Tips From The Cleaning Queen
January 21, 2007 by Karen Weideman
Filed under cleaning, time management
Author Emilie Barnes admits to being a born organizer. She and her husband, Bob, are the founders of More Hours in My Day time-management seminars. Emilie has recently published her 70th book, 500 Time-Saving Hints for Every Woman. Here are some things that she shares:
1. The 80/20 Rule – Use this rule when determining priorities. There are not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything you would like to accomplish. Instead, you should be concerned with accomplishing the top 20 percent. If you have a list of 10 items, instead of trying to get all 10 things done that day, concentrate on the top 2 most important. Concentrating on the top 20% percent will get the most results.
2. “Don’t put it down. Put it away.” – I think this one is self explanatory. Sometimes it’s hard to do with little ones at your feet. Put things in their proper place. I admit that I am trying to teach this one to my daughter. As soon as she comes home she needs to put her shoes in the closet. I’m trying to start while she’s young.
3. “File it. Don’t pile it.” – Wow! This is a big one with me. A few weeks ago, I almost took a picture of the piling place in my home. It’s the kitchen counter. Instead, I spent several painful hours going through all the papers. I filed, shredded, tossed, recycled, and so forth. The pile is gone now. I am trying really hard to go through the mail and papers each day to avoid this happening again. The “pile” has been a major sore spot with me.
These are just a few of Emilie’s tips. Click here for more information about her book, as well as a few more of her tips.
Picture from cbn.com.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] Also this month I have tackled the pile station in my house – the kitchen counter. I know, I told you about this one the other day. Thankfully I spent several hours shredding, filing, and recycling papers. The counter is not completely cleaned off now, but it looks so much better now.I like Maricar’s take on the matter of organization. I agree with her. We cannot do everything and be a good mom to our kids. Sometimes things cannot always be the way we want them to be. I cannot live my life being stressed out all the time because of the way my house looks. I just have to deal with as much as I can and teach my kids some responsibility along the way. I cannot advocate messiness and will always strive for some semblance of order in my house. But I also see the pitfalls of being obsessed with neatness. Mine is a 3-person job. Two little kids in the house, meals to prepare, bathrooms to clean, laundry to wash, and toys to put away every single day. At this point in my life, striving for neatness is causing me some amount of stress, and I never get there anyway. I want a clean house. I want neat closets. But, until the kids are older, I’d probably have to shelve such aspirations. Technorati Tags: b5 blog, clutter, home life, housekeeping, messy home, organization [...]