seasonal spin

Organize Christmas: Create a Christmas Planner Notebook

What's the fast-track to an organized holiday season? Create a Christmas planner notebook!

Organizing holiday preparations in a simple three-ring binder takes the household notebook concept to new holiday heights!

To create your tool for efficient holiday planning, try these pointers from sister site Organized Christmas:

As we get ready for Christmas, we’ll be making lists (and checking them a lot more than twice!), holding discussions with spouses, children and parents, and drawing up a holiday budget.

Too often, we record our plans piecemeal, consigning them to a confused clutter of scrawled envelopes, jotted notes and cryptic calendar entries—none of which make it to the shopping center with us when it’s time to buy gifts.

Organized people keep the results of their work in a central place: a Christmas planner. Complement to a household notebook, it'll track preparations for a stress-free holiday season.


Get Ready for Christmas with the Houseworks Holiday Plan

get organized for christmasLabor 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



Do It Now! Tips To Get Ready For Back-To-School

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:



Travel Tips: Get Organized For Family Travel

Summer's here and school's out: it's time to take to the road!

Summer vacation travel can be enriching, enjoyable and exciting--but only if you're organized. The family that fails to plan for summer travel can end up frazzled, frustrated and longing for the quiet comfort of home.

This year, get ready! Whether it's car trips, plane travel or close-to-home "stay-cation" picnics or camping trips, we've assembled OrganizedHome.Com's best, easiest tips to organize summer vacation travel.

Bon voyage!

What To Know Before You Go

A smooth, stress-free vacation begins well before the trip. Use these ideas to streamline vacation travel planning and preparation:



School's Out! Summer Survival for Busy Moms

summer survival for busy momsThey're here!

Tumbling from the school bus, fresh from Field Day, with papers and projects and petrified sandwiches spilling in their wake: your children. It's summertime, and the living is easy.

Yeah, right.

Summer vacation is wonderful, no doubt about it. Damp heads and wet bathing suits, backyard tents and fireflies in canning jars. "Look, Mom!" rings out a hundred times a day, from the top of the pool slide to the bug-dotted bottom of an upturned rock.

Here comes the Kool-Aid Mom! She's all sweet smile and tidy clothes, calling cheerful children from the corners of the yard with a bell-like voice and tray of sweating, jewel-toned glasses.

Then there's the second day of summer vacation.



Summer Cooking Tips: Cool Off in the Kitchen!

Who can imagine summer without summer food? Steaming corn-on-the-cob, each kernel bursting with sweet flavor. Burgers and barbecue. Ice cream sundaes. The crisp red smile of a watermelon wedge, dripping with sweet juice.

There's a darker side to summer meals. Food budgets groan under the strain of substituting quick-cook steaks and chicken breasts for thrifty stove-top casseroles. Ravenous children make the refrigerator door thump-thump-thump like a dog's tail. Catch-as-catch-can mealtimes, eaten on the run, substitute convenience for nutritional value. What's a summer cook to do?

With creative meal planning strategies, summer doesn't have to bust the food budget, toss nutrition to the winds, or reduce the family chef to a melted, quivering puddle reminiscent of the Wicked Witch of the West. Try these suggestions for simpler, saner, cooler and more nutritious summer meals:



Moving On: Tips For An Organized Move

movingEvery year, one in five American families makes a move --- and this year, it'll be your family on the road.

No doubt about it, moving can present the organizational challenge of a lifetime.

Every habit, every routine, every tiny piece of the mosaic of your life is tossed at random into a huge, cluttered van, to be shaken out and reassembled at the other end. It's a daunting task--but you can get organized and cut stress when the moving van arrives.

Moving on? Try these road-tested tips for an organized move:

Establish Move Central, and Make It Portable

Moving has more tentacles than an octopus. Between wooing The Amazing Disappearing Handyman at the old house and penetrating the layers of voice mail protecting The High-Tech Realtor at the new, you're making more calls than an old-time switchboard operator. It's easy to lose your mind along with your train of thought --- not to mention all those little business cards that will Enter Move Central.

Even if you never use a planner at home or on the job, a business planner or moving notebook is more important to a move than boxes and tape. Find one at the local office supply store. Get one with big pages, one for each day, and throw in some business card holders, zipper pouches and receipt envelopes.



Garage Sale Tips: Clear Clutter With A Yard Sale

garage saleGarage sale, tag sale, yard sale--whatever you call it, the garage or yard sale is part and parcel of the American way of life.

On sunny weekend mornings, slow-moving cars ("I brake for yard sales!") circle suburban neighborhoods as their occupants hunt baby toys and French-fry makers, auto parts and cocktail shakers.

If you're in active declutter mode, the next stop is your house! A yard sale can clear clutter and score some cash, but it helps to have a road map.

Try these tips for a successful yard sale:



Safety Checklist for Time Change Sunday

Spring forward, Fall back: Time Change Sunday is on the way!

On Sunday, March 8, Daylight Savings Time will begin in most of the United States. Setting the clock forward means it's time for a seasonal safety check!

As you circle the house, setting clocks ahead, make time for this short safety checklist. It'll see you into Spring from a safe--and organized--home:

  • Change the clocks, change the batteries. Smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors save lives ... if they're powered on by a fresh battery. Safety experts recommend replacing smoke and carbon monoxide detector batteries twice a year--so celebrate Time Change Sunday with fresh batteries all around.


New Year In The Kitchen? Clean Out The Refrigerator!

clean out refrigeratorIt's January. Standing in line at the supermarket check stand, nobody can deny that we're on the dreary downside of a new year. Tabloid headlines scream the weight-loss secrets of the stars, while traditional women's magazine covers sing siren songs of money-saving, belly-busting, speed-cleaning tips, tricks and techniques.

We ourselves? All those resolutions that looked so basic, so easy, so noble through the champagne haze of New Year's Eve have lost their rosy glow viewed in the stark light of a morning cup of coffee. With the children back to school and holiday decorations back in their attic boxes, our resolve for a better, thinner, healthier and wealthier year has once more washed up against the hard and niggling realities of daily life.

Be of good cheer! There's a tried-and-true boost for just about anybody's New Year's resolutions. [I'm talking garden-variety resolutions here: weight loss, financial prudence, better home or personal organization. If you've vowed that this is the year you read the Russians, my hat's off to you but you're on your own!]

I'm talking about cleaning the refrigerator. Spearing the Great White Whale.