Spring Cleaning

OK folks, it's about that time of year - time for Spring Cleaning! However, the kind of Spring Cleaning I'm talking about is a little different. This is an exercise from the Fishful Thinking institute (the people who belong to that cute little fishy on my sidebar). This type of Spring Cleaning is a way to help both you and your kids eliminate mental clutter, negative thinking, and limiting beliefs. I know this exercise is designed for the kiddos, but especially if you have house cleaning issues, you have a lot of shame and guilt in your life and it isn't doing you any good. Try this exercise yourself to release those negative thoughts and replace them with positive intentions and a plan of action to make a few simple and small changes that will make your life so much better.

Fishful Thinking
Week 2 Activity: Spring Cleaning – Bag It Up!

Ingredient: Optimism, Emotional Awareness

Ages: Grade 2 to Grade 5

From Dr. Reivich:
It is finally here, springtime! It’s a time of renewal, rejuvenation and — spring cleaning! Our desire to start fresh each spring doesn’t have to stop with cleaning out drawers and bagging up all the hand-me-downs. This can also be a good time to take stock of our mental clutter, and help ourselves and our children to “bag up” any old perceptions that no longer fit.

One of my sons found the start of this school year challenging and would wake up in the morning with thoughts like; “I don’t like my class,” “I won’t do well,” “I can’t do the homework,” swirling around in his head. It was a rough start. But rough starts don’t have to mean rough middles or endings. Now, he’s enjoying school, finding the homework to be manageable and liking his class.

I can help my son develop confidence by talking with him about “those old beliefs that just don’t fit anymore.” In doing this, I’m helping him to take notice of how he’s grown—not just physically, but mentally, too!


How to Bag It Up!
Help your child to take stock of the mental clutter. Start by sharing an example of a negative belief that you want to get rid of. Write the belief on a slip of paper and then put it into a bag labeled “giveaways.” (If your child will find the “bagging up” part silly, simply talk through examples of beliefs that are no longer accurate.) After you’ve given your example, ask your child to come up with examples of his or her own. These questions will help:

• Is there something that you used to think about yourself that no longer seems to fit? Examples: “I’m not smart enough” or “I can’t do that.” Can you give examples of how that old belief no longer fits?

• Can you think of a negative thought you have that gets in your way or makes you feel down about yourself? Examples: “Nobody likes me” or “I stink at sports.” What is some evidence that proves that belief is not true?

• What is one thing you are doing now that you weren’t able to do last year?

Getting rid of things that no longer “fit” creates extra space, and that feels good. This spring set a goal of cleaning out negative beliefs, and filling up that extra space with Optimism!


Article for Mom:
Live Long and Smile; Keep Smiling, Be Healthy (Natural Life magazine)
According to a recent study, maintaining an optimistic perspective throughout your daily life can have a beneficial effect on your physical health. In fact, positive thinking may just help you to live longer!

Legal stuff - I am a Mom-bassador for the Fishful Thinking website and as such, I am eligible for prizes and incentives based on my activities and the traffic I generate to the site. Please contact me if you are interested in becoming a Mom-bassador too.

The Clutter Game

Let’s play a game. Let’s pretend that over the course of the next month, you have to actually use everything that is currently in your house. You have to wear every piece of clothing, eat off of every dish, use every towel and sheet, and read or watch every single book or movie!

That’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it? But even if you stretched it out to a year, what percentage of your “stuff” do you think you would use? I would think 50% would be a pretty generous estimate. If the statistics folks are right, it’s probably closer to 20%. That means that 50% to 80% of the stuff in your house is living there absolutely rent free, all year long! Because when you think about it, that is how possessions earn their keep, by providing us with comfort and convenience and by serving some useful purpose. But if you’ve got a whole house full of “freeloaders” who aren’t pulling their weight, they are costing you money.

You have to own and maintain a larger house with more and more storage space to keep them in. Some people even rent additional storage spaces because they’ve outgrown their houses. You have to buy boxes and baskets and bins to store it all away and keep it out of sight. I’m hoping you do anyway. If not, then you have the emotional cost of having all this stuff lying around and taking away your peace of mind.

And how much time do you spend messing around with it? I just spent almost a whole weekend reorganizing all my pictures. That was OK with me because those pictures have a lot of meaning for me and now I won’t have to do that for probably another 5 years, but how often have you spent a whole Saturday or a whole weekend cleaning out the garage or doing the “stash and dash” for company? That’s a lot of time and effort this stuff is costing you.

Then there’s the energy drain. There are some things that really give you joy and bring back fond memories for you, but a lot of excess stuff just acts as a drain on your spirit and just makes you feel depressed and guilty for letting it pile up so much. And you feel so embarrassed when someone drops by and your house is all messy and disorganized with your” freeloaders” taking up every spare inch. Not to mention the conflicts with your children, spouse, or mother! More than one marriage has ended because of conflicts between over messy homes.

Wow, I’ll bet you’re really looking at your freeloaders with new eyes, aren’t you? Let’s do one more fun game. Mentally estimate what percentage of your house is filled with unused “treasures” – everything from old broken toys, clothes that don’t fit, stuff hiding out in the garage, books you aren’t ever going to read, etc. Be honest now. Now mentally pack it in boxes and stack it up in one (or two) rooms of your home. Estimate what percentage of your square footage that would represent. Let’s say it’s 10%. If your house payment is $1500, you are paying $150 a month to keep all that clutter! If you’re not getting $150 worth of joy out of it, I suggest you start sending that stuff out into the world to go freeload off of someone else!

Clean up Music

I read a good tip this week - I forget which blog I saw it on, but I thought it was great. Not only does upbeat music boost your mood and get you in the right frame of mind to want to do your cleaning, but it also can be used as a sort of a clue to your family that it's clean-up time.

If you always play the same artist or the same genre of music when you do your cleaning, your family will start to build a subconscious association with that music and when they hear it, they will be more likely to get up off the couch and pitch in with the work.

Flylady has a whole CD of songs that have been put together just for cleaning. You might want to pop over to her website and check it out. My favorites are the Pointer Sisters or the score from Dreamgirls.

PS: Here's a quick tip from my Grocery Tips for Smart Shoppers. Bring your Ipod with you when you go grocery shopping. The stores play that draggy elevator music so you'll shop slower and buy more stuff. Listen to your own upbeat music and keep your own pace!

Fishful Thinking

Maybe you noticed a new little goody on my sidebar there. I just signed up as a Mom-bassador with a new website called Fishful Thinking. It's sponsored by Pepperidge Farm who are the goldfish cracker people and it's all about optimism and using positive thinking to raise our children.

I know this is a blog about cleaning and organizing, but I think you need to have a certain amount of optimism to be able to make the kinds of changes we are trying to accomplish. We are definitely trying to make positive changes and improvements to our lives and our homes and I think a positive attitude can be a big help with that. Plus, I think most of us have kids as well and this is a great resource for raising kids. There are a ton of great articles, ideas and quizzes on there, plus there is a whole kid's section of the website that has games and activities for your kids to play.

Go ahead and click on the little fishy over there to go and check out the site. I think you'll really enjoy it.

Photo Storage and Organization

My husband and son are at a father-son campout this weekend, so I just devoted my entire day - literally about 10 hours straight to organizing our photos. Now normally, I wouldn't advise a client to tackle such a large and time-consuming project. But I know myself and my schedule and believe me, large blocks of spare time are a pretty rare thing in my life. And I also know that with a semi-unpleasant job like this, my best bet is to do it in one large chunk because otherwise I can let a project like this drag out for weeks.

In my house, photos and other personal mementos are probably my largest source of clutter. I'm pretty sentimental and over the years I have amassed a pretty extensive collection of "stuff". Not only pictures, but craft items my mother made for me and my children, clothes that have particular significance, birth announcements and certificates for variance achievements, report cards, etc.

It's a LOT of stuff and it takes up a fair amount of space in my house. But because a lot of it has meaning to me, I am willing to forgo other types of clutter to make room for it. I have it all in a large cedar chest that my mother bought me when I was in college and I have three large Rubbermaid tubs that fit neatly into the closets in several rooms. So, even though it is technically clutter, it is fairly neat and pretty organized clutter.

However, I have decided to take it a step further. I like to scrapbook and I am on the verge of digging into digital scrapbooking, so I need my pictures converted to digital format for scrapbooking. Plus I am nervous something could happen to ruin all these special memories for me, so I have found a place that converts them to digital images on CD. It's not a bad deal. You send them a box of approximately 1,000 photos, sorted by size and organized the way you want them, and for $50 they scan them and send them back to you on CD. The place is called Scanmyphotos.com and they're based in Irvine, CA. That's important because some of these places send your pictures off to India or China for scanning and that makes me nervous.

Anyway, that sounded like a pretty good option at about 9:00 this morning. The problem is that I think I've got a lot more than 1,000 photos. I haven't counted yet, but I'll bet it's in the neighborhood of 5,000! Yikes! I don't know if I'm up for spending that kind of money to get all those pictures scanned. We'll see when I'm all done and have a chance to count the photos. I may have to pick and choose and only scan my most favorite ones. Plus I'm not sure what to do with them once they're scanned. 1,000 photos is a lot more than my poor computer can handle. I'd have to find some kind of an on-line picture storing and organizing place. Sounds like I need a bit more research.

But in the meantime, I am definitely accomplishing something. I got all of our oldest pictures out of those old-style magnetic albums that were ruining them. That was a heck of a job right there, I'll tell you! I've also gotten all the old pictures out of their individual envelopes and gotten them all sorted by size if I do decide to scan them. And I've weeded out all the negatives and thrown away all the paper envelopes that were taking up a lot of room. Yes, I hear you gasp, but I know perfectly well that I'd never go back and go to all the trouble of figuring out negatives to get reprints of anything made from them. And besides, the last thing I need is MORE pictures, so I felt comfortable in decluttering them. Duplicates too! Lord in heaven, who ever came up with that particular marketing scheme?

I've also made some progress in getting some of the larger stuff organized - pictures in larger frames, report cards, envelopes of the kid's school pictures. I'm hoping that by the time I'm done, I may be able to eliminate one of the Rubbermaid tubs. Then I just need to figure out what to do with the actual pictures. I'm torn between keeping them in those shoebox-style photo boxes, or putting them into large photo albums, the kind with slip-in sleeves. The boxes hold more, but they're easier to use for scrapbooking when you can see them all laid out in the flat albums.

This is one instance where I could use some good advice. What great strategies to you have for keeping track of your pictures and keeping them organized?

I'm participating in the Photo Storage challenge over at Organizing Junkie. Click the link to pop over and find more ideas on photo storage.

Handy Tip for Transitioning Seasonal Clothes

You guys know that I always share great tips with you when I run across them. Here is a great solution I found on a new blog I've found called MeckMom.com. I think this is brilliant and it works great for both kid's clothes and your own clothes and fits in very nicely with my active/inactive storage concept, so click HERE to pop over and see. Be sure and leave MeckMom a nice comment for sharing such a lovely tip with us.

Organizing Your Kids - Part 2

As the mom of two ADHD kids, I've had to learn to think on my feet when it comes to getting them moving in the morning. When Matt was younger, mornings used to be my daily nightmare. It was mostly about herding him around, yelling at him, and raising my blood pressure thinking he was going to be late for school every single day. Needless to say, it caused both of us to start our day off on totally the wrong foot.

After some trial and error and reading a number of good books, I decided to revamp our whole morning routine. It worked wonders with Matt and I have been able to carry that same strategy along with Blake. Now our mornings are usually pretty great - well, probably 90% of the time and that ain't too bad!

Here are some of the fixes I put in place.

- Minimize distractions. No cartoons, video games, or even radio, ever. ADHD kids just cannot split their focus between two different activities and really neither can I. Whenever the TV is on, it's like a magnet and it draws everyone in the house right to it, even if there's nothing interesting on. If I find him drawn to books or toys in his room, I will even have him get dressed in a bathroom or the laundry room where there aren't any distractions clamoring for his attention.
- Set a wake up time and stick to it. This just makes it easier on your body if it knows you have to get up at a specific time. For Blake it is 6:50 (his choice). Since he goes to bed at 9:00 most nights, that gives him enough sleep to function and he likes getting up that early on weekends to watch cartoons. In fact, he insists on it when I would prefer to have him sleep in a bit later, but he's one of those morning kids.
- This also makes it easy to set benchmark times. For instance, they should be dressed by ___ time, lunch made by ___ time, and ready to go out the door by ___ time. Sometimes it helps to have an extra alarm clock in the kitchen to give them a warning 20-30 minutes before they have to leave. Then they know if they are running behind. (I do this for myself sometimes too!)
- Make kids responsible for getting themselves up in the morning. If you make yourself responsible for waking them up, then you get into the "sneaking back into bed" game and that is just no fun. It just turns into a power struggle and a frustration. Even a six year old can work an alarm clock and they like the feeling of responsibility it gives them.
- If you have a kid who is hard to wake up, get an alarm clock with a very loud alarm and put it across the room from him. If nothing else, "the call of nature" should get to him once he is up and moving around. That's why you put the alarm clear across the room. (For Matt, I got him a "Clocky" which is an alarm clock on wheels. If he doesn't shut it off, it jumps off his dresser and runs around the room beeping like mad - drives the cats absolutely crazy!)
- As a last resort, use a squirt gun. He might get mad, but he will realize you mean business about getting his butt out of bed in the morning. Or if you don't want to use the tough love approach, offer hot chocolate or some other treat on the mornings he is successful in getting himself up at the appointed time. It may take a while, but it's important that kids learn to take responsibility for themselves.
- Get your morning routine set in stone. That is the only way these kids can remember to do everything they need to do is if they do exactly the same things every morning in exactly the same order. Here is our routine:
- Get up 6:50
- Make bed
- Get dressed
- Brush teeth and comb hair (All by 7:15)
- Make lunch
- Get backpack ready - by 7:30
- Eat breakfast
- Then there is usually some extra time to finish up homework, do extra reading, practice the piano, or even watch a little TV (as a special treat) before the carpool comes to pick him up.

Yes, I can hear you now, he's brushing his teeth first and then eating his breakfast, instead of vice versa. However, having the breakfast last on the list is absolutely the KEY to the whole thing. That way if he does have a rough morning, I can toss him a piece of toast and shoo him out the door. Obviously, I'm not going to make him go hungry, but if he's a little bit hungry by lunchtime, that's probably a good motivator for him to be better organized the next day.

This way, he suffers for his lack of focus and not me, because I'm not frantically running around trying to find shoes and backpacks and gloves at the last minute. Instead, he's the crazy guy running around trying to grab a bite to eat with the pressure of the carpool honking in the driveway. That's a very good natural consequence and it works very well as a motivator.