Blog
Keeping Your Busy Family Organized – Ready…5…4..3..2.1
Is family organization a myth, like unicorns? Or are organizational skills something people are born with, like red hair? Neither, anybody can do this, even me. Having a busy family can be chaos at the best of times, but when you have kids, pets, aging parents and...
Creative & Mobile Home Office Ideas
Working from home is a challenge. It can be wonderful and freeing, but it can also be isolating and stressful. Much of my experience working from home has not been by choice, but for health reasons. Most of the information I find about home offices don't apply to me...
Hospitals & Doctors
Surgery – Overcoming Embarrassment
One major battle when one is recuperating from surgery is to overcome embarrassment. People create an enormous amount of stress for themselves by keeping their worries a secret. To get best advice, you need to be able to be completely honest and open with your...
After Surgery – Discharge Day
After surgery and healing, there is freedom. My favorite hospital day is always discharge day. Typically I know it is coming ahead of time. They will usually tell me I can go home the following day provided certain criteria is met. When I had my hip replacements, I...
After Surgery – Hospital Routine
Odds are that your first day in your hospital room is a blur. You don't get there until halfway through the day and you are pretty out of it, so your first real taste of hospital life is likely your first morning. Rule 1: Sleep is Constantly Interrupted This is not...
Caregiving & Friendship
Caregiving & Friendship
I am lucky, I have cared for and been cared for all of my life. My family and I have had more than our share of medical care over the years. It doesn't get easier, but it is manageable. You can be the caregiver or just a supportive friend, but regardless of your role,...
Choosing a Get Well Gift
Choosing a gift for someone in the hospital or who is at home recuperating is difficult. Flowers are impractical; their water has to be changed; they die and smell bad; they are not uplifting for long. Food is a no-no if they are on a restricted diet. And personal...
Reclaiming Your Home
Everywhere you look are ghosts. They are memories best not remembered, at least now, while they are still raw. They hit you when you are least expecting them, taking your breath away. It is time to reclaim your home. After any emotional trauma you need to make peace...
Rest & Recuperation
Designing a Bedroom for Rest & Recuperation
If you walk into your bedroom right now, does it make you want to crawl in to bed and read a book? Or does it remind you to do the laundry? Can you even get to your bed? Your sleep and rest space is probably the most important room in your home for your rest and...
How to Treat Incontinence When Recuperating
With the number of surgeries I've had, and my openness about my experiences, many people approach me with their most embarrassing questions. So I have had more conversations about bowel and bladder control than I can count. I wish it weren't so awkward for people to...
Making a Temporary Wheelchair Comfortable
If you are in a wheelchair most or all the time, hopefully it is customized and tricked out for your needs. But if it is only for a month or two there is no way most of us will go to that effort or expense. So what are the interim solutions? The temporary means by...
Happiness & Resilience
Keeping New You Resolutions – Remember Small
Are you making a New Years Resolution or a New You Resolution? Who decided that New Years Day was a good day for resolutions? You are tired, overfed, over-sugared, possibly hung over and surrounded by family, some of whom you may not even like. Is this the day for...
Find Mid-Career Satisfaction
You want more? You're smart and capable, but not fulfilled? You feel you could be doing more? Enjoying life more? There is a pattern emerging among many seasoned professionals. They are rewriting the definition of success. Many of the people I know are walking away...
Resilience is the Secret to Your Happiness
Ever wonder how people can go through hell and bounce back to do amazing things with their life? Ever wonder if you could do the same? The answer is a resounding YES! What you are witnessing is resilience, and you are not born with it, you learn it. What is...
Family & Home
Your Guide to Outsource Christmas
Outsource Christmas?!? It probably sounds ridiculous, but how many of your traditions are actually chores that you don't enjoy anymore? Do you scramble around the month of December trying to get it all done before your family and friends descend? Meanwhile, at the...
Best Christmas EVER! and a Christmas Planner
Don't forget to read to the end and get a Christmas planner. Ask people their best Christmas and they will tell you about their childhood, or their children. I would like to tell you it was my daughter's first Christmas, but she spent the week vomiting, so that is...
Managing Your Household Checklists
Household checklists are they single best tool for keeping control of a busy home. Household management binders, folders, or something similar will save your sanity especially when life is changing fastest. If you are considering outsourcing any of your house work,...
Dig Yourself Out of That Pile
Laundry is daunting and overwhelming, and it never ends! As soon as you get the basket empty, someone comes along to fill it again. If you want to control it, first you need to make it manageable. Figure out your laundry style. Don't know your style? Find out here:...
Get That Load Off Your Back
Of all the chores in my house; laundry has always been my weakness. Only when I couldn't do it, did I finally master it. Nothing to Wear When I was young, I had to call in sick to work twice because I had no clean clothes. More than once I woke up in the morning with...
From Chaos to Organized in One Day
Home Organization has always been like a myth, something I hope is true, but can't quite believe in, until recently. I just organized my whole house in half a day! You probably think I am making this up or exaggerating, but I'm not; even I am surprised. If you aren't...