Get Your Home Organized

Getting organized is usually top on everyone’s to-do list when making New Year resolutions. The trick question is how to do it? Organization doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a little planning and a game plan to make it happen.
One of the best ways to regain order in your home is to go room by room and do what I call an “organizational cleaning”. Even though we all clean our houses on an regular basis, to really get organized you have to do more than that. Organizational cleaning refers to the process of purging through your belongings and rethinking how a room is laid out and organized. This helps make it as functional and efficient as possible.


How to Organizational Clean?


1. Pick one or two rooms a week to reorganize, depending on how much attention each room needs. Record on your calendar which rooms you’ll work on and set a goal date to complete each. Also set the date by which you want your entire house to be reorganized. Having a main goal written down that’s also broken down into smaller goals increases the odds of achieving what you want.


2. Go through each item in the room and decide if what you own needs to be (1) donated, (2) sold on consignment or at a garage sale, or (3) thrown out. Have a bag for each of these categories and start purging. Be realistic about what you own and whether you really need it. We live in a society that believes more is better, but when it comes to an organized and clutter-free home, that isn’t the case.


3. Once you’ve purged through your belongings, take a step back and analyze how the room is laid out. It’s much easier to keep a room clean if it’s set up in the most efficient way possible. For example, is the clothes hamper located where it’s easily accessible, is the bed positioned to make the room flow properly, are there ample storage containers or bins to keep toys and books organized and off the floor, do you need to purchase a decorative magazine rack to help keep clutter off the coffee table, etc. Once it took my 7 year old to point out that the trashcan in our garage wasn’t located in the most efficient place. We always cleaned out the car when we got home and used the garage garbage can for all the trash. Once we moved the garbage can to where my son suggested, it made it a lot easier. I had to laugh that I hadn’t thought of it before and couldn’t believe what a difference it made. Sometimes you just have to look at things with a fresh pair of eyes to find a better way. Use this philosophy in every room in your house to help create a more efficient living space.

4. When you’re finished reorganizing a room, make sure to explain to everyone in your family any new systems you might want implemented to maintain order. Let them know what your expectations are so they know what to do. I’m sure you’ll have to remind them again and again until everyone is used to the room’s new lay out or your new system, but once everyone catches on, your house will be better for it.

Organizational cleaning is something that will help you regain order in your home and isn’t difficult to accomplish if you allow yourself the time it deserves. It’s also an ongoing process that needs to be done every couple of months. It’s amazing how fast stuff accumulates and order can be lost, but if you go through this process you’ll find that it never gets ahead of you and that you’ll be able to maintain order, and keep your home clutter free!

(A lot of time elapsed between my last blog because our family just moved. I spent most of my time packing and unpacking. In fact, I'm still unpacking! As a side note, moving is a great way to purge. Time consuming and expensive, but effective!)

The Best Weight-Loss Secret

Now that we've all eaten with reckless abandon during the holiday season, it's time to get serious about shedding those holiday pounds! If you made it through the season without putting on at least a pound or two, I'm very impressed! But for the other 99% of us it's time to kick it in high gear and start eating healthy again and get back into our exercise routine.

The first step to getting a handle on your weight and start losing pounds fast, is to write down everything you eat and drink. If you record the foods you eat along with the calories and fat they contain, you'll quickly get a clear picture of your diet along with it's strengths and weaknesses.

Counting calories is still one of the most effective weight-loss secrets around and doesn't require that you restrict your diet to certain foods. You can eat a variety of foods, just in controlled amounts. Experts agree that by simply restricting your caloric intake and avoiding the many fad diets out there, you'll successfully lose weight. The key is to make sure that you're consuming less calories than you're burning throughout the day. The only way to monitor that is to record what you're eating.

Even though many companies try to make weight-loss appear to be complicated and overly scientific, it ultimately boils down to consuming less calories than your body burns on daily activities and exercise. It's that simple! The best way to know if the number on your scale is going to go up or down, is to know what your numbers are. In my book Lose Weight, Feel Great! (Even After Kids), I discuss the 5 important numbers you must know to lose the weight you want, and keep it off for good. This book, available in March 2008, takes a simple approach to healthy eating and weight loss. To simplify things for this blog, I'm just focusing on one of those numbers the book discusses - your total caloric intake.

Start a food journal listing all the food and beverages you consume everyday for at least 4 weeks. I know you're thinking this sounds way too time consuming and tedious, but it's much easier than you think. It's also much more effective than you could ever imagine! Most foods have the calories and fat content listed on their labels making calculating what you're eating easy. For the foods that don't, there's a great website thecaloriecounter.com, which gives the nutritional information of practically everything out there.

Keys to Calorie Counting Weight Loss:

1. Decide how many calories you need to restrict yourself to. 1200 calories is a good number to start with to help get quick results. Experts agree you should never go below this number. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you may need to start with 1500 calories.

2. Designate a place where you'll record your food intake along with the calories and fat grams, and make sure it's available to log in what you've eaten throughout the day .( We tend to conveniently forget some of the foods we indulge in, so don't rely on your memory. Record what you eat immediately.)

3. Read labels carefully and look up foods that don't have that information available on thecaloriecounter.com. Make sure you carefully measure portion sizes. A single serving is much smaller than most people think, so pay close attention to how much you're eating.

The more you record your food intake the easier the process gets. In fact, most people eat many of the same foods regularly and will quickly memorize the calories and fat grams they contain. Once you start using a food journal, you'll realize how important it is in your weight-loss efforts. If you record your foods and restrict your total calories for at least a 28 day time period, you'll see the weight fall off and get yourself into great shape for bathing suit season! And speaking of bathing suit season .... aren't you glad that Christmas isn't celebrated in the summer? At least with the festive season arriving in the winter, it gives us all a chance to repair the damage we've done before having to step into a bathing suit. Just one on those small things to be thankful for!