School is winding down in most of the country right now and with that all the school supplies and paper come home!
This Half Hour Organizing Project will show you what to do with the extra school supplies and how to create a school paper container. When school starts again in the fall, be sure to watch this Going Back to School segment of Organize Your Life!
photo cred www.threadsforteens.org
I get asked lots of questions about how to get organized, what are the best organizing tips, and how to organize certain rooms or spaces. With all these questions lining up, I’m launching Tiny Tip Thursday! Twice a month I will answer one reader’s questions on a video!
Today’s question came from Ruth and she asked about tips for moving. Here are my Tiny Tips for Ruth!
Before you can organize you must declutter. You know this already, but it’s the number one sticking point for folks when they are trying to get organized by themselves. So, how do you start to declutter? What are the steps you need to do to declutter and organize?
Well, good news for you is that I can answer that! Let’s get started!
1. Pick one room or one space to work on. Do not move around trying to organize more than one room at a time because you will get overwhelmed and not get very much accomplished.
2. Starting with this one space, begin to sort everything out into categories. In other words, begin to group things together; stationary in one pile, shoes in another pile, papers in another, and so on.
Do not do anything else until you have finished this step. Sometimes this can take days, especially if the room is super cluttered.
3. Once all the sorting is done (and I mean ALL the sorting), you can start to decide what you want to donate, keep, or trash. Deciding is the hard part, so to help you out, I suggest you use the Value Questions below when making decisions.
Remember that the whole point of decluttering is to reduce the amount of stuff, so be very honest with yourself about you do and do not need!
I am not going to tell you how to organize in this post because that is the next step AFTER you have decluttered, purged, and made decisions about what goes and what stays.
While you are making decisions about stuff keep using the Value Questions to determine how valuable something is in your life. If it’s not loved or needed, it pretty much should go away. Sound callous? Maybe, but in order create change in your home, you must get rid of stuff.
Declutter a space until what is left is everything you have decided is either loved, needed, or adds value to your life. Clients will often ask me if there is a “maybe pile” and I always say, NO! It’s either yes or no. Keep or get rid of. No gray area. No maybes.
3. The final step in decluttering is to have donations picked up or taken away and trash hauled out of the space. When this is done, you can finally start making plans to organize!
NBCnews.com
It’s hard not to think about, let alone talk about, anything but the Oklahoma tragedies.
I have talked a lot about preparing for emergencies on this site, but nothing, nothing, nothing could ever prepare you for a tornado like this. It’s easy to feel helpless, but there are so many ways you can help. Here are 3 ways that you can help today in Oklahoma.
Always my first choice when it comes to donations of any kind. USA Today published a fantastic post about ways to help.
Donate online or text STORM to 80888 to contribute $10 to the Salvation Army’s relief efforts or make a donation by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY. If you’re sending a check make sure you put the words “Oklahoma Tornado Relief” on the check, and mail it to: The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 12600, Oklahoma City, OK., 73157.
2. Red Cross-
We all know them. They always respond to the worst tragedies and they are already on the scene in Moore, OK.
The organization says in the immediate aftermath, the best way to help is to donate at RedCross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999.
The world’s leading independent organization for children, ” Save the Children USA helped more than 78 million children in 2012, surpassing our goal of reaching 74 million children annually.”
They are taking donations and have already mobilized a response team to Moore, OK. Here’s a tweet from Melissa Joan Hart (yes, the actress)
You can also Txt TWISTER to 20222 to donate $10 to Save the Children to help us respond to tornado in Oklahoma & other US disasters. Std rates apply.
This video brought me to a full-out cry this morning because this little lady had a plan all these years and it worked. Watch until the end because you will cry, but it’s a story of hope. Let’s all do what we can.
“Mom, why do people kiss?”
Yes, people. These are the questions I’m fielding from my teens these days, so I thought it’s time you finally knew how I had “The Talk” with my daughter. This is the for-real S-E-X talk. No embellishment added (OK, maybe some).
Some of you know this story, but if you don’t, I’m going to warn you. If you’re squeamish, stop reading now. If you don’t like to call body parts by their medical name, stop reading. And, if you are already offended that I am writing about this on this site, you should really stop reading now!
One cold November night when my daughter was in 5th grade, she asked me to come into her room because she didn’t understand something she just read.
Pause here for a minute. I had just found her a book series that she loved and had plowed through the first book in a week.
It was a cute series about a girl who has to stand up for her faith when her friends were doing the opposite of her. So, in this second book, I expected the same gentle outcome.
“Show me what you mean, Mallory.”
She points. I read, ”Then he slipped a drug into my cola and raped me.”
{WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? Are you kidding me?]
“Why is she saying this?”, I ask
“Because she is telling her friends her testimony about how she became a Christian.”
{Thinking quick on my feet here}
“OK. Do you know about sex?”
“Mommy! Yes.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Mommy! No. I can’t talk about it.”
“Well, I need to know what you already know so I can tell you what she means.” Nothing. Only a head shake.
So, I do the only logical thing to do. I go get Dave’s giant Anatomy & Physiology book from his anesthesia school days and sit on her bed. Opening it up the cross section of the penis, I begin to explain the anatomical function and structure of this body part.
She is audibly shocked.
Then I to flip to cross section of the female pelvis. ”A girl has 3 holes. This one you pee out of, this one you poop out of, and this one is where a baby comes out.” Oh yeah, believe me, that was enough to unleash a host of questions and ah-ha moments from her.
“When you’re married, God designed it for a man and woman to have sex (flip to cross-section of penis) and the man puts this penis in (flip to cross section of pelvis) the vagina. It’s awesome and wonderful, when you’re married. And that’s also how babies are made.”
Words like gross, yuck, and never came out of her mouth.
“But sometimes a man wants sex and the woman says no, but he forces her or holds her down or threatens her and does it anyway. That’s called rape.”
“But mommy, why would he do that?”
“Because he is mean and selfish and doesn’t care about her”
“That’s really mean and awful”
As I closed the anatomy book, I casually ask, “Do you have any questions?”
“Nope
“Alright then, good night”
And that, my friends, is how I had “The Talk” with my 10 year-old-daughter. Totally unplanned and not what I would recommend, but because it happened that way we have always freely talked about relationships, dating, and body parts. I did not have this same talk with my son and instead left it to Dave to explain it from a guy perspective, but don’t be shocked to know that I have had to field other, shall we say, boy-part questions.
When the kissing question came up today it seemed so benign. So innocent. Maybe that one will be easier to explain.
