What will you do with an extra hour?

Daylight Savings Time ends on November 2. If you have been looking for an extra hour to "get caught up" here's your chance. Is there a special project that you have been putting off or procrastinating on? Plan ahead of time what project you are going to work on during the extra hour of time you have.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Go through your closet or dresser and donate all of the clothing that is out of style, no longer fits, or you just don't wear.
• Knock several things off your To Do list.
• Grab a stack of old mail or piles of paper and go through it.
• Clean out the refrigerator and pantry and discard everything that has expired.
• Organize the linen closet.
• Go through that pile of magazines, cut out the special articles to read and recycle the rest.
• Go for a walk, call a friend, play a game with a special child.

What is your special project? Consider taking an hour every week, every month or just once in a while to focus on your special projects that tend to get put on the back burner. Most important of all, have a great weekend!

Laundry Systems

I received an email from a subscriber asking for some tips on setting up a laundry system for a large family. I suggest that you involved the entire family in the process. Consider their ages, but even a toddler can help sort the laundry, if you have the patience to work with them.

Give each family member their own basket; you can color code if you would like, to give each person a different color of laundry basket. Have each family member bring their own dirty clothes to the laundry room and sort them into larger bins. Each large bin is labeled with the category of clothing that you use for washing clothes - darks, colors, whites, etc. Once the basket is empty, it can be exchanged with another basket, sitting on a shelf in the laundry room that has clean folded laundry in it, waiting to be redistributed to the individual's dressing room. Once the clean clothes have been put away, the empty basket is ready to collect dirty laundry and the process repeats itself.

Each time you implement a new system for any organizing project, you want to remember that it takes time to develop new habits and your family may need to be reminded of how the process works a few times before the system moves smoothly. The key is consistency. The natural consequences are no clean clothes to wear if you haven't followed through with your part of the bargain.

Keep Breathing

I returned safely from the conference in St. Charles, Missouri and learned a lot of great information.

It was mere minutes after returning that I learned that my daughter and her fiance moved their wedding date up to March 2009 and she asked me to make her wedding dress. What an honor! This will be a very busy winter/spring for us - first the holidays are a few short weeks away, then my husband and I have a vacation planned for early February, followed by the wedding, and a combination conference and family vacation in Orlando the end of April - my first reaction was to go into panic mode. A couple of deep breathes and Ohms and I am back on track. My personal mantra is "keep breathing" and everything will be fine. A little time and focus management and it will all work out.