Organising kids

I want to share an great idea that Sharon wrote to me with:

“Am only half way through reading your book, and loving it.  I have just collected my 7 and 9 year old daughters from separate sleepovers and am having to call each house and request that forgotten items be sent to school tomorrow with my daughters’ friends. I had a bright idea to hopefully prevent this from continuing to occur.

Use a large baggage tag or plastic delegate name holder available from large newsagents. On a piece of paper which will slip inside the tag, make a list of all the items your child is wearing to the sleepover, and anything included in their overnight bag (e.g., toothbrush, hairbrush, 3 pairs of panties, teddy, rigid red headband, sleeping bag, pillow, blue jeans, yellow PJs etc). This way, the child can check their belongings as they are placed in the bag, or the adult (friend’s mother or grandparent) helping the child can be sure that everything brought to the house is leaving the house. This also saves time for the collecting mother, and reduces the time it takes to extract the visiting child from the friend’s house, which is always an agonising experience for everyone.

Have a good week Lissanne. Thanks to your book, I will be starting mine a little more organised than I was last week.”

The four F’s

Need to get organised? Need to sort your paperwork? Let me show you the “four F’s to sort paperwork (an extract form my book, SORTED! the one with ‘recipes’ for organising) Here’s all the answers to your organising problems! It first went to air on ABC radio 10/10/07. I’ll also tell you how to organise your photos and get a grip on interruptions at work.

hotcakes!

My book is selling like hotcakes. A bookstore I visited in Sydney has sold out! You should buy one! click here.

Schools unclutter the curriculum

I LOVED this story I heard yesterday on the Triple J news. The Australian Primary Principals Association has announced that the curriculm is fat and it needs some attention.

APPA President Leonie Trimper says their new Charter clarifies primary education “without the curriculum being cluttered by activities and issues that were more the role of parents, special interest groups, and other government sectors.”

“In essence, the Charter says that there should be four core elements to the curriculum:
• English literacy.
• Mathematics.
• Science.
• Social Education.”

She said that the core was not intended to imply that other learning areas were unimportant. “All learning areas are worthwhile, but the Charter argues that substantial involvement in the other learning areas depends on the critical and prior importance of ensuring that all children make satisfactory progress in the core areas.

I love that clarification, simplification and decluttering applies to so much more than the physical world.

Read the full article here

Say what?

I bought some Ansell rubber gloves yesterday. As I was discarding the packaging, I noticed the text on the back on the packet. It actually says “Retain this packaging for future reference”.

Are they serious? What would I need to do that for?!

Get Organised for Christmas

Christmas is only 12 weeks away so get organised! Organisation = planning, so check out this ace Christmas planning checklist from my mate Nicolle Hrabe! Nicolle, from utilize:mytime, is a Personal Concierge, Lifestyle Manager and Personal Assistant, errand runner and life saver for very busy people. Outsourcing tasks is great idea – particularly if you want the stress free option. Have someone else do it! It’s more affordable than you think.

Check out her website!

procrastination

Are you a procrastinator? I am too, although I’m generally quite selective about when I put things off. There’s some great conversation here, at Flying Solo, a teriffic on-line resource for small business owners.

I’ll let you in on a secret: my post (about three quarters down the page) is actually an extract from my new book, SORTED! But the bottom line is that it’s not in your best interests to shuffle deck chairs on the Titanic.

If you like what you see, I also write for Flying Solo – you can find my articles here.