chandelier over your bathtub or in the center of the room also adds a romantic touch to your decor. If your electrical wiring setup doesn’t allow for this kind of fixture, just hang a chandelier that uses candles. Or put a delicate crystal lamp with a romantic shade in your bathroom. Dangling crystal teardrops will add a perfectly romantic touch to almost any simple shade.

5. Display softly colored bath salts, soaps, and lotions in your bathroom for some more visual oomph.

Romantic has never looked so good!

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5 Quick Tips for a Romantic Bathroom

That means that some of my suggestions about products to use will probably be changing as I create new articles for this site. Considering some of the things I’ve learned lately, in the pursuit of trying to feel better, be more energetic, and create a good environment for my family, I can only think it’s a good thing! Some of the regular chemicals we use in our households are dangerous and scary, and I’m ready to find alternatives that work.

I’m also migrating to natural fabrics and materials in my home furnishings and household supplies. I am not a fanatical kind of person, so the truth is, I might not always choose the 100% natural alternative; however, each decision will be based on my analysis of all the facts I have on hand.

Is the product dangerous, or are the dangers unknown at this time, or has the product been proven safe over the many years it’s been in use?

Is the manufacture of the product sustainable over the long term?

These questions and others will feature prominently in my buying decisions.

I hope you’ll enjoy to new direction of future home management tips on this site. Let me know what you think. I’m leaving comments open.

Post from: Home Management Tips

Going Natural with Home Management Tips

I decide when to clean my refrigerator by noticing how much stuff I have to shuffle around when I’m putting away new leftovers (instead of on a scheduled date). I avoid filing papers that represent something I want to think about or work on because it would take more time to file them and create to-do items for them than it takes me to glance over them when I’m looking for something else.

The thing is, at some point, we all have to decide when we’re striving for too much organization. Organization takes time and effort, and sometimes we overpay in time, effort, and money, for what we get back on our investment in organizing our lives.

There are many other ways you can use disorder to make your life easier. Below, I’ve listed 5 easy ways to let disorder and disorganization into your life.

5 ways you can use disorder and disorganization around the house to make your life a little easier

1. Go simple with the filing systems. If you can find what you need, when you need it, your filing system already works for you—even if you don’t use folders. Why spend money on filing supplies when you don’t need to? Why spend time overhauling a system that already works?
2. Plant a flower garden, the easy way. Mix all your seeds together in a jar, shake them up, and pour them (somewhat) evenly over your flower beds. You’ll end up with a profusion of flowers overflowing your beds, drowning out the weeds, and bursting with color.
3. Let your mail pile up and sort it once a week. You’ll only have to get out the envelope opener once, run the shredder once, and pay the bills once that week.
4. Leave on your kitchen counter an appliance you would love to use more often but don’t because it’s difficult to get out and put away. If it’s useful to you and you want to use it, then why not make it easy for you to do so? See? A little disorder can make your life better.
5. The next time you plan to “clear out the clutter” ask yourself why you’re doing it. Is it because of what you think others might think of you if they saw your mess? Why does it matter? If you’re not clearing out the clutter because you want to make your things easier to find, use, or put away, then you’re probably not clearing out for the right reasons.

As for the book, A Perfect Mess, if you’re looking for someone to remind you why clutter isn’t always bad to have around—and why having clutter doesn’t make you a bad person—you’ll want to read this book. I listened to the abridged audio edition, so I can’t say with certainty that every word in the book is a gem, but what I heard was excellent. This was front porch listening, although you could listen at any time. There was something very relaxing about the voice of the reader, and the subject matter is something most of us could stand to hear.

The point of the book isn’t to encourage you to be disordered, cluttered, or dirty. In fact, some order and organization is essential to a happy, productive life. However, as the author discusses the subject of disorder, it becomes clear that some disorder can actually improve your life, give you more time, save you money, and spark your creativity.

Those are the reasons I suggest you read—or listen to—this book.

Ever since Einstein’s study of Brownian Motion, scientists have understood that a little disorder can actually make systems more effective. Yet, most people still shun disorder or suffer guilt over the mess they can’t avoid. With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess, A PERFECT MESS overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success. Drawing on examples from business, parenting, cooking, the war on terrorism, retail, and even the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abrahmson and Freedman demonstrate that moderately messy systems use resources more efficiently, yield better solutions, and are harder to break than neat ones. Applying this idea on scales both large (government, society) and small (desktops, garages), A PERFECT MESS uncovers the ways messiness can trump neatness, and will help you assess the right amount of disorder for any system.

Post from: Home Management Tips

5 Ways to Use Disorder and Disorganization to Keep Your Home Running Smoothly

When you’re working in your kitchen, you need easy access to the things you use regularly. Easy access depends entirely on knowing where your items are, without having to stop and think about where they might be.

When you’re putting away groceries, you want to be able to put items in their place quickly and without having to think about it too much, but just as importantly, you want items to be easy to find later.

If putting groceries away isn’t quick and easy, disorganization will creep back in and overwhelm you just when you most need to find something.

Kitchen organizing doesn’t have to take long at all. If you do it over a period of a week or two, you’ll be amazed at how organized things will get after just 15 minutes here and there.

Doing it the simple way: organizing as you go

1. The next time you put away groceries, put canned foods on one shelf—or use two if absolutely necessary—and slide your vegetables to the left and your fruit to the right. Put boxed goods in a central location.

Group items together that you use together, such as baking goods. I also put my themed foods together, such as tex-mex, spaghetti & sauce, boxed side dishes (scalloped potatoes, instant potatoes, quick rice dishes, etc.). It makes everything easy to find and easy to put away.

As you take items out of your pantry and use them, you can take a few minutes here and there to put items into their new locations. With almost no extra effort, you’ve begun to organize your pantry space.

2. Don’t scatter your kitchen gadgets around your kitchen. Locate them in a centralized location, even if it’s a little out of your workflow.

If you spend thirty seconds walking across the kitchen to get your super-duper-potato-slicer or your handy-cheese-grater, that’s okay. At least you know where it’s at and you won’t spend 2 to 4 minutes looking for it or trying to remember where you put it last.

Next time you take your gadget out of the dishwasher, put it with the majority of your other gadgets. Soon, you’ll have them all in one location.

3. Hide everything that you can. Not only will you have clearer counters, you’ll have cleaner utensils, cookbooks, and gadgets. As long as you know where you put things and put them there every time, accessibility isn’t hindered. In fact, you could be helping yourself out if you have a habit of stacking things on your small appliances.

Anything stored near the stove requires extra wash time because of oil and grease deposits. Have you saved yourself any effort by keeping your toaster on your counter? Sure, you save about 1 minute getting it out and putting it away, but you’ll spend countless minutes over the course of a month cleaning it—same for your cookbooks.

Even if you use your cookbooks extensively, don’t keep your cookbooks in an open shelf in your kitchen. Grease and other deposits will stick to the books and you’ll end up cleaning them often, or wishing you had the time to do so! Keep them as far away from the cooking areas as you can. I keep mine on a dedicated shelf in my pantry.

The next time you wipe down your counters, grab up your small appliances and gadgets and tuck them away (a clutter free house looks cleaner). If you don’t have space to tuck them away, consider moving anything you use less than 4 times a year to a longer term storage area.

4. So you would love to do steps 1 through 3, but you don’t have any space? Next time you put away your dishes, clear out any older, unused dishware from your cabinets first. Donate to Goodwill, or give to a relative or friend who might want them.

I started out as a young married woman with many hand-me-downs, and I was always excited to have something “new.”

You can clear out plenty of old dishware in less than 5 minutes, if you grab a box and start packing.

5. Throw out old food and make room for what you really use.

The next time you go to put something into the freezer, grab at least two items that have been in there too long and then throw them out.

You cannot leave food in a freezer indefinitely and expect it to taste good later, or even be safe for eating. By throwing out older items (or just things you know you’ll never get around to preparing or reheating), you’ll create extra space for what you will use. It takes just seconds to pick up something and throw it into the trash.

Within a few weeks, you’ll have an up-to-date selection of frozen items and you won’t even notice the time you spent organizing it!

6. Get rid of duplicates.

I’ve already written an entire article about this topic, but it’s so powerful, I want to mention it again.

The next time you put away a gadget, utensil, or pot or pan, notice if you have more than one of the item. Really think for a second about whether or not you make use of the second item on a semi-regular basis.

If not, consider what your life might be like without the item. Will you suffer because you don’t have one of them? Will someone else appreciate having your extra?

In just a few minutes, you can clear out additional space for other items without sacrificing anything of note.

As I’ve said before, organizing is really about having the space to keep things in a particular spot so you know where you can find them, without having to think about it.

Practice a few of these tips each day and before you know it, you’ll have a more organized kitchen in almost no time at all!

Post from: Home Management Tips

6 Quick Kitchen Organizing Tips

There’s a reason they say TV will rot your brain. After a few days of gobbling up whatever they find on TV, many kids need to find something else to focus their time on, hopefully something productive and something that will give them a heads up on the upcoming school year.

Saving your sanity during the summer months might be as simple as putting your kids to work learning something new.

For older children, you might want to consider keeping them busy with tasks that can prepare them for their future. If college is in the cards for your child (don’t we all hope that’s the case?), try getting them interested in software programs that can get them ready for standardized high school tests and college entrance exams. Vocaboly.com offers a vocabulary builder that can help your children build and improve their vocabularies.

Vocaboly.com’s software is vocabulary building software for SAT, TOEFL, GRE, and GMAT, and comes with a free trial so you find out what you’re getting before you buy.

When I took the GMAT, I scored high on the Verbal Section, and I believe my larger-than-average vocabulary (from extensive reading) was helpful. If your child has never been a voracious reader, using software to beef up his vocabulary might be the way to go.

Younger children might be better suited to educational computer games, such as those you’ll find at coolmath-games.com. My 9 and 11 year old love these games.

If you have the time and interest, don’t rely on others to teach your children something new. Do it yourself.

You can create interesting puzzles for your kids to solve with EclipseCrossword. I love this software for creating holiday puzzles, but it can certainly be used to create educational puzzles in history, social studies, geography, and other subjects.

If you want your children to spend more time outdoors than in, maybe this is the year to teach them how to grow flowers or vegetables, how to mow the lawn or trim the weeds, how to identify plants, or even how to change a flat tire!

Summer fun doesn’t have to be mindless and it doesn’t have to drive us crazy. A little educational entertainment and mindful preparation for the future can keep our kids busy learning, while we have lemonade—or get things done around the house.

Post from: Home Management Tips

Manage your sanity (and your children’s time) during summer break by teaching them something useful

Are you interested in setting up a budget or learning more about the budgeting process?

I’ve written about budgeting several times on this site. Here are the links.

• 6 Steps to a Working Budget
• Sample Household Budget (to view or print)
• Budgeting for Gifts
• Gifts Budget (spreadsheet)

Here are some more budgeting articles you might find useful.

• Personal Budgeting: How to Create a Budget
• Budgeting for Your Peace of Mind
• Household Budgeting: Secrets to Marital and Money Bliss
• Household Budget: 10 Sneaky Saving Strategies
• Home Budget: Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck

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Getting Started with a Budget

To make the entire process as simple as possible, I’ve uploaded a spreadsheet that I use to track those budgeted gift amounts. By taking the time to complete the spreadsheet and list all the people I’ll be buying for this year, I save myself time later in trying to track gifted amounts and gift values. This also helps keep me from having to worry about gifting too much to one person and not having enough for someone else—think in-laws, children, and siblings…

This spreadsheet includes three sheets:

1. Instructions
2. Christmas
3. Other Gifts (including anniversaries, birthdays, etc.)

The gifts budget spreadsheet is available as a free download on my templates page.

I hope you find it useful. If you do, please consider leaving me a comment.

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Budgeting for gifts

This year, I’m resolving to get that habit back. Exercise is one of the simplest ways you can improve your health and fitness level. Walking, running, all those activities were easier when I was maintaining an active lifestyle.

One way I’m going to accomplish my goals is to begin using my Home Management Tips Calorie and Food Log Spreadsheet again. I didn’t use it much in 2008, but now that I’m gearing up to lose more weight, I know it will give me the motivation and accountability I need to keep me on track in 2009. My Simply Daily Food Log can also keep up with a daily calorie count, but I want to be able to watch my progress on pretty charts and graphs.

This year, I’ve also convinced my husband to try losing some weight with me. What helped me convince him to participate? John Tesh does a radio program called Intelligence for Your Life. On one particular night Tesh was discussing how to be successful at keeping your New Year’s Resolutions going. He mentioned that losing weight with a partner made you much more likely to succeed. We were both listening to that program that night, so when I wanted to convince my husband to participate in my efforts to lose some weight, I told him I really needed his help and we would both be more likely to stick to it if we did it together. He agreed. I don’t know how much John Tesh had to do with it, but I sure don’t think it hurt anything to have someone backing me up.

What about you? Do you want to lose weight or become more active? What have you resolved to do this year that will have the biggest impact on your health?

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Resolve to be healthy this year

I’ll be making a post soon to tell how to make the Christmas Card Houses I mentioned in my comment there. After all, the holidays are coming up and you might want to give this a try with your kids. Crafts are a great way to manage your children!

Post from: Home Management Tips

Win an Epson Printer in the Happy Epsonovemberama kirtsy Contest

You see, I had always used a pen. Once I began using a pencil, and only a pencil, I found that I actually quite liked using a calendar. Nothing is permanent, nothing requires Liquid Paper. All I need is my pencil with eraser and I have everything I need to keep a useful, working calendar.

These days I use a calendar software program. Because I want my entire family to have access to the calendar, I prefer a stand-alone program, independent of my email or other personal communications.

I use Sunbird now, but I’ve only recently converted from Windows Calendar, and before that Google Calendar. If you have a very internet savvy household, Google Calendar is a great option. Your kids can have their own calendars and share events or tasks with your household calendar.

Since my children are too young to keep up with their own calendars right now, and my husband still doesn’t see the need for a family calendar, I keep up with everything, and I enjoy using Sunbird as my calendar.

Unless you’re around your computer a lot, I suggest you go with the printed calendar. My personal preference has always been a weekly view.

How to make a calendar work for your household

Let’s start with the paper calendar. If you don’t have a calendar, but would like to be able to print calendar pages, I have a template you can print from. This monthly calendar template doesn’t have the dates, so you’ll need to write them in, but it prints nicely on an regular 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper.

Here’s how you can make a calender work for you. Not only will it help you stay ahead of household tasks, it will help you keep up with household events and family members’ appointments.

What you should put in your household calendar

• Add timed events
• Add scheduled recurring tasks and any other tasks you need reminders for

Add dated and timed events

These events have set dates and times that are usually out of your control, be it your child’s sports events and practices, or appointments for your household members. These events can’t be easily shuffled around, unlike your tasks.

Add scheduled recurring tasks and any other tasks for which you need reminders

Some organizational gurus suggest you never include tasks on a calendar because the tasks can be moved around and shouldn’t be assigned to specific dates. However, for a household calendar to effectively guide you as you try to get your household tasks done, your schedule is the perfect place to keep them.

Precede each task with empty check boxes or circles, so you can mark the task as complete. Using a pencil overcomes the issues of moving things around, as does using arrows –> instead of check marks to indicate that a task has been rescheduled instead of completed. Of course, reschedule as soon as you place an arrow through the box so you don’t forget!

Adding your tasks to your calendar also allows you to assign certain tasks to family members and then remember who did it last. This heads off arguments between your kids and can motivate them to get their chores done because they’ll quickly learn it’s no use arguing with Mom’s calendar!

Things to include on your calendar

• Family members’ appointments
• Doctor appointments
• School events & school holidays
• Work events
• Laundry days (see my article Staying Ahead of Dirty Laundry: 5 days to an empty laundry room for suggestions)
• Auto maintenance schedule
• Household maintenance schedule

This might seem like a lot to keep in one calendar, but having it all in one place really does make things easier to keep up with.

If you choose to use a calendar on your computer, you can segregate your tasks and events into groupings and create separate calendar views for each group. I do this. I keep calendars for household, personal, work, auto, and school. I keep all the calendars “on” most of the time so I see everything, but I can turn off any that I want, to eliminate distractions when I need to concentrate on getting tasks done for one particular group, such as household or work.

Give it a try and see if this doesn’t help you keep your household running more efficiently.

Calendars to try

• Mom’s Plan-It 2009 Softcover Engagement Calendar
• Mom’s Plan-It 2009 Desk Calendar
• Mom Organizer 2009 Pocket Wall Calendar
• Little Helper 2009 Planner
• Family Organizer 2009 Pocket Wall Calendar

If you have any tips for keeping your household calendar organized and up to date, consider sharing them in the comments.

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How to use a calendar to keep your household organized