This can be a real problem. Do you feel angry and frustrated and even desperate? You may even be considering divorce because you feel so unable to live with a person who makes constant messes and can’t even see them. Then you get criticized for being critical, etc. Here are some things that may help your situation… First of all, even though you have told… Read More »Are You a Neatnik Married to a Slob?
Dishwashers don’t really do the dishes for you, as everyone imagines. If you have a dishwasher, you have to load it – and everyone in the family seems to have a different idea of the correct way of doing that – and unload it – and everyone in the family plays musical chairs with that job! For some reason, unloading the dishwasher is a universally… Read More »A Peaceful House – Keeping Up With the Dishes
Keeping up with the laundry is much like keeping up with the dishes. There is a point when the laundry is “done”, but it doesn’t stay “done”. Also, there is a lot of conflicting information out there about how to do laundry. Should you wash everything in cold? Should you wait to do laundry until you have a full load? Should you put everything in… Read More »A Peaceful House – Keeping Up With the Laundry
In order to follow this simple system, you will need to do battle with your perfectionism. You will have to give up the notion of “doing it right”, and just do it. When it has to be perfect and sterilized and magazine ready, that adds a lot of pressure to the mix, and most people put things off until they can be done “correctly”. Then… Read More »A Simple Way to Clean House
Clutter and housecleaning can be a major source of stress! Stress causes and worsens illness. Peace in our homes radiates out into our relationships, and our health. So, I’m going to spend some time discussing some practical issues. Let’s start with the entry of the home. Whatever you have to work with, your entry should say “Welcome home!”—not, “You’ve got so much work to do… Read More »A Peaceful House – The Entry
If piles of paper are spilling onto the floor from every horizontal surface of your house, if you have boxes of paper stashed in the back of your closet and in your garage, you are not alone. However, it’s probably making you feel overwhelmed, anxious, and even depressed. Here’s what to do when your paper has gotten way out of control. Believe it can be… Read More »Are You Overwhelmed by Paper?
Many of us are feeling overwhelmed by our houses, our schedules, and our lives. We are not living with joy; we are struggling just to get through the day, only to collapse exhausted at night, and get up the next day to start the whole horrible process again. We are living in chaos! Here are three principles to help us as we try to get… Read More »3 Basic Principles to Help You Keep Your House (and Life) Running Smoothly
Without even knowing you, I bet that a lot of your problems could be handled by putting systems into place. Let me explain. Let’s say that your house is in chaos. The grandparents are coming to visit; you spend 3 days cleaning and getting ready. You yell at your spouse and children to help you. You are completely exhausted when the grandparents finally arrive and… Read More »Is Everything Falling Apart?
If the idea of letting paramedics into your overwhelmingly cluttered home in case of a life or death emergency would cause you to pause just for a moment and wonder whether it might be better just to die, you are not alone. What to do? I’ll get to that in a bit. First, I want to tell you what NOT to do. Don’t stop… Read More »What NOT to do When You Are Overwhelmed by Clutter
Clutter is a powerful source of stress, anxiety and depression. It causes problems with our relationships and with our physical and mental health. And yet it is so prevalent in our society. It’s interesting to look up the definition of “clutter”. And, of course, we all have our own definition. (One person’s clutter is another person’s happy place.) One of the issues with clutter… Read More »Are You Drowning in Clutter?