Photo by louder

Although I loved writing my ebook, and the positive response has been overwhelmingly humbling, I’m so glad it’s off my shoulders.  I’m still busy, mind you, but I feel like I can finally kick up my feet a little and catch up with the rest of the world.

Here’s what’s going on in my feed reader:

• 10 Truths About Frugal Living Revealed by 5,000 Reader Comments :: Frugal Dad
• Simple Storage Solutions :: Remodeling This Life (check out her entire series)
• Back to the Basics of Saving Money :: Gather Little By Little
• My New Retirement Lifestyle Cash-Flow :: My Dollar Plan
• I Have Reached Biscuit Nirvana: Feather-Light Drop Biscuits :: Everybody Likes Sandwiches
• 70 Things To Do Before Having Children :: Marc and Angel Hack Life (head here for some mild controversy)
• Alphabet Photography :: Playful Learning
• Is It Fair For You To Be Judged By Your FICO Score? :: My Super-Charged Life (my answer – a resounding no!)
• 10 Tips to Beat Clutter in Less Than 5 Minutes :: Unclutterer
• 20 Questions to Help You Overcome Your Barriers and Find Your Passion :: The Wisdom Journal
• What Do You Take if Your House is on Fire? :: Small Notebook
• 5 Ways to Have Less and Enjoy More :: On Simplicity

It was another great month here at Simple Mom!  My ebook launch, a fabulous giveaway, and surpassing 3,000 subscribers were all highlights – and it’s all thanks to my great readers.  Thanks for your loyalty, encouragement, and positive interaction.  It’s a pleasure to write for you!

Here are my top 10 referrals from bloggers this August:

• Soule Mama
• Small Notebook
• Frugal Dad
• Ohdeedoh (Apartment Therapy)
• Rocks in my Dryer
• Freebies 4 Mom
• Make and Takes
• Tip Nut
• Fussypants
• Blissfully Domestic

Thanks, as always, for linking here.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

My computer’s desktop is cluttered with documents, and my fridge needs to be cleaned out. I’ve pulled far too many late nights the past few weeks, and I’m looking forward to some much-needed quality time with my family this weekend. All this is rather ironic, to be honest.

It’s ironic because today I’m releasing my first ebook, and my home has been on the backburner while I finalize its details. And the irony lies in the fact that it’s a book about decluttering, cleaning, and organizing. Laugh with me, will you?

I love to declutter. This makes me a nerd, I understand, but it’s still a task I truly enjoy. It’s cathartic to go through the stack of papers on my desk and get rid of all I no longer need. It’s freeing to sort through my closet, and pillage the contents I no longer wear for charity. When I was in college, I loved the last day of class, when I could strip my notebooks clean of jots and twiddles I no longer needed.

This rather unusual recreation came in very handy when we moved overseas, and we needed to whittle down our possessions as much as possible. And then I started this humble blog when I realized I had more thoughts than I knew what to do with on keeping a decluttered home and living a simple life.

So now, I’m releasing my new ebook, Spring Cleaning for Normal People: The Simple Mom Guide to a Decluttered Home (Any Time of Year). It’s a fun, easy-to-read guide for overhauling your home in around 10 days. It involves a simple declutter-clean-organize rhythm of injecting new life into your home, giving you room to stretch your legs and breathe again in your own abode. And I’m selling it for $7.

The book won’t make you a candidate for the cover of Cottage Living.

It won’t permanently clean your house, thus ending your career as a home manager.

It doesn’t bring you a live-in maid.

But it does give you a little encouragement when you want to add more square-footage to your home without hiring a contractor.

I’ll cut to the chase and tell you what’s inside:

• Part One: Stuff – A short essay about our consumer culture, and the headache behind having too much of it.
• Part Two: A 10-part guide to spring cleaning your home – decluttering, cleaning, and organizing all the main rooms of your house. Included are:

• checklists for each room
• printable templates to inventory your food, your clothing – anything you like
• a daily game plan to keep you motivated and encouraged
• recipes for making your own natural household cleaners
• reflection questions to get you thinking about the why behind home keeping
• ideas for future projects when you’re in a “diy” mood

This 68-page, instantly downloadable book works beautifully in a Home Management Notebook, and you can print the checklists and templates as often as you need them. In short, this is meant to be an encouraging, helpful guide to kick-start your goal of a simpler home.

Here’s what a few readers have said so far:

“Simple Mom’s spring cleaning guide is a gem for home managers. I think that the skill of cleaning well is being lost (at least, it has been for me!), and her guide is a simple and helpful primer for those of us who have a few things to learn about the subject. Best of all, she makes a normally overwhelming task seem lighthearted and manageable. I’m definitely planning to implement several of her tips into my own household.”
-Shannon from Rocks in My Dryer

“The forms provided are great and I am loving everything about it. It makes me want to clean, and that is not an easy task.”
- Amy from Mom Advice

“An excellent spring cleaning guide that is completely realistic.  It’s about making your home a place you can enjoy living in – not turning your life upside down to have a clean home.”
– Rachel from Small Notebook

“I’m finding out that once you start to reclaim *surfaces* – beautiful, bare, dust-free, uncluttered, wood surfaces - it is inspiring and even addictive! … And the gleaming dark wood made me want to see our other surfaces bare, too, so I have plowed right on with filling up boxes to give and sell. I know this may sound cheesy, but I feel like I can breathe again, when I look around and see empty table-tops!”
- Sarah, co-creator of Pear Budget and stay-at-home mom of 3

Here’s a few free screenshots of what’s inside:

Head here to buy and download your copy.

(Edited to add: When you buy the book, the download link will come to you through an email from a third-party vendor called E-junkie.  And if you choose to pay by echeck, it will wait to send you the link until it clears.)

And as always, the Daily Dockets, Weekly Checklists, Grocery Lists, and Preschooler’s Chore Charts are completely free and can be downloaded here.

Check back on Simple Mom next week for thoughts on organizing your photos, a menu plan for September, and my latest dilemma on productivity – online, paper, or both?

Alright, I’m off to clear off my desktop, and then I think I’ll break out Candy Land for a quick game with my daughter.

Photo by liikenevalo

I‘m a big believer in multi-tasking. I like folding laundry while I’m talking with my husband, letting dinner simmer on the stove while I empty the dishwasher, and straightening up the bathroom while my preschooler takes her bath.

I’ve also witnessed the power of single-tasking, and in this era when we worship productivity, there’s something to be said about doing only one thing at a time. You can fully concentrate on the task at hand, you’re less prone to making mistakes, and in many cases, the task is done quicker because you’re not doing something else.

It’s good to blend both multi and single-tasking into your day. The problem lies when we apply the wrong approach to the wrong task. We single-task when we should be multi-tasking, or more often in my case, we multi-task when perhaps it’s best that we single-task.

Here are a few things I do better when I single-task:

• create our monthly budget
• update our accounts
• menu plan
• respond to emails
• talk on the phone
• spend time with my children
• talk with my husband

And here are some things that are basically accomplished well when I multi-task:

• cleaning while I listen to podcasts
• cooking while straightening the kitchen (unless it’s a dish that requires my full attention)
• decluttering paperwork while I watch a movie with my husband
• washing dishes while I chit-chat with my daughter
• nursing my son while I catch up on blog reading

Too often, I try to talk on the phone while I straighten up the house, or menu plan online while also reading blogs and replying to emails. I end up scatterbrained and a bit chaotic, not fully concentrating on anything.

A Mama’s Challenge

Here’s the irony. With children at home, it often feels impossible for us to focus on anything more than two minutes at a time, because we’re constantly interrupted. As soon as I sit down to update our bank accounts, my daughter wants me to sharpen her colored pencils, or my son has dropped his toy for the umpteenth time and needs help retrieving it.

It’s the stage of life, and it is what it is. Small children require a lot of hands-on, interactive parenting, and while it’s a short-lived job, it leaves you utterly exhausted come bedtime, doesn’t it?

Even though I’d love to single-task most of my day jobs, it just isn’t going to happen. What mom doesn’t multi-task all day long? You’ve got to change the diaper and answer the phone. You oftentimes need to read to your older one while you nurse your younger.

My Personal Solution

It’s a great thing for children to learn independence, and they learn patience when Mommy can’t get to something exactly when they want it. But we can’t make our children need us less. Being a mom requires all our attention, and the short breaks throughout the day called “nap time” are rich blessings to enjoy some quiet. Otherwise, to expect single-tasking as the default method of getting things done is just setting ourselves up for frustration.

Here’s what I remind myself:

• It’s a good thing for my children to learn patience and to put others’ needs before their own
• They are young, and they need help with a lot of tasks

• My main job is to parent, not to get my to-do list done

• I’ll often have to resort to multi-tasking, even when I prefer single-tasking

Remind yourself today that there are more important things in life than getting things done. It’s good to be productive, yes. But we can’t do everything at once – and sometimes, certain things deserve being done one at a time, with all our devoted attention. Like parenting.

Do you find this to be true in your life? Is it even possible for a mom of littles to single-task? Which is easier for you – multi-tasking or single-tasking?