Holiday Grand Plan

You've decided: this is the year you'll celebrate the holiday season from a home that is clean, organized and ready for Christmas. You dream of holiday parties, overnight house guests, Christmas cookies, a decorated home and a calm and stress-free holiday season.

There's only one problem: right now, you're living in domestic chaos. Looking around your home, you don't know where to begin.

Cluttered counters, crammed closets and out-of-place possessions pile up everywhere. Dust bunnies and ceiling cobwebs announce that deep-cleaning is long over-due, and the guest room? Forget about it! It's home to moving boxes, unfinished crafts and last winter's stained jackets and unmatched mittens.

To have the holiday of your dreams, you need more than just a gift list and good intentions: you need the Holiday Grand Plan, a tried and tested roadmap to Christmas in a clean and organized home.

Written by Katie Leckey with contributions from the Prodigy Homelife Get O group in 1992-1993, the Holiday Grand Plan is the Web's oldest Christmas organizing plan.

By breaking down all the tasks needed to clean and organize the house and prepare for the holidays, and dividing them into weekly assignments, the Holiday Grand Plan will help you reach the season calm, centered and ready to celebrate from a clean and organized home.

Holiday Grand Plan 2010 begins on Sunday, August 29, and continues throughout the holiday season. Based on Katie's companion Spring Cleaning Grand Plan, the Holiday Grand Plan combines holiday prep, home organizing and cleaning components.

Digging Out: Helping Your Loved One Manage Clutter, Hoarding and Compulsive Acquiring

Your parents or your child or your sister or your brother or your best friend has a home that is stuffed to the gills with stuff. The dining room table is covered in piles, the kitchen is full of dirty dishes and garbage, even the sofa is piled so high with junk that nobody can sit. Perhaps some of the exits are blocked, and if there are stairs, chances are that there are even little piles of junk there. Maybe the paths through these rooms are narrowed down to "goat trails." Perhaps the furnace is broken or the plumbing is leaking or the appliances need servicing because nobody can come do the necessary work because of the clutter.

You worry about what will happen if someone gets sick or injured in the hoard, or BECAUSE OF THE HOARD. How will the paramedics get in? What if there is a fire, how would people escape when

the junk goes up like a tinderbox? Maybe there are kids who are forced to live in the mess and you need to figure out how to help them.

You want to do something to help, but what do you do?

The sad fact of hoarding is that so many people who hoard are extremely resistant to help and change. We, the family and friends, are either shut out from helping entirely or we jump into the EXHAUSTING process of dehoarding a house, only to watch the situation return to the way it was and even get worse, in

what seems like the blink of an eye.

We feel impossibly torn – we hold ourselves responsible for our loved one's wellbeing and safety and yet it seems like we are powerless to change the problem.

To make matters worse, until recently, there wasn't a lot of guidance on how to help someone with a serious hoarding problem.

But now, there's a book that speaks directly to us, the family and friends of people with SERIOUS hoarding problems:

Digging Out: Helping Your Loved One Manage Clutter, Hoarding and Compulsive Acquiring, Book Link: http://amzn.to/gFA9PI

In the words of the publisher "Many people who hoard understand the extent of their problem and are open to help. This book is not for them. Digging Out is for the concerned and frustrated friends and family members of people who do not fully accept the magnitude of their hoarding problem and refuse help from others. If you have a friend or loved one with a hoarding problem and are seeking a way to guide him or her to a healthier, safer way of life, this book is for you."

Digging Out gives specific harm reduction strategies to help anyone with a hoarding problem to live safely and comfortably in their home or apartment. This is not a book that promises to magically make the hoarding go away. Instead, it offers direct, specific strategies to:

• Manage health and safety hazards

• Avoid eviction

• Manage child protection issues

• Motivate your friend or relative to make longer-term lifestyle

changes

Learn how to:

• Handle a spouse or roommate with a hoarding problem

• Work through special problems faced by frail and elderly hoarders

• Heal strained relationships between people who hoard and their friends and family

If I could recommend just one resource for people who are living with the anxiety, shame and frustration of their loved one's hoarding issue, it would be Digging Out.

You can purchase Digging Out from Amazon: http://amzn.to/gFA9PI

Discomfort With Silence

We as a human race are very uncomfortable with silence. Just check it out for yourself. 

Sit in a quiet room, with a clock or watch that has a second hand. Of course the clock must be clearly in view, with no distractions. 

Don’t say anything for thirty seconds. Just listen and be present with the silence permeating your presence. Notice how long that small duration of time feels when there is total silence.

How did it make you feel? What did you notice? Where did your mind and thoughts go?

What would happen if you extended it to one minute of silence? People who regularly meditate often do it for thirty minutes to one hour a day. They claim it clears the fog in their mind and creates renewed energy. After doing this exercise, I think it will be come increasingly clear to you that it takes discipline to sit still in silence. I think the benefits to people with ADHD can be significant but learning to sit still with a physically and/or cognitively hyperactive mind is quite challenging. You might want to start with learning to feel comfortable with silence.

Click here to watch this video. Afterwards, ask yourself the following question? How will I begin to integrate silence into my life?

(Written by David Giwerc, ADDCA)

It's New Calendar Time!

This is the time of year when those of us who rely on paper planners need to think about purchasing our new planners for the New Year.

Purchase your calendar based on your personal needs. Do you need a one day at a time format or week at a glance? Do you need a specific size, to fit into your backpack or purse? I personally like a loose-leaf format, so you can easily add accessories, such as address/phone book section, planner guide tabs and pages, etc.

A favorite of mine is Frank Covey: http://store.franklinplanner.com. There are so many different styles, formats and options to choose from, you're assured a planner for your specific needs. Another favorite of mine is Day Timer: http://www.daytimer.com. I used Day Timer as my time management system, before the invention of PDA's. Now my iPhone is my time management choice. Whichever calendaring system you use, be sure that you use it consistently. Otherwise, it is useless.

My blog & I

If you've come to my blog to get the latest information about the work I do, the clients I serve or the hottest topic of the day, week or month, well it might not be posted on here at this time.

The reason is that I'm very fortunate to have a very busy professional organizing business. And rather than hiring someone else to write my blog, which might never happen in my lifetime (never say never), I decided that I need a bit of a hiatus from this wonderful blog to continue to serve my clients needs to my fullest capacity & mine (to get a good night sleep).

If something inspires me to write, well write I will. Until then, if your checking my website out & seeing if I'm the kind of organizer that will suit your specific needs and you wind up at my blog, understand that there are only so many hours in a day & what kind of organizer would I be if I spent all my time blogging & not serving my clients needs???

You can now safely go back to my website, check out my contacts page & go from there. If you have a specific question about my services, I'll look forward to receiving an email from you.

Until then, happy blogging...

Hoarding in Manhattan

This wonderful New York Times article mentions my dear friend & colleague Kristin Bergfeld's business (Bergfeld's Estate) and the fantastic work she does in New York. Here is her information and the link to the New York Times article:

"To mark our 24^th year of successful business, we have established a new program, “BERGFELD’s Partnerships for the Elderly™”. Our purpose is to serve elders who choose to “age in place” but whose home is at risk because of hoarding. We coordinate with social service organizations that identify qualifying elders from among their clients. We then collaborate with them, their elder client and related professionals who contribute at no cost all products and services necessary to clear, repair and reconfigure the qualifying elder’s home.

Our very first “Partnerships” project is the subject of an extensive article in The New York Times, 26 August, 2010."

Is anybody out there?

Do you ever wonder if anyone is really out there reading these blogs. I do. I know that I haven't been a great blogger over the last few months, but what I have learned is that there is so much to write about that might or might not be important to the reader. What I have found out is that my clients are brilliant and creative and I honor each and every one of them.

How lucky to be welcomed in to so many homes, helping my clients realize their goals and dreams. My dream is to be able to do the work I do for a long time to come. That will mean that I can never stop working out, to keep my aching back strong. Tomorrow is another day to find out if there is anyone out there, who really cares about what is being said here.

I will work on blogging more often. How about you?