Link love :: the FINALLY time to relax edition

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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:

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:

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

Spring Cleaning for Normal People: introducing my first ebook

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?

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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.

springcleaning8.jpgThe 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.

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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:

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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.

Are you really saving money on that?

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Photo by Brandon

The following is a guest post from Miranda Marquit. She edits information on debt consolidation for DestroyDebt.com and writes for YieldingWealth.com.

Every where we turn, there are “special offers” and “bargains” that save us money. But sometimes, these are just gimmicks designed to help us spend more. Here are some ways that you may actually be spending more, even though you are supposed to be “saving” money:

1. Credit card and financing deals

“0% financing for 12 months!” is a common refrain, as is “Pay nothing until 1010!” However, when you buy something on this premise, planning to pay it off, the store wins. Most people actually don’t pay off their purchases before interest is charged. And in the case of the “no payment” deal, the interest is usually capitalized and added to the principal when it is time to start making payments.

Another problem with buying things on credit (besides the interest charges) is that you have a skewed idea of how much you spent. Study after study shows that people spend more money when they shop with credit – and they have a harder time remembering how much they spent.

2. Big superstores

The idea behind the superstore is “one stop shopping.” Additionally, it’s supposed to have a plethora of items at lower prices. However, many of us spend more money when they shop at these superstores. A few items are priced lower, but most of them are just as expensive as elsewhere. And people tend to buy more at a superstore, as well as buy impulsively. Comparison shopping for sales and using coupons often don’t enter the equation, either. You’ll buy less – spending less overall – if you make a list of the best prices at two or three stores, and plan your shopping trip in advance.

3. Free shipping

Many web sites offer free shipping when you spend a certain amount of money online. So, in order to save $5.97 in shipping costs, you make an unplanned purchase of $10.64. Your “free shipping” actually cost you $4.67.

This principle applies to other similar ploys. The “buy two, get one” sale and other gimmicks are designed to have you spend more money than if you stuck to your original plan to just buy one. It looks like a bargain, but you are really spending more than you planned – on something you probably do not even need.

Before you part with your family’s hard-earned money, it’s important to research whether you’ll really save money. Any “bargain” that requires a purchase of items you don’t need or want, or hadn’t planned on buying in the first place, isn’t really a money saver.

Agree? Disagree? What’s been your experience with these marketing tactics? If you avoid these kinds of strategies, I’d love to hear how else you “work the system” to save money.

The gift basket giveaway winner

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Photo by Thomas Hawk

Wow, you all know a fabulous giveaway when you see one! There were a total of 1,571 entries. That is such a compliment to these vendors! They really are great and produce quality stuff.

I know you all are on the edge of your seat, so without further adieu, the winner is…

Karen Putz from Deaf Mom World!

Congratulations, Karen! Please send me your snail mail address so I can pass them on to the shop owners.

Thank you so much to all of you for entering – I wish I could give something to each of you. But I’m not made of money.

But I do encourage you to visit these shops. I’ll be ordering some Christmas presents from them as soon as I publish this post.

Come back Wednesday for a guest post, and on Friday, I’ve got something new to show you. I’m super excited about it.

Alright, I’m off to enjoy some cake and ice cream…

What’s more beneficial – single-tasking or multi-tasking?

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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?