Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington - Podcast

An excerpt from Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run.

One of the most fearless women I know, and a moment when her resolve was tested (Learn more about Glanzmann's Thrombasthenia and the Glanzmann's Research Foundation at http://www.curegt.com/ and visit the Make-A-Wish Foundation at http://www.wish.org/):

Southern Women's Show - Savannah, GA

Join me one week from today,

on February 4

at the

Southern Women's Show

in Savannah, GA

Times: 11:30am and 5:30pm

Place: Conversation Stage

What: Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Punished or Pushed

I talked to my best friend on Saturday, but it wasn't our usual chit-chatty, wise-cracking, telling-on-the kids good time. She confided in me that her business is struggling. And when she says struggling, she means taking a cash advance from her credit card at an un-godly interest rate to make payroll. She means the bank threatening to call the loan on her start-up capital. She means customers bouncing checks and credit lines shut down. She means she's on the brink of business collapse.

With desperation in her voice, she asked me, probably rhetorically, "Why am I being punished?"

Now, just so you know, she and I have been best friends for 20 years, so she knows my ways. I have this nasty, annoying habit of always trying to point out the upside of down things. Another friend, who finds this trait to be a character flaw, once said to me, "Why is your glass always half full?"

I curtly replied, "It might always be half full, but the irksome thing is that I never know half-full of what."

"There you go doing it again," she snarfed. "Can't you just let me insult you without turning it around?"

While I know that wallowing in our worries together can be a bonding experience, I suspect that doing it too much or for too long breeds more worry and self-pity and saps any remnants of get-up-and-go. Besides, I just can't help myself. I want to believe the best., therefore I do. And I was certain that her punishment perspective was one that reflected her fear.

So I suggested, "Maybe you're not being punished. Maybe you're being pushed." Pushed toward something great that she wouldn't choose on her own. Pushed toward a door about to swing open and swallow her up in success. Pushed toward . . . her future, which was the thing she feared most right at that moment; causing her to see her circumstances as punishment.

How do you view the difficulties thrown at you each day? Punishment or a push?

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Are you on the right path? Are you afraid of the future? Instead of ducking down and taking cover from perceived punishments heaped upon you by life, do everything you can manage the current events. Then, stand up tall, open your eyes and see the direction in which you're being pushed. You might be surprised to find that you've been headed there all along.

Lucy Adams is the author of two books: Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny.

Read more Southern Girls Living Fearlessly HERE.

Go Clean Your Room

I return to report on my quest for organization, inspired and influenced by the article, Cool, Calm, and Decluttered: 25 Ways to Pare Down and Get Organized for a Fresh New Year, in the Better Homes and Gardens January issue. Today's focus is on Tip 17:

"Go clean your room," can mean lots of things. Give your kids a list of exactly what you expect, and let them check off the tasks as they are done. (submitted to BH&G by Scott Roewer, professional organizer)

Tip 17 knows my heart, because I adore writing lists. I even keep a Book of Lists. But Tip 17 does not know the hearts of my children. As usual, when I said, "Go clean your rooms," grumbling, moaning and complaining commenced, but when I handed them their lists, complete with little check boxes next to each task, the real whining started.

"We have to do all these things?" one asked.

"Yes," I said. "Putting your dirty clothes in the hamper and closing your dresser drawers are pretty standard when it comes to cleaning your room."

"I don't have any misk-el-an-ous, so can I go ahead and put a check mark next to that one?" asked my 9 year-old daughter.

"And this says to fold our blankets on our beds!" screeched another child indignantly. "Why? We're just going to get back in our beds tonight?"

"Okay, fine" I replied. "Don't fold your blankets. I won't wash your breakfast dishes."

He stared at me. It wasn't computing. "What do breakfast dishes have to do with my room?" he suspiciously asked.

"You're just going to eat off of them again tonight," I told him, using his same logic.

"Oh." He and his siblings went to clean their rooms.

For all their complaining about the lengths of their lists, when I went to inspect, I found that I hadn't been thorough enough in my itemization. I forgot to include:

• Put books on proper bookshelves, not on top of the bookcase.
• Socks are clothing. Dirty ones go in the hamper with dirty clothes.
• Close the closet door.
• A once-used towel is not dirty. Hang it in the bathroom.
• The area behind your door is not storage AND its part of your room. Put that stuff where it belongs.
• I will check under your bed. Don't kick everything under there.
• ALL trash goes in the trashcan. Socks are not trash. I repeat, socks are clothing.
• Sitting on your bed staring into space is NOT the same as "going to clean your room."
• Don't come out of your room until you're done.

Nonetheless, their rooms were somewhat tidier than before they started. And I learned two things from this experience.

1. It's hard to change the organization habits of other people, even small people. And its hard to get organized in a household in which you're the only person who cares.
2. Children don't get the same thrill as I do out of checking things off of lists.

Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run Book Trailer

Lucy Adams is the author of two books: Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny.

Think, Think About It

I love Tip 16 from the Better Homes and Gardens January issue article, Cool, Calm and Decluttered. It's something anyone, everyone, can do. Most of us do it without even knowing we're doing it. Tip 16 urges us simply to think:

If you're having trouble letting go of clutter, whether it's too many things in your house or too many commitments eating up your time, think about what it requires you to sacrifice. Less stuff means less to organize and less money spent. Fewer activities means less running around and more family time. (submitted to BH&G by Laura Wittmann, author of Clutter Rehab)

That Laura Wittmann, now she's my kind of organizer, because a lot of the time what happens to me in the middle of getting something organized is I start to think. I think about all of the possibilities for the closet I'm cleaning out. I think about all of the alternative uses for the box of costume jewelry that's been stashed on the top shelf for five years. Then I think about the room that the closet is in and what color I'd like to paint it. Before I know it, I'm flipping through home design magazines, like Better Homes and Gardens, and thinking about all of the ways I'm going to re-decorate my home someday, when I have enough time and money. But this kind of thinking probably won't get e the kind of time and money to which Wittmann refers.

I am excellent at thinking about my stuff and my time. The problem comes when I must take action, mostly because my time isn't always my own. It's parceled out to 5 other people, four of whom depend on me to help them follow through with their own commitments. And the stuff in my house, other than the furniture and drapes and kitchen appliances, belongs to me only theoretically. Those other five people tend to have emotional ties to things I never even considered important. At some point I think I have to honor and R-E-S-P-E-C-T that.

So, while I would sooooo like to live like a minimalist, the maxed out size of my family prevents me from it. For now, I'll have to settle for thinking about how wonderful that would be. That's okay, though, because I love to think about organization. I am really, really good at thinking about it.

(On a side note, since we're talking about thinking, my husband keeps encouraging me to think about taking a Cosmo challenge next month. Should I do it?)

Lucy Adams is the author of two books: Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny.

Playing Games

Day 3 of a Georgia snow-in made me swiftly move forward with my self-imposed New Year's organization challenge inspired by the Better Homes and Gardens January 2011 issue. Using the article, Cool, Calm and Decluttered: 25 Ways to Pare Down and Get Organized for a Fresh New Year, I'm honoring my time-tested, but never achieved, yearly resolution, To get more organized. I guess I've never known exactly how until now.

Tip 13: Make clutter-busting a family game. Write tasks on ping-pong balls. Each person chooses a ball, completes the task, then chooses another one. After 30 minutes, whoever has the most balls gets a prize - like a no-chores day or control of the TV remote. (submitted to BH&G by Alicia Rockmore and Sarah Welch, authors of Pretty Neat: Get Organized and Let Go of Perfection)

I admit skepticism, and icy roads, kept me from following Tip 13 to a tee. Buying a billion ping pong balls would just result in bringing in more stuff for a less than enthusiastic brood to bounce around the hallways of my house. I would win the game every time because I would be the one picking up all of the ping pong balls.

BUT, because I couldn't take another day of kids loafing around making messes for me to clean up, we did play a game loosely based on this suggestion. It was a contest. I set a timer. It did involve rewards (money and my sanity). It had rules. And it resulted in decluttering. And I know it was really a game to all involved because kids were calling each other cheater and going to great lengths to win.

The goal of the game was for each child to try to collect, in 20 minutes, the most items to donate to the Salvation Army.

The rules:

• A child could only collect items over which he or she had decision-making jurisdiction.
• Any child who did not participate could not win a prize (this will become clearer when I list the prizes).
• No school books or supplies could be donated.

The prizes:

• $5 to the child with the most items collected.
• $4 to the child with 2nd most items to donate.
• $3 to the child with the 3rd most items.
• $2 to the child with the least items (but items had to be collected to win this prize. No participation = No prize.).

I can't say whether it was the money or the thrill of competition that activated their adrenalin, but when I said go, kids were throwing elbows and giving out war hoops heading up the stairs. Then one-by-one they raced up and down, piling stuffed animals, bouncy balls and outgrown baseball hats in the middle of the living room floor. "How much time?" each would shout, lunging back toward the stairs.

My enthusiastic 11 year-old brought all of his underwear and church clothes and dumped those in the floor. He figured he could go without for five bucks. Other than that, however, my children were willingly agreeing to get rid of stuff that had I gone to their rooms and tried to confiscate it, I would have been stopped by arguments as to why it was necessary to that child's existence.

Plus, even amongst subversive plots to remove items from large piles and put them in small piles and confusion over ownership of various submissions and some outright, flagrant attempts to donate other people's belongings, we had FUN. We LAUGHED. We shook off out winter blues. Two large garbage bags of donations later, not a single child had any regrets or remorse.

Tip 13 is a lot luckier than it sounds!

Lucy Adams is the author of two books:Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run and If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny.