Woot! Yippee Do Dah! I’m so excited to be here sharing what’s on my mind with you. Today is simply blah. The sky will not stop drooling and our whole yard is officially a swamp but, still can’t bring me down. As far as I am concerned, it’s all glorious and happy rainbows and fluffy stuff. Hehe
Ok, I probably won’t hold your attention for very long if I continue with all this excitement because you will all want to turn on some music, put on sweats and dance on your bed, too! Maybe there should be ice cream, but I can’t have any so I will live vicariously through you all. Go eat ice cream. Unless it’s against your New Year’s resolution. Then don’t, or at least I won’t tell if you do. Shhhhh
Calming down now. Not really, but I will focus to the best of my abilities. Since I am here exclusively, for now to divulge large quantities of information about how to save money and spend less, I suppose I should get started. As I have told you before, I use a huge variety of ways to accomplish this. However, I think the most important thing to start with is the same way I get started here at home. It’s all about (drumroll please):
Organization! Let me just say that again. ORGANIZATION! Without being organized, I would get nothing done, like ever. Seriously. Ever! Especially because I have two children on the autism spectrum. My days have to stay scheduled or the whole house goes crazy. Kind of literally. Because I have a full-time job, kids, pets and hobbies, I must budget for “my time” accordingly. I also have to plan for times that I can turn my back on my kids and just know that mass destruction will commence. Charts, schedules, calendars and a little planning go such a long way. I am an avid coupon clipper. While I plan to tell you all about that later, little things like this must have a place and time. Too many things are out of our control. We can’t blame life for getting in the way when we are the ones who let it. When my kids were younger, organizing was harder because they were such a distraction. They were always in the way and I was always frustrated. I am a multi-tasker and like to accomplish a lot in a day. While everyone is different, I love to check off a list. My husband even sometimes just asks me to make him a list of top priorities so he can do the same. I gave up trying to plan and organize with them around because I found that I was losing my mind and overbooking some priorities. There is only one of me sadly. Although there should be like 20, because I’m pretty rad!
My first time I decided to really get organized, I tried a regular planner from a store. This did not work for me and may not work for you. Or, it might. I just found that I could never write what I needed in those tiny little spaces. That was long before Pinterest and the land of Google. Using a simple program like Word you can create your own. Or just Google templates until you find what you think will work for you. For the rest of the week I will post topics about how to become more organized, if you aren’t already. Hopefully I can help you find some ways to become even more productive and successful than you already are.
The most important thing about all my planning is that it has to coordinate. I don’t mean that my planner has to match my Calendar and so on. I mean, what goes in one has to line up with all the others. I have to leave complete instructions with dates so I don’t forget the little details sometimes. Like if my daughter has class snack day, while I am planning my calendar to remember to take her snack, I also pull out my grocery shopping list and make a little note to buy her snacks and for what day. And vice versa, my grocery shopping must go into the calendar before her school snack day. Not at all complicated until there are 3 other very loud people in the same room and you have worked for so long you can’t remember your name. Lol In addition to my planner and calendar, I keep a budget, a coupon system and a book full of schedules from around my city. I like to be able to quickly look and see who might have a “kids eat free night” if I am running around and realize I have not fed the kids and it’s bed time and we are still not home. Oops! Do you do that? Yeah, me neither!
This all might sound like a lot, but you will see as I go over it further that it really isn’t more than you already do, just organized in one place. Since I cannot do this when my kids are around, and never could, I do this when I take a break from work, or after everyone is in bed and the house is quiet and sitting in the car line at schools. I also keep a notebook next to my bed and I try to write things down as they come to mind or I will never sleep since I try to keep the idea so fresh, it keeps me awake. Then I’ll be the stale one in the morning – Yikes! I’m not a morning person to begin with so losing sleep is not an option. In my next post I will go over how to start a planner or organizer to help you gets started. Feel free to post anything you would like me to go over in the comments. Try to stay warm and dry.
The House of Xen 