Quick cooking tip

Here is a quick and easy cooking tip I learned from a book called Queen of the Castle. It's called Whack-a-meal. What you do is pre-brown your hamburger using your crock pot. You put a couple of pounds of hamburger in your crock pot and leave it for 4 hours on low - stir every hour or so.

Then you drain it and let it cool. Then put it into gallon sized zip lock freezer bags. Be sure to get it as flat as you can and get all the air out so it won't get burned in the freezer. When you're ready to use it, you just whack it on the counter a few times to loosen up the frozen hamburger and pop it into your recipe. Isn't that clever?

New Messy Mom's Workshop for March

I am getting ready to set up a new Messy Mom's workshop starting in March. To give you a little background on my workshops, they are four week sessions that are taught right in my living room. I try to pattern my classes in a way that is similar to the Weight Watcher's format - each week we have a combination of lesson time and time for sharing our experiences. I want to hear what challenges each person has and whether or not they have benefited from the previous week's lessons. That helps me fine-tune the workshop to provide the most helpful information to you.

The reason I have it as a four week workshop is to give my students a chance to build on each week's lesson. Let's face it, we've all been down this road before, many of us several times and we have to build up our credibility all over again, both with ourselves and with our families. We've all tried the latest and greatest gimmicks, books, websites, and advice from friends and family to get our darn houses cleaned up! Some methods have been more successful than others, but I don't know many people who have had the opportunity who have been able to attend a live class like this to get ideas from a real person in a way that works for them.

Here is the basic plan for the 4 week workshop:
Week 1 - Basic daily cleaning routines and your vision for the home you want to create
Week 2 - The easy way to declutter your house and what to get rid of and how
Week 3 - Get your family on board. How to get your family to participate in the daily cleaning process without fussing, arguing and nagging, and how to get them to show more appreciation for your efforts.
Week 4 - Resources to keep you going in the future/Getting your finances in order

The base cost of the workshop is $50 for the series - prepaid. I offer a 10% discount for signing up with a friend or relative and the first 5 people to sign up with receive a free gift.

I'm starting a new advertising program, so I am expecting these classes to fill up pretty quickly. If you want to reserve a spot, you'll want to contact me pretty quickly. Click HERE to E-mail me for more info or click the Paypal button to sign up for a class.

Slacking off a bit

Dear blog friends - I hope you don't think I'm ignoring you. I know I haven't posted as often as I normally do, or visited your blogs as much either, but it's just been busy lately. I've had 4 stamping events to prepare for over the last two weeks, so I've been spending a LOT of time in my stamp room lately and my husband has been making rather pointed comments about me staying up later and later to mess around on my computer.

So, I've decided to just cut myself a little bit of a break and not give myself a hard time if I don't get my posts put together as often as I would like. Hope you understand!

Learning to Let Go

I think I am in a unique position to understand the importance of not hoarding things. Over the course of our marriage, we have lost all four of our parents and had to clean out two full houses worth of "stuff". And believe me, these people were hoarders. Not the scary type of hoarders who save mountains of newspapers and stuff, but normal Mom & Pop type hoarders.

It made me sad when I was going through my Mom's house, particularly her craft room, which was crammed to the rafters with unfinished projects, art supplies, and expensive, unread craft books. I kept thinking if she'd spent more of that time and money on doing fun stuff with us instead of all this useless junk, what great memories I would have instead of cussing her while I was wading through all this stuff and trying to sell it for pennies on the dollar at an estate sale.

You need to think long term and realize how this might come to roost on your children. If things go in the normal way, you might have 20, 30, or even 40 years before this becomes an issue, but we all know that this can happen very unexpectedly. My cousin and his wife died suddenly and violently in their mid-30's and left behind 3 orphaned children. Things like that happen sometimes, and if something terrible like that happens, do you want your children to have to deal with your whole house full of junk, in addition to all the other traumatic stuff they would have to deal with?

Cleaning out a house after a death is a terrible thing. It's exhausting, both physically and emotionally, it's heartbreaking, it's frustrating and annoying, and it's just about the least fun thing you can imagine doing. My in-laws were very clean people and not pack rats (so we thought) but we had a big eye opener when we started digging into the drawers and closets and all the little hidden areas of the house - ugh! They had saved every pay stub, every birthday card, every paid bill, and 20 years worth of bank statements - what a mess. And because we were out of state, we had three days to do the whole house. I've never worked so hard in my entire life and my kids and husband did too. Everyone hated me by the end of the week, but we got most of it done and the neighbors and people from Goodwill had to deal with the rest of it.

So take a minute a go around your house and put yourself in your kid's shoes and imagine them having to deal with your house if something happened to you. Then take some action and get rid of some of that stuff.

On another note - do you have a will and a trust? Yes, I can see your eyes rolling. I can see that guilty look on your face. This is something you HAVE TO DO! Yes, I am yelling. As I said, we have lost 4 parents and not one of them had a really proper will set up and it cost us THOUSANDS of dollars - real serious actual dollars that we could have used to buy cars, pay for college, or put towards retirement and instead it was just wasted on lawyers, court fees, and other unnecessary expenses. I think most people have no idea at all about what happens to your property after you die. Let's look at two scenarios:

John and Sally are married and own a house that is in both of their names. They have two kids and no will. John suddenly has a heart attack and dies. In this scenario, Sally would have no access to any money other than what she can grab out of their checking account or what she might have stashed in her name. She can't sell the house, his vehicle, or any personal belongings of his until it is cleared by the court, which may take months and will require very high cost legal representation. Our lawyer cost us $38,000 for a simple transfer of property. If you can't come up with that kind of money (and who can these days?), you are going to be stuck with a property that you can't easily sell and will still have to make payments on and maintain.

If the estate is large enough to require probate, the state will automatically take 10-18% right off the top. Chew on that for a minute. Sally will most likely be awarded custody of the children, but if some relative decides to kick up a fuss and paint a bad picture of her, that could even be a chancy thing and they could end up placed with another relative or even in foster care. And in the meantime, Sally is grieving, trying to figure out how she is going to support her family, dealing with insurance companies, and lawyers, and real estate agents, maybe for the first time ever and she is going to be tearing her hair out and downing tranquilizers just to keep her sanity.

Now here is the second scenario. Same circumstances, but John and Sally had a properly written will and have a simple trust set up with their house and all their major property in it. The house, vehicles, and all other property passes smoothly and automatically to Sally and all she has to do is show the death certificate to the proper parties and have John's name removed from the assets. She can mortgage them or start selling them the day after the funeral if she so chooses with no questions asked, no lawyers needed, and a minimum of taxes to be paid. Custody of the children is prearranged with backup plans set in place as needed if both couples were to die or become incapacitated.

Which scenario would you choose? I know which one we would. About a month after my father-in-law passed and we saw what a heck of a mess we were in for with his estate, we found a good estate lawyer for our own estate. We didn't have to go far, we found one right at the end of our street. We sat down with him for about 2 hours, answered some questions, made some decisions, and paid him about $1,000, which was without a doubt the best money we've ever spent! Then in less than a week, we had a will for each of us, a trust, power of attorney forms, guardianship forms and everything needed for every possible combination of catastrophes that could befall our family.

That's more than I usually share in a public blog about my finances, but this is something I feel so strongly about. As an adult, you have a duty to put your business in order to protect your family - you just have to. You need life insurance, wills, backup custody plans, the whole enchilada. 'Cuz I've been on the receiving end of a situation like this and I'll tell you, it ain't a pretty picture and it is easily the most stressful period of my life and I'm not about to put my kids through all that and I hope you won't either.

A Little Funny for you!

Here's a cute little poem I found that seems very appropriate for our situation. I write on my computer as the laundry and dishes are sitting there waiting to be done. Guess it applies to me as much as anyone!

Cleaning Poem

I asked the Lord to tell me
Why my house is such a mess.
He asked if I'd been 'computering',
And I had to answer 'yes.'

He told me to get off my fanny
And tidy up the house.
And so I started cleaning up...
The smudges off my mouse.

I wiped and shined the topside.
That really did the trick....
I was just admiring my work...
I didn't mean to 'click.'

But click, I did, and oops I found
A real absorbing site.
That I got SO way into.
I was into it all night.

Nothing's changed except my mouse
It's very, very shiny.
I guess my house will stay a mess....
While I sit here on my hiney.

Working with your Personal Style Part 3

I promised you another installation in my Personal Style series. I've been reading a book called Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forester. This is a very interesting book and I'm only partway through it. But so far, he's got some really unique and interesting ideas.

He talks about our two types of brains - the rational and reactive minds. The reactive brain is basically our human version of animal instincts. This is what allows us to react quickly when we sense danger, or when we spot an opportunity that would be helpful to us, such as a great sale item, or the last donut in the breakroom.

This mind has some advantages and some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that we may see certainly things as a threat that aren't really a threat. For instance, I don't much like exercise and my reactive brain sees it as a threat to me, even though my rational brain knows it is good for me. So there is this constant battle going on between the two minds and that is what makes it so difficult for me to exercise and lose the weight I want to.

This is why willpower doesn't usually work to help us change the habits we want to fix, such as cleaning and organizing our house because we've got this constant tug-of-war going on between the two parts of our brain. So, what's a girl to do? Well, the nice thing about the reactive brain is that it isn't very smart. So you have to think of some ways to outwit it and those are some of the strategies he talks about in the book.

One strategy would be to just bring it out into the open. When you find yourself being resistant to doing something, by avoiding it or procrastinating on starting a task, you need to call yourself on it. Realize what you are doing and take a moment to really think about it. Reiterate why this task is important to you and why it needs to be done, then think about why you might feel it would be a threat to you. Most of the time you'll find that there really isn't any serious threat to what you want to accomplish and you'll be able to talk yourself into doing it.

Another way to do it would be to kind of "sneak up on it". Tell yourself that you have no intention of starting this task, but that you want to get the materials ready just in case you might need them. For example - tell yourself that you have no intention whatsoever of doing the dishes, but you just feel like running a sink full of hot soapy water. Then tell yourself that you'll just put one pot in to soak, maybe two, but no more. Then tell yourself that it's a shame to waste that nice soapy water, so you'll put the rest of the dishes in just to soak. By then, you've probably shut down the alarm bell in your reactive mind and you can get in there and finish washing the dishes with no more resistance.

Another strategy is to acknowledge that this task is hard for you for some reason. I have a devil of a time making phone calls -to anyone and for any reason, including businesses and close family members. I just lost a close friend of the family this week and I am feeling terrible because I only managed to call her just once this year.

This is a classic example of my reactive brain seeing this action as a threat and doing everything possible to prevent me from doing it, regardless of what my rational brain is telling me about why I need to do it. One way to get around this might be to promise myself a treat of some kind every time I manage to pick up the phone. Hey it works for dogs and dolphins, why not me?

Another strategy might be to put some kind of penalty on not doing it. For instance, I tell my husband that I need to make a phone call today and then I tell him I have to pay him $1 if I haven't made the call by the end of the day. I do this with my kids sometimes. If they don't make their beds, their brother has the right to go in and make it for them and charge them a $1 fee. But you have to pick a family member who is willing to follow through on this and apply the penalty consistently if you don't do the task.

This is what Mark calls restructuring your life to support good habits. It's like putting your credit cards in the freezer. It makes it just difficult enough to use them that you likely won't bother to do it. He even suggested a new idea of setting up a credit card with a built-in "tattletale" feature. Every time you spend more than XX dollars, an E-mail is sent to your husband - or your Mom! Boy, that would sure make me think twice about overspending!

The Only 4 Things to do with Paper

By Marcia Francois

One of the most popular questions I get from blog and mailing list readers is this: How do I control all the paper?!

I understand your frustration completely because when I get lazy, that's the first area that goes out of control for me too.

The first thing you have to do is decide to make some decisions. I like using a timer because I'm naturally competitive (anyone relate?) and that inspires me to take action, and quickly too!

Before you start, gather the following items:

1. a timer
2. wastepaper basket
3. brightly coloured pen (I like a nice thick red gel pen)
4. notebook and/ or planner
5. post-its (the originals, not the cheap stuff)

Right, now you're set!


There are only four actions you're allowed to do once you've scanned each piece of paper. Don't take longer than 30 seconds to scan the page.

1. Dump it

Throw it in the bin. The more ruthless you are, the less you have to file! Win-win! If you only need one piece of information, write it down in your notebook and throw the piece of paper away. Some of you are hyperventilating at this point - that's okay ;)

2. Delegate it

If someone else has to attend to it (husband needs to phone), write the action on the paper itself or on a post-it note stuck on the page and put it in a separate pile.

3. File it

Please do yourself a favour and only put paper in this pile if you ABSOLUTELY need to reference it. Just a quick stat for you - only 20% of filed papers are ever referenced again.
Use your post-it pad for different categories. For example, when I'm sorting my paper, I use Household, Marcia, Dion and Business as my categories.

4. Do it

Here I apply the two-minute rule. If you can do it in two minutes or less, do it right there and then. When I say "do it", I mean either action it or schedule it to action later.

For example, if you're working through your papers at 10pm and need to make an appointment, you can't phone right there and then, so write it on tomorrow's to-do list. That's within two minutes and it counts.

There you have it - the only four things to do with paper. If you stick to making decisions, your paper will be beautifully organised in no time at all. Now all you have to do is keep a regular "date" with the papers.


Want to use this article in your ezine or on your blog? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb.

Marcia Francois is a time management and organising coach who empowers small business owners and other busy professionals who want to make the most of their time. You'll get simple, practical organising and time management secrets to help you work less and enjoy life more! Visit http://takechargesolutions.org for your free Organising Success Pack.