Have a Fourth of July Parade

A great way for kids and parents to celebrate the holiday is by having a Fourth of July Parade. Let the children decorate their bikes, wagons, big wheels, and themselves to march down the street or sidewalk. Make sure there is plenty of adult supervision especially if they parade down the side of a street. When my children were young we lived on a cul-de-sac. Most of the families on that street had young children so it worked out great for everyone.

11-30-2007-16-53-23-91_edited-1 06-29-2010-15-00-41-765_edited-1

Below are several sites with ideas on decorating bikes and/or the children. It doesn’t have to cost much. Use items you already have around the house, a few store bought craft supplies, and a whole lot of imagination and fun!

image http://crafts.kaboose.com/bike-decorations.html

image http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/a-star-spangled-ride-674243/

image http://www.familycorner.com/family/kids/crafts/patriotic-flip-flops.shtml

image http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Crafts/Stars-and-Stripes-Cap.html

Don’t forget the red, white, and blue balloons. They always make a parade fun!

If you have ideas for a parade please let me know. I’ll share them with all my readers.

Thanks,

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

Have a Fourth of July Parade Read More »

Fun Things to Do For Fourth Of July

In every store you go to there is red, white, and blue displays enticing you to buy all kinds of things to get in the spirit of the holiday. You could spend a fortune on these things. Or you could spend quality time with your children or the creative child in yourself and have fun making your own decorations.

Here are several websites with ideas and instructions to help you get started.

Kaboose.com has a bunch of crafts and other activities.

image image image

http://crafts.kaboose.com/holidays/july-4/

Disney Family Fun site has plenty of ideas.

image image image

http://familyfun.go.com/4th-of-july/4th-of-july-crafts/

HP Creative Studio has projects you can print on your printer.

image image image

http://www.hp.com/hho/hp_create/themes_holidays_4th_of_july.html

I will check out more sites and ideas and post them here in the next few days. If you have any fun, inexpensive, and easy projects please let me know so I can share them with all my readers. Thanks.

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

Fun Things to Do For Fourth Of July Read More »

Selling Your Family on Decluttering

Benefits of Decluttering

(Post Updated February 2020)

Last night I was reading the book “The One Minute Sales Person” by Spencer Johnson. It says the best way to sell anything is to help the person get what they want from the product, idea, or service.

So what does this have to do with decluttering and organizing? Actually plenty!  When it comes to decluttering, we not only have to “sell” ourselves on the idea, we also have to “sell” our family members on it.

We can work on keeping our own things cleaned up. However, if our spouses and/or children leave things laying around we’ll become frustrated and discouraged.  Begging them to help usually doesn’t work in the long run.

 

Selling the Benefits

We have to figure out how to convince them that decluttering and organizing helps everyone in the household. That is where the “selling” comes in. They need to know how they will benefit from getting rid of the old things and organizing what is left.

The specific benefits may different for each person but here are some basic benefits of decluttering and organizing that applies to all of us.

  1. Fewer things laying around (toys, electronics, etc.) makes it easier to find and put away the ones we really use and enjoy.
  2. Putting dirty clothes in the proper designated place makes it easier to keep the laundry up. That means they will have clean clothes when they need them.
  3. Putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher or washing them by hand instead of leaving them all around will allow you to use clean dishes instead of paper ones. That’s better for the environment and today’s children are learning to take pride in protecting the environment for their own future.
  4. Keeping track of how much money is spent on “things” and if they are “wants” or “needs” will help save money and keep the clutter from building up around the house. I call this conscious buying and it benefits everyone.

More Ideas to Help

I looked through some old blog posts and found ones that may help inspire you to find the benefits for you and your family.

Wants vs Needs
Mindfulness in the Home 

Things Can Be Freeloaders
Time To Get Off Autopilot

Mistakes As Clutter 

 

How do you “sell” yourself and/or your family members on the benefits of decluttering and organizing? Please let me know by leaving a comment so I can share these ideas with all my readers. Thanks.

 

To a lighter load along the way.
Janice Scissors


Selling Your Family on Decluttering Read More »

Ran Over By A Bulldozer

I haven’t blogged for awhile. Below is this week’s newsletter explaining why.

 

Cut Clutter With Scissors Newsletter
Volume 2, Issue 18
May 2, 2010

 

It’s been awhile since I wrote a newsletter. Sometimes life throws you a few lemons and sometimes you feel like you’ve been run over by a bulldozer. The last four weeks have felt like the latter. My mother had surgery on May 3 that ended up with multiple complications, the most serious being a stroke. She is now on her road to a slow recovery which gives me a chance to settle into a “new” routine.


Both of my sisters live out of town so I’m the one handling most of the legal, financial, medical, and household issues. Fortunately my mother was the “born organized” one. I’m still wondering where my SHEness (sidetracked home executive aka Sidetrack Sisters & Flylady) came from. My name is on her checking account and her Power of Attorney/Living Will was easy to find. Actually, since her stroke did not effect her memory she was able to tell me where it was.

Ironically right before her surgery I was putting the finishing touches on my new ebook, “Cut Out The Paper Clutter”. Because I’ve been following many of the ideas in the book regarding the organizing of financial papers it wasn’t too difficult to take over her bill paying and still keep my own under control. Most of my bills are on autopay and the rest are paid with online banking. I have spent several years using many of the tips that I share in the ebook to reduce the junk mail so it takes little time to sort my mail. I hope to have the ebook up for sale by next week.

My mother hasn’t embraced all the electronic bill paying yet but we had planned on doing it during her surgery recovery time. I will take the next few weeks to slowly get most of her bills on autopay and set up online banking. This way it will be much easier for her to handle her own bills when she gets back home from rehab. I will also start using some of the tips/websites listed in the ebook to get her name off of the junk mail lists. See below for a link to the blog post that list the websites.

As much as I have learned through research, first hand experience is still the greatest teacher. We all know the importance of setting up our financial papers so our spouse or children could easily take over the responsibility if necessary yet this is one area many people put off. Clearing out the paper clutter and organizing our finances can go a long way to reduce the worry. The stress that comes with disorganization and procrastination will get worse with age. Whether you are in your 20’s, 40’s, 60’s or older, now is the time to get rid of the paper clutter so you can free up your time and energy to spend on the more important and fun things in life.

My goal is to get back to the weekly newsletters (or as often as possible) and blog posts. Although I will be focusing a lot on paper clutter I also will share tips on traveling and garage sales. After all, it’s summer time and that’s what people do during this time of year.

If you have any questions, tips, or suggestions please reply to this email or post a comment on my current blog posts at: http://organizebythemonth.com. I’m always happy to help you with tips to declutter your home or life. I also love it when I can learn new things from you and then share it with all my readers. Thank you.


To a lighter load along the way.
Janice Scissors

Please pass this newsletter along to friends and family who want to declutter and organize their lives. When they sign up at https://cutclutterwithscissors.com, they will receive a free ebook filled with decluttering and organizing tips.

Blog Posts

How to Declutter Junk Mail http://organizebythemonth.com/?p=245


Stay Connected
https://cutclutterwithscissors.com
http://organizebythemonth.com (blog)
http://twitter.com/jlscissors
email: janice@cutclutterwithscissors.com

Ran Over By A Bulldozer Read More »

Organizing With Project Worksheets

I have found over the years that if I plan out a project on paper I have a much higher success rate in completing it. To make it easy for myself I would design a worksheet and make copies of it for each new project.

Over the years I have designed more specific worksheets for different kinds of projects. I have converted these into PDF’s and loaded them to my server. You can download these free worksheets and print them out. If you have any questions about them please ask me in the comment section.

Paperwork Project Worksheet

Household or Craft Project Worksheet

Weekend Projects Worksheet

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

Organizing With Project Worksheets Read More »