This month we talked about chaos in the home, family, mind, and career. Today’s lives are hectic – overscheduled and overwhelming. I hope some of my ideas and advice help bring a little peace and serenity into your soul.

Next month we’ll get back on the career track with tips on being a successful Internet marketer. We’ll discuss how to get started, what type of setup you’ll need and, most important, how to rise to the top of the Internet marketing game.

Summer started this month (here in the U.S.) and I hope you are all enjoying a relaxing season. Don’t forget to try and schedule time for a vacation (or staycation), forget about work, and kick back for awhile.

1. Routines – Nothing calms the storm better that sticking to a well thought out routine.
2. Take a Timeout – Take 15 minutes for yourself and unwind. Have a cup of herbal tea or a glass of water. The calmer you are the better you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way.
3. Aromatherapy – Light some soothing scented candles to help calm the atmosphere and the spirit. Try lavender, peppermint, or vanilla.
4. The number 10 – Count to it whenever you start to feel as if one of those many balls in the air starts to fall. Also helpful when your fuse is short and you’re about to explode.
5. Delegate – Ask for help and pass of tasks that can easily be done by someone else.
6. Write it down- Avoid the stress of forgotten appointments and trying to remember everything. Buy a planner or a calendar and write it down instead.
7. De-clutter – Lets face it clutter causes chaos. Get rid of anything you don’t “know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” as William Morris said. Then feel the peace fall over your house.
8. Soft music- Key word is soft. Blaring Aerosmith isn’t going to calm anyone down. Neither will the Wiggles greatest hits. Just pick something that is pretty and will sort of melt into the background.
9. Don’t procrastinate – Putting things off add stress to your life while undone tasks add chaos to your home.
10. Don’t sweat the small stuff – Don’t let the little upsets in life bother you. I promise you, it’s not the end of the world.
11. Be imperfect – Set your standards a bit lower. If the dishes don’t get washed until tomorrow morning, if a bed doesn’t get made or the lawn doesn’t get mowed, the earth will continue to revolve around the sun.
12. Don’t multitask – You may think you’re being efficient but what you’re really doing is trying to take a shortcut. Give your full attention to whatever you’re doing – especially when parenting.
13. Have a vision – Keep a picture in your mind of what direction you want your career, family, health, etc to go. Keep that picture of what your ideal life is. Have goals and work towards them.

Three years ago I happened upon a website about cleaning and managing the chaos in my life. I didn’t realize I was about to step into a different world. A world of Flylady. Flylady.net is more than just a housecleaning and home management website. Flylady creates a family (of Flybabies) from the women who join her Flygroup. In this family you learn how to feel unconditional acceptance. We’re talking about a group of people (mostly women) who have all felt the embarrassment of a cluttered and dirty house and has learned that it doesn’t make you a bad person.

Flylady has her own language as well as her own innovative way to keep you like in order. My favorite “Flyladyism” was CHAOS = ‘Can’t have anyone over syndrome’ which was the state of my home quite often. This acronym can also apply to self-esteem – if you can’t love yourself, you can’t truly love anyone else either. Also if you’ve ever had a weight problem, you know that extra pounds don’t make you feel like inviting someone in for a night of intimacy.

In Flylady’s world, housework is home blessings while sayings like “You’re never behind, jump in where you are.” give you a wonderful sense of acceptance. Even if your house isn’t a mess and you don’t have a problem with clutter, Flylady can give you advice on how to make your life run even smoother. She covers everything from dinnertime to teaching children how to clean up their rooms.

If you would like to learn more…check out my awesome Squidoo lens on Flylady

As you get older and your family gets larger the amount of paperwork necessary to keep your life in order grows from a molehill into a mountain. Depending on how disorganized you are, your paperwork might be a literal mountain.
So what is the best way to keep your household records organized? Whatever way works for your and you can maintain.
Start by keeping vital records like marriage and birth certificates, passports, copies of social security cards, driver’s licenses, insurance policies, bank account information and household inventory in a fireproof, waterproof safe-box. These can be pricey but believe me when I say that not protecting these documents can be much more expensive.
Next you’ll want to get a small two drawer file cabinet or one of those racks that hold hanging files along with a bunch of file folders. Then you’ll want to label a folder for each category that applies to your household. Some label ideas are:
Financial (Payroll information, bank statements, investment statements, etc.)
Tax Time (Receipts, W2s, W9s, etc.)
Medical (School forms, prescription lists, allergies, etc.)
Insurance (policies, inventory of valuables, claims, permits, etc.)
School (report cards, permission slips, school medical forms, school handbooks and contact information, etc.)

Add any other labels that apply to your home. Use as many labelled folders as you need to keep things in order. A piece of advice, though, your should keep household files separate from business files.

From here on every time you set your hands on a piece of paper it should be immediately obvious where it belongs. It either goes into a to-do folder, a hanging file with the appropriate label or the trash as junk mail.
No more paper clutter.
No more paper chaos.

Sure, life is messy but that doesn’t mean your house has to be. We all have our “non-collectible collections” those large groups of items we keep adding to even though they’re not worth much to anyone but us. For me it’s books, magazine articles, and information printed off the Internet. As time goes on and clutter builds up, every drawer, closet, corner and flat surface in your home becomes affected.

And the more clutter, the more chaos. You can’t find bills when they need to be paid, movies and library books when they need to be returned, or a clean spot to do crafts or play games as a family.

Getting rid of clutter (if it isn’t a major issue and you’re not a packrat) doesn’t have to be an enormous task or require whole weekends of work.

Depending on how bad the clutter is, divide your home into “zones” and “hot spots” that seem to attract clutter in your home. In my house, I have zones like; my daughter’s toy corner, my home office desk, and my hallway closet. Hot spots at my house include the top of our entertainment center and the top of our microwave. Do you know what the zones and hot spots in your home are? Good.

First, grab a trash bag and spend fifteen minutes walking from room to room, throwing away anything that is obviously garbage. Junk mail, papers, old magazines, and empty cartons for example.

Now that that’s done, everyday commit to clearing out one zone or hot spot of anything that doesn’t belong there or that you don’t want there. As tough as it may be, don’t keep things just because they were gifts and you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Don’t keep things that don’t belong to you. Call the owners of the items and give then a few days or a week to pick up their things or they’ll be donated.

As you’re going through each zone or hot spot, keep three boxes or bags with you. One is for trash, one for donation or selling and one is for keeping but not where it was – where it belongs instead. If you keep doing a little each day, before you know it your clutter will be under control.

Unfortunately the work doesn’t end there. You have to set up some rules about what is allowed to come in and where things need to go.

For some really good tips, check out “It’s All Too Much” by Peter Walsh of the hit show Clean Sweep

Nothing does more to control the chaos in a household than a good meal plan. Never again will you panic at 4:00pm that you have no idea what to make for dinner. Meat? Needs to be defrosted. Pasta? Maybe but you had that a couple of days ago. In the end you decide to boil some hot dogs and nuke some baked beans. Or worse, you order out for a pizza. And in the back of your mind you promise that you’ll make a healthy dinner tomorrow.

Or have you ever stared into your refrigerator confused about how to make a meal out of what you see? Is ketchup, bologna, and cantaloupe a meal? Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but I’m not exaggerating the good effect a meal plan can have on your family and sanity.

The best way to start a meal plan is by writing down 10-14 dinner recipes that your family enjoys. Avoid trying to blindly follow one of those pre-made dinner plans. You end up with recipes you’re not comfortable making and that your family doesn’t really like eating.

From those recipes you’re chosen, write up a month’s worth (30 days) of dinners, sides and dishes too. If you have 10 meals, your family will eat the same thing three times a month. If you have 14, they’ll only be repeating menus twice a month. Once you have a month of meals you can break it down into a week at a time (or however often you go shopping) to make it easier to write up your grocery list.

You’ll also find that by knowing ahead of time what you’ll be eating you’ll be able to buy bulk of some things ahead of time and you’ll know how much you need when something goes on sale.

By starting with a plan, you are in a better position to b-chaos your dinner times. Maybe you can make double portions and freeze the leftover so you can have nights off and a healthy home-cooked meal for your family. You could even prepare somethings ahead of time and make mealtimes easier that way. Before you know it, you won’t even remember what it was like to not have a plan for dinner.

Between the last post and last month’s theme, I’ve gone over taking time for yourself and how important it is to fit this “me” time into your day.

Today I want to talk about those individual minutes and where they can come from.

If you don’t know, I am married with three kids, own a home that can only be described as a “Handyman’s Special” ad my husband is not a handyman. I run an Internet marketing,  blogging, and freelance writing business while also running a part time Mommy’s Helper (babysitting) service three days a week. Furthermore I am actively involved in local politics and the education system. Basically I have a lot of opinions and I like to tell them to people. With all this going on you’d think I have no time to myself all all.

Not true.

I’ve just learned to take my time where I can get it. I enjoy a cup of tea or iced tea (depending on the season) while dinner is cooking. I spend a little longer in the shower. I’ll read a couple of chapters while I send my kids out to play. Take advantage of every moment of your life. Think of it as a bank account that has $86,400 in it every morning but by the end of the day will be empty no matter what you do with it. Wouldn’t you try to get the greatest quality for your money?

Well it’s the same with time. You get 86,400 seconds in every day and they will be wasted by the end of the day unless you do something productive, creative, meaningful with it. After all, if you waste it – it’s never coming back.

Much of the chaos in our lives is out of our control – house needs to be clean, work done, kids gotten ready for school, appointments kept, and on, and on…

But some of the chaos we bring onto ourselves by over-obligating ourselves when we really shouldn’t. Some of us are people pleasers who never want to feel that we’ve let someone down while the rest of use are over achievers who want to do it all just for the experience and satisfaction.

For all of use who take on too much it is essential that we learn to say no when we need to. But first we need to realize when we need to.

If you don’t have at least 90 minutes to yourself each day and if you feel frazzled and rushed at least once everyday, you probably don’t say “no” often enough. Saying no is essential to our mental and physical health. But it is so hard to do when we want to do and be everything for everyone.

If willpower is not a problem for you, learning to say no may be as easy as limiting yourself to a certain number of activities. Perhaps you promise yourself to commit to more than two social events at one time.

If saying no is impossible or nearly impossible for you, you may have to resort to scheduling your time strictly and including time for yourself and time for relaxing. Stick to this schedule without fail. Do not permit anything to get in the way of time to destress.

It was once explained to me that if you are empty from giving to much eventually you’ll be unable to give anything. Taking care of yourself – good care, no great care – is the best thing you can do for the people you care for.

If you really need to crawl into it, start by saying no just one extra time a week to the duty or chore that you dislike the most and that you can delegate to someone else. Above all, until saying no when you want to or need to is a natural action to you, remember the mantra “Just Say No”

I make no secret of the fact that I love my to-do lists. But as with any list of activities it is important to not let the list run your life. Sometimes, somethings will not get done.

I usually write up a to-do list for work a month at a time and set deadlines for each item throughout the month. This allows me to know what my next priority should be without feeling too much pressure. Yeah, usually one or two things won’t get completely finished so I put them on the next month’s list. If I find myself transferring the same item month after month, I question my dedication to the activity and whether it really needs to be done.

Daily I follow a schedule rather than a to-do list but I do have a running to-do projects list for around the house. Usually I won’t write a list for a day unless I have a bunch of errands to run and want to make sure I remember all of them.

Okay, I’m a list junkie. Maybe you are too. I do plan to try a to-do list according to an idea that I recently read. Basically you write a to-do list for the day, every time something comes up that you need to do you just add it to the list. Work from the top completing things and crossing off as you go. The great thing is that anything you don’t finish, you just put at the top of your to-do for the next day. A running to-do list is great for people who get paralyzed by pressure and easily feel like a failure if something doesn’t get it done. Whatever method works for you, you should definitely being using to-dos – just don’t let them control you.

Sticking to routines and schedules has always been a challenge for me. It seems the more I try to stick to a schedule, the worse it gets thrown off track. I mean how do you schedule a phone call from your mother that unexpectedly lasts an hour? I don’t understand how anyone with children, family and friends, a house and a business can really stick to a strict schedule.

So I decided that I would set up a schedule and as long as approximately the amount of time scheduled was spent on each activity, I was happy.

For example, I have two chucks of time set aside for writing. If something comes up that cuts into that time, I’ll try to carve a little time out of somewhere else that I may have over-scheduled for. For instance, remember that phone call from my mom? Well if that phone call comes during my scheduled housecleaning time, I’ll try to squeeze 20 minutes out of work time or I’ll cut back on some other social activity later on. Of course I could have just cut my mother’s call short and did housework but a call from my mom takes precedence over vacuuming my carpet any day.

Schedules and routines are all about prioritizing you time. So put priorities first.