Organized Home

Are you ready to cook once, eat for a month?

Once-a-month cooking. Frozen assets. OAMC. Meal assembly. Whatever you call it, cooking many meals in a single session banks home-cooked meals--and precious family time--for busy home managers.

What's not to like about freezer cooking? Economies of scale speed cooking chores. Buying in bulk saves money. Home preparation fosters better nutrition.

New options like "meal assembly franchises" help home cooks build frozen assets quickly.    More »

Labor Day weekend ahead! School bells are ringing, football fills the airwaves and September looms. Will the holidays be far behind?

Sure, you're dreaming of the perfect Christmas--then you open your eyes to reality. Looking around the house, it's hard to imagine how to cut the clutter, manage fall cleaning and prepare for Christmas all at once.

How will you bring the current state of domestic chaos into holiday readiness: clean, organized, prepared? You need a plan!

It's time to kick off the Houseworks Holiday Plan at sister site Organized Christmas!

Working week by week, we'll deep-clean, declutter, and prepare for the holiday season in small, sustainable bites.

Along the way, we'll create a personalized Christmas planner to simplify the holidays--and online HHP communities provide motivation, inspiration and fun.

The fun starts Sunday, August 30! Will you be ready?

Get The Houseworks Holiday Plan

Simplify Your Holidays With A Christmas Planner

Print Free Christmas Calendars, Checklists and Planner Pages

Get Inspired For Organized Holidays With ChristmasPlanner.com    More »

When it comes to kids and housework, the blasted terrain is familiar: a dirty house, balky children, and frazzled, frustrated parents. 

Tired parents try it all, from chore charts to screaming fits.  Canny children engage in housework sabotage, selective hearing or childish irresponsibility to duck assignments.  The noise levels--and stress levels--rise along with the stacks of dishes.

How to negotiate a peace on the issue of children and chores?  Try these family-tested strategies to calm the conflict and gain the goal:    More »

In my years as worker, mother and home manager, I have experienced a full range of life’s little organizational challenges.

I have run a business from a home shared with two tiny children and moved cross-country (and back). I've merged two cluttered households into one small city apartment, and lived for eighteen happy years with a card-carrying packrat husband.

Home schooling a child beat them all hands-down, organizationally speaking.

How do I count the clutter? The books. The papers. The biology experiments on the kitchen window. The adult-sized child sprawled on the floor, reading. The record-keeping. College admissions and testing and letters from the correspondence school.

Homeschool families, like Tolstoy's happy ones, are all alike: drowning in a sea of clutter! Whatever the organization arena--time, space, money, computer access—-homeschool families have it worse. They have more stuff, less time, more distractions, less money, more chores and less space than just about anybody else. How do you get organized for homeschool?    More »

Morning Madness! Only the pre-dinner "Arsenic Hour" comes close in the "Calgon, take me away!" category. 

Bathroom fights, soggy cereal, and the ever-present, "Mommy! I can't find my . . . !"  Getting the family out the door in the morning can make any parent want to pull the bedclothes up and hide. 

One small concept can go a long way to taming the morning beast: the family Launch Pad. Just as a spaceship must have a dedicated structure to support liftoff, so family members need a Launch Pad to stabilize them as they blast out the door.

What is a Launch Pad? It's a dedicated space for each family member:    More »

Move over, summer--a new school year is coming! 

With the start of school, families face new organization challenges. School bells ring--and so do early-morning alarm clocks. Shorter autumn days bring a hectic round of sports, activities and events, and calendars fill with cryptic notes. Can the holidays be far behind?

Get organized now for the best school year ever! Use these ideas to prepare your home and family for the busy days ahead:    More »