First off, I have to be honest and say that I’m not a crafter. My mom is a talented and sought-after artisan quilter and I grew up watching her acquire and stash lots of crafting supplies. Now that she is retired and free to quilt a LOT, the stash has grown

Many crafters like to have a lot of supplies and tools on hand in order to be well prepared for current and upcoming projects. Many also have a number of unfinished or in progress projects to organize. The key is to balance your crafting inventory with the space available so that you can easily find what you need and spend your time enjoying crafting rather than searching for supplies and tools.

This is an incomplete list of ideas but I hope it will be a starting point. And if you are a crafter, I would love to see your comment here here about decluttering and organizing strategies that work for you.

• You could think about what space you have to devote to your supplies and tools. What is the volume? How much, in percentage terms, of your stash would you have to cull in order to fit it into your space with room to spare? Perhaps you can highgrade and keep the very best tools and materials?
• Do you have any duplicate tools? I have found that now that the clutter is gone, I only need one of each tool because every tool has a home. I always know where something is when I need to find it. Could you pass along all the duplicates and just keep the best of each item?
• Who could benefit from the decluttered extras? Are there any schools or clubs who could use the supplies? What about posting your extras on Craigslist or Freecycle? Maybe you have a friend who is interested in getting started in your craft?
• Perhaps you can take a look at your unfinished projects and upcoming planned projects. If you estimate, how much time total will these projects will take to complete. How much time do you have to devote to your craft? Are there any projects you can pass along to someone else who has the time to complete them?
• Cara at Repurposeful suggests storing unfinished projects in reused plastic bedsheet cases.
• For beaders, Geralin of Metropolitan Organizing suggests using florists “water picks” to organize those tiny beads.
• Beth from MySimplerLife.com suggests, “Give yourself a time limit on unfinished projects. Either finish them or let them go. Letting go means room for new projects.”

Please leave your favorite organization and decluttering tips in the comments below!

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• Are You Churning or Decluttering?

What do I mean by “seriously cluttered”?  If you have areas of your home that cannot be used for their intended purpose, then your life — and your family’s –  is being seriously impacted by the clutter.  For example, sometimes a family cannot eat at the dining room table because it is covered with stuff.  Or a sofa or chair is out of commission because it has a heap of clutter on top.  Sometimes people stop using beds, bedrooms or even bathrooms because the clutter has taken over.  Is this you?  Commit to turning the problem around for just 15 minutes a day — I promise you will be amazed at the results of a little consistent daily focus.

Here are the links:

• HoardHouse.com is an evolving media project by three Columbia University journalism grad students.  The project explores the issue of hoarding in New York City, drawing from interviews with psychologists, social workers and hoarders themselves.  Sometimes when you are in the middle of this problem it is comforting to know that you are not alone, and that others have similar or even more serious issues with clutter.
• Does Decluttering Make Sense in Hard Economic Times? This is the question posed by the writers at OnSimplicity.net.  When we feel poor or when we’re even worried about the financial future, the scarcity mindset kicks in and it’s harder to release clutter.  This article makes excellent points about why it’s just as important to declutter now as ever.
• “The Rules” About Paper. Does paper pile up as fast as you can eliminate it?  ClutterDietBlog.com breaks down paper clutter maintenance and prevention into 10 straightforward rules.  Great stuff!
• Decluttering a Loved One’s Possessions. Sometimes the sad tipping point from a little bit of clutter into complete chaos is when a loved one passes on or has to go into long-term care.  We are faced with their many possessions and no idea how to decide what to keep and what to part with.  This thoughtful article suggests ways to bring clarity and effectiveness to the decision-making process.

Here’s hope for an abundant, joyful and productive week! )

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• Monday Link Roundup
• Monday Link Roundup
• Anti-Hoarding Strategies from a Hoarding Therapist

Most people have accumulated far more houseware items than they need or can use.  The more unnecessary stuff you can eliminate from your home, the easier the rest is to care for and the less work it is to keep your home tidy and orderly.  Be ruthless about getting rid of what you don’t need and you will be amazed at how peaceful your home will become.

A good rule of thumb is that every item in your kitchen (and the rest of your house too) needs to have a “home” — somewhere it belongs and the place to which you return it when you aren’t using it.  If you can’t find a home for something, then you don’t have room for it — choose between decluttering the item or decluttering some other item to make room for it.

Do you have two or three can openers, toasters, or whatever?  Keep the best one — just one — and give away the rest.  Trust that if you need a replacement at some point in the future, you will be able to get one then.  When you do have to occasionally replace items, make a point of buying or finding good quality.  I ask myself, “Will this last for the next 40 years?”  That’s an exaggeration, but it usually makes sense to spend a little more for something good (even if it’s used) than to just buy the cheapest version you can find.

Countertops:  Try keeping only the items you use every single day on the counters, and find homes in your cupboards for everything else that you decide to keep.  This will give you lots of counter space for food preparation and you’ll find it far more easy to keep your counters clean.

Food containers:  How many containers of leftovers can you keep in your fridge before things start to spoil without getting eaten?  This is the number of food containers you need.  For me, I couldn’t possibly imagine needing more than ten containers.  If you regularly cook and freeze several meals at once, perhaps you need more containers.  But if you keep more containers than you need, you’re setting yourself up to have spoiled “mystery” leftovers in your fridge and who needs that?  Decide how many of your containers you need (keep the nicest ones) and toss or give away the rest.

Do you have many “unitaskers”?  These are tools or appliances that only do one thing, e.g., ice cream makers, yogurt makers, juicers, waffle irons.  For each unitasker, ask yourself if you use it regularly enough to give it room in your clutterfree home.  “Regularly enough” may be once a week or once every six months, depending on how much space you have, but remember that everything you own needs to earn its space in your home by being useful or bringing you joy.

Think about getting rid of any purely decorative items that are taking up room in your kitchen unless you truly love them.  You can cut back to just your favorite decorative items and this will help streamline your kitchen and make it a place of calm and happiness.

What about the stuff that you can’t find space for or that you don’t use much but can’t bear to part with?  Or maybe you haven’t been using an item much but you think you might start using it more often.  Try putting these items in boxes, and put the date on the box.  If you need something from the box, go get it and then find it a home in your kitchen.  After six months, evaluate what is left in the boxes and see if you are ready to part with them then.

Are you looking for a worthy destination for your decluttered items? Many women’s shelters accept donations of good used housewares for women who are starting over after leaving abusive relationships. Imagine how much help all your extra stuff will be to someone who really needs it, and what a blessing it will be for you to clear these unneeded items from your home!

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Related posts:

• How to Declutter Your Kitchen – Part I
• 7 Steps to Declutter Your Home in 15 Minutes a Day

Imagine what it will be like when your kitchen is free of clutter. A decluttered kitchen is remarkably easy to keep clean and tidy. You will know what food you have on hand, and you will know that it is all fresh. You won’t worry whether the clutter is hiding any old or spilled food that could be attracting bugs or rodents. With your work spaces cleared and a kitchen stocked with only the fresh food that you need, it’s easy to prepare and cook meals, which is better for your budget and for your health.

The Basics

If you haven’t read the article 7 Steps to Declutter Your Home in 15 Minutes a Day take some time to read it now. This is the basic set of instructions for decluttering your home.  Sticking to 15 minutes a day will eliminate clutter surprisingly fast, but without the burnout that we experience when we crisis clean.

Make sure to tackle only what you can manage in 15 minutes: clearing out the fridge, clearing off the kitchen table or a counter or two, clearing out a couple of drawers or a cabinet. You don’t want to find yourself with a bunch of stuff to put back away when your 15 minutes of decluttering is through.

Don’t focus on cleaning until the kitchen is fully decluttered. It’s fine to sweep up the dust bunnies quickly or wipe down a shelf you have just cleared, but don’t get wrapped up in perfectionistic deep cleaning. You can do a thorough clean when the clutter is gone.

Decluttering the Food

The goal of decluttering the food is to get rid of any food that you are not confident is fresh and that you are not certain you will use.  This is the time to get rid of the “maybe” stuff. Please don’t hang on to any food you have any doubts about at this point — you deserve food that is fresh and good.

I know it’s hard for us to “waste” food, especially if we have ever experienced financial hardship in our lives. But trust that you are making room for health and abundance to enter your life by getting rid of the clutter; food that is no longer fresh is simply clutter that you need to clear out to make room for a better life.

Spices/condiments/grains etc.  Toss any dry goods that you have had for more than 9 months or a year at most. Make a shopping list to replace only what you truly use. If you can’t remember when you bought something, toss it. If you can’t remember when you last used an ingredient, don’t put it on your replacement list.

Freezer. Get rid of any food that has been in the freezer more than six months. Get rid of anything in your freezer that is a non-food item. (If you have room in the freezer after you declutter, consider keeping your dried flours, rice, grains and beans in the freezer.  They stay fresh for much longer and you don’t have to worry about pests.)

Fridge. If you have any jams, pickles, etc. that have been open for more than three months, toss them.

Canned goods. Get rid of anything that is more than a couple of years old. If you have canned goods that are less than two years old and you haven’t used them because you don’t like or don’t need the food, put these into a bag and put them by the front door to drop off at the food bank (or pass it along to a friend).

Coming up in Part II: Decluttering your kitchen tools, appliances, pots and pans etc.

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Related posts:

• How to Declutter Your Kitchen – Part II
• 7 Steps to Declutter Your Home in 15 Minutes a Day
• Tweak: Declutter Daily
• Are You Churning or Decluttering?

Vietnam Veterans of America is “The only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families.” In order to raise funds, the VVA accepts donations of good used items which they auction off in order to help fund their worthwhile work.

You can see if your area is served by the pickup service and arrange a pickup at the VVA’s site, www.ScheduleAPickup.com.

According to VVA, you do not need to be home when the driver picks up your goods. They will provide a tax receipt for your donation. The service is not available in all areas, but fill out a free registration to check to see if you are in an area served by pickup

Remember to only donate items that are truly in good condition and useful; sadly, charities that collect used item donations spend huge amounts of money every year sending unusable donations to landfills.

Thanks to Unclutter for the tip!

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Haven’t we all said things like this before?

• If I get rid of this wedding vase, I’ll feel guilty.
• But I might need seven sleeping bags one day.
• I think this brooch/chair/ugly knickknack might be valuable again.
• If I put the bills away, I’ll never pay them on time.
• I want this chartreuse muumuu to go to a good home.
• I want to declutter, but I can’t get motivated.

Go read the article now to get some great solutions for these dilemmas — and bookmark the article

What are your favorite non-reasons for holding on to clutter?

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• Dealing with Clothing Clutter
• Anti-Hoarding Strategies from a Hoarding Therapist

The UCLA treatment program concentrates on helping hoarders with discarding clutter, organizing kept items, preventing incoming clutter and introducing alternative behaviors. Therefore, I’ve boiled down the article’s strategies into these four categories.

Discarding

The program’s patients choose a single room to start decluttering and stick with that room until it is cleared. (I too advise this approach in my post “7 Steps to Declutter Your Home in 15 Minutes a Day.” ) It helps to choose an arbitrary clutter-clearing path around the room and stick with it. They handle items once, and handle every item — no sifting.

When discarding items during the intensive treatment program, hoarders learn to rate their anxiety on a scale and then monitor the anxiety over time — the anxiety always decreases. The anxiety decreases faster if the discarded item is out of sight (the old out of sight, out of mind). When discarding, notice that nothing terrible happens after getting rid of a valuable-seeming item; this will help make it easier to make future clutter discarding decisions.

When discarding items, ask yourself:

• What’s the worst thing that would happen if I didn’t have this item?
• What do I think other people do with similar items?
• If I need this information later, how could I access it if I throw this away now? (Helpful with paper clutter.)

Organizing

People who hoard tend to like to keep things out in plain sight because they are afraid that they will forget about the item or what it represents if it is put away. (I am very much this way, especially with paper clutter. Now that the house is virtually clutter-free, I can use this “in plain sight” trick effectively to help me remember things — for example, I’ll put my shopping basket in front of the door in the morning so I don’t forget it.)

Hoarders also tend to categorize items differently from non-hoarders, which means that we may sort and store items in inefficient, complicated ways. Over-categorizing is a common problem.

Once clutter has been cleared from a room or an area, it’s best to start using that area for its intended purpose right away. For example, relax on your couch, sleep on your bed, or use your kitchen counters and table for preparing and eating food. Empty the trash every day.

Preventing Incoming Clutter

Discontinue as many subscriptions to magazines, newsletters and catalogs as possible.

If shopping is a problem, it can be helpful to practice going into stores and resisting the urge to buy. Hoarders with serious shopping problems could place credit cards with trusted family or friends. (I found the information on minimizing incoming clutter to be rather sparse in the article. This is a big issue for a lot of people.)

Introducing Alternative Behaviors

People who hoard tend to be resistant to the idea of schedules and routines, but structure really helps. A pattern of late nights and sleeping in is a common problem, and so it’s good to get back to a regular sleep/wake routine (see the Get Enough Sleep Tweak posts). The therapists believe that normalizing your sleep routine can also help with depression.

As hoarders, we tend to be all or nothing people. When our homes are overwhelmed with clutter, we tend to spend all our time either trying to cope with the mess or hiding from it in bed (this sounds familiar and I would add “or on the computer”). The program works on helping the hoarder create a balance of work, recreation and rest.

Hoarding patients develop a simple daily routine that includes emptying trash, doing dishes and sorting mail. They set a specific day of the week to do laundry and pay bills.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of UCLA’s treatment program comes down to the motivation of the participants, and I would bet that this is always true of any attempt to overcome or manage hoarding tendencies.

But if you are a hoarder, you are here reading this right now, which means that you are probably already highly motivated to change your life. Many hoarders, tragically, do not seem to believe that there is a problem at all and completely resist the idea of changing. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that there is hope even for those who are unable to get into intensive treatment — gradual, small improvements in routines and ways of doing things can be transformative!

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Well, I didn’t really want the kitties either, to be honest, but still my heart kind of ached at the idea of getting rid of things that once held meaning for my used-to-be-little boy. The kitties spent the last two weeks on my otherwise uncluttered desk.

Today I had a flash of brilliance. We live on a busy street with lots of pedestrian traffic, and lots of kids. I passed the kitties over to my husband and asked him to walk them a block or two away and find a wall to put them on next to the sidewalk. In my imaginings, a child would find the kitties and treasure them (for a while at least). Thinking this, I could part with the figurines. “But take a picture!” I begged my hubby. I knew I would want to tell this story on my blog.

Hilarity ensued. When Martin found a nice wall for the kitties and put them up there, the smaller one crashed to the ground and broke! A tragic loss But here is a picture of the lone surviving kitty, waiting for its new owner.

Sometimes it really is hard for us to part with our clutter. People like us who have clutter and hoarding issues tend to imbue objects with intense emotional significance, and we sometimes even feel guilt toward the objects themselves when we are ready to release them from our lives. When you run into a quandary like this, consider whether there is a creative way you can part with the item without anxiety You might be surprised at what you dream up!

This is a Friday Fun post. 

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• A New “Now” Picture

Believe me, if you do this every day you will eventually be free of clutter — faster than you think. Remember, your house did not get cluttered overnight, and it doesn’t need to get cleared out overnight either. Start today and steadily get rid of the clutter in little chunks one day at a time.

It’s easy to declutter — just follow these seven steps:

1. Pick a room. Many people find that it’s easiest to focus on decluttering one room at a time. I suggest starting with the kitchen — chances are, it has the least clutter, and a decluttered kitchen makes it easier to prepare nutritious food for you and your family. Or you could start with your bedroom to create a haven of peace for yourself! Just choose a room and move on to the next step.
2. Start with the obvious garbage, if there is any. Go around with a trash bag and load it up. As you fill a bag, immediately put it next to your door or in the garage, ready to go out at the curb on your next garbage day. The sooner it’s out the door and out of your life, the better!
3. Get your baskets. Once the obvious garbage is gone from the room, you’re ready to declutter. Get three boxes or baskets and label them Trash, Donate and Relocate (for anything that belongs in a room other than the one you’re decluttering).
4. Choose a spot in the room to start decluttering. You can pick the spot that bugs you the most, or just start at the door and work your way around the room clockwise or counterclockwise. Maybe you would like to start decluttering the areas where cluttering is getting in the way of the purpose of the room (e.g. clear the clutter from the bed or from the diningroom table). It’s not important where you start — just start.
5. Start decluttering (remember, only 15 minutes a day!). Start at the top of the pile of clutter, and as you pick up each item, if you don’t need or love the item, or if it doesn’t belong in that room, toss it in a basket — Trash, Donate or Relocate.
6. At the end of 15 minutes, stop decluttering! Dump your Trash basket into one of your garbage bags and put it with the rest of the trash for garbage pickup. Put your Donate items into a box for Goodwill and put it by the door. As soon as this box is full, you’ll be putting it in your car to drop off or arranging for someone to pick it up. Finally, go around your house with the Relocate basket and put those items in the room they belong (don’t worry about perfect placement, just get them into the right room for now). Put your baskets away for tomorrow.
7. Now, reward yourself for a job well done! Have a bubble bath or put your feet up and enjoy some time with a book, a favorite TV show. Great work!

Remember, spend only 15 minutes a day decluttering. You can get accomplish a LOT in 15 minutes — a couple of bags of trash gone, a bag of clothing or a box of books to donate or a refrigerator or cupboard cleared of out-of-date or unwanted stuff.

The idea behind decluttering is to get as much of the clutter as possible out of your house without unnecessary delay. Beware of the temptation to churn the clutter.

We have hoarding and clutter issues in part because of perfectionism. While you are decluttering, it’s natural to have feelings of indecision and anxiety when deciding what to do with an item. Remember, we all make mistakes. If you throw away or give away a few items that you later wish you hadn’t, it’s a small price to pay for a peaceful, clutter-free home. Keep your focus on clearing the clutter out the door and remember that you are creating space for the abundance and wellbeing to flow into your life.

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Related posts:

• How to Declutter Your Kitchen – Part I
• Tweak: Declutter Daily
• How to Declutter Your Kitchen – Part II
• Anti-Hoarding Strategies from a Hoarding Therapist
• Are You Churning or Decluttering?

It’s not that I hadn’t been doing laundry, mind you.  A couple of times a week I would wash three or four loads in a panicked laundry marathon.  (Sunday nights were popular because it would dawn on me, “What the heck are we all going to wear tomorrow??!”)  But since I was doing laundry under pressure, I would go through the huge heap trying to piece together enough outfits to get us all through a couple of days.  I couldn’t just wash everything because there was so much dirty laundry.

What happens when you can’t find missing socks in the chaos (hint: check under the kids’ beds and even between their sheets!)?   You guessed it — it seemed like I was always asking Martin to pop into Walmart and pick up yet another six-pack of socks or underwear because there were never enough.  When you’ve forgotten several favorite pairs of jeans or dresses at the bottom of a heap of clothes, it’s easy to think that you need to shop for more clothes because you have nothing to wear.

When I decided something had to be done,  I started a new routine:  washing, drying and putting away two loads of laundry per day, every day. In my large capacity washer, this was about twice as much laundry as our family of five generated on an ongoing basis, so I figured I’d be catching up on the backlog of laundry at the rate of one load a day.

Well, I did two loads of laundry a day almost every single day, and Mount Washmore gradually — very gradually — became smaller and smaller.  Believe it or not, it took more than a month to get to “bare floor” status.  This means that our family of five had more than 30 loads worth of backlogged dirty laundry!

Decluttering the Clothing

As I sorted and folded the clean laundry every day, I separated each item into one of three piles:

• Keep: the item was in good condition, still fit, and looked nice;
• Throw Away: the item was torn, stained, worn out, etc.;
• Donate: the item was in good condition but no longer fit or, if it did fit, it didn’t suit its owner.

Why didn’t I just trash the junky clothes without washing them?  This is where the crazy comes in     To this day, I find it nearly impossible to throw out an item of clothing that is dirty.  What would the garbagemen think??

I have to tell you that it was very challenging also to give some of the clothing away, my clothing in particular.  What if I gained weight and needed those bigger clothes?  What if I lost weight and could wear the smaller clothes again?  Well, the truth of the matter is that most of the clothes that didn’t fit me were also very dated, and if you look at your clothing critically you may find the same thing.  This anxiety that I had was compounded by the fact that I had suffered poverty in my teen and young adult years and I worried that I would find myself too broke to buy more clothing in the future when I needed it.  Well, that worry proved to be unfounded and I now truly believe that clearing out the clutter opens the door to abundance in our lives.

So I pushed forward through the anxiety and continued to trash and donate all the clothing that was in bad shape, didn’t fit, or that we just didn’t like.  Every time a donation bag was filled I put it in my minivan and made a point of dropping it off the next time I went by the clothing donation box.  I did not keep count but I know that I must have donated at least 12 huge bags of clothing.  It was unbelievable.  Even after tossing and donating every item we didn’t love, the whole family had more good, clean clothing than we knew — and so many socks that I did not buy socks again for at least a couple of years!

A nice side effect of dealing with the clothing clutter?  My daily habit of doing laundry stuck with me and became my Laundry Routine.

* Thanks to the wonderful FlyLady for this unforgettable expression.

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Related posts:

• Tweak: Laundry Routine
• Tweak: Declutter Daily
• The Top 6 Non-Reasons for Clutter

What does the word “churn” mean?  In the old days, pioneers churned milk to make butter, vigorously mixing the milk up and down in the butterchurn until the butterfat formed a clump.  Unethical stockbrokers are said to be churning stocks when they trade excessively — rearranging money in their clients’ portfolios needlessly — in order to earn higher commissions.  When we churn our clutter, we’re attempting to move it around and reorganize it, but the end result is still that we have homes filled with stuff we don’t need, don’t love and don’t use.  This clutter is smothering us.

When you add the Declutter Daily tweak to your routine, beware of the urge to simply churn the clutter.  There is no way to really achieve a peaceful home without clearing the clutter right out the door.  Anything that you don’t use regularly and/or love needs to be recycled, given away or simply thrown out.  Before you know it, 15 minutes of decluttering a day is going to give you room to breathe and thrive in your home.

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• Decluttering Craft Supplies and Tools — Things to Think About

The desk was piled high with mountains of paper, empty coffee cups, CDs, assorted junk and garbage and who knows what else.  The bedroom in which the desk stood was crowded with cardboard boxes of clothes, plastic totes full of clothes and heaps of clothes.  There were shopping bags full of papers.  There were narrow paths to get around the room.  Of course, the bed was unmade.

From the desk I could see the laundry room that adjoined the bedroom.  The laundry room floor was entirely covered by an 18-inch deep pile of dirty clothes.  I had to step up onto the dirty clothes to do wash, and sometimes I would have to move the heap away from the dryer door so that it would open and close.*

The kids rooms were also piled high with junk.  With nobody to teach them how to stay organized and get rid of what they no longer needed, how could it be any different?

The living room was also filled with clutter.  Sometimes we’d manage to get it cleared out down to the bare floor, but toys and junk piled up again quickly.

The kitchen typically had a pile of “recycling” in the corner — but really, when there’s a big pile of empty bottles and cans it looks more like trash than recycling, doesn’t it?  More often than not the counters were piled high with dirty dishes waiting patiently to be washed, sometimes for days.

To tell the truth, the clutter had been even worse at times in the years before that fateful day, but I had already been working what would become the Tweaks System.  Regular grocery shopping and cooking at home meant that the kitchen had to at least be functional.  The junk food packaging piles from my darkest times were already a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, the house was incredibly disorganized and cluttered and I knew I wanted this to change.  I just had no idea how — the task of getting it all cleaned up seemed absolutely overwhelming.

Then, on a message board I found a post about an organizational site called FlyLady run by a wonderful lady named Marla Cilley.  Her site put a name to what our family was living in:  C.H.A.O.S. , or Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome.  How apt, because I would panic if we had unexpected drop-in guests!

According to FlyLady, the first step in dealing with a chaotic disorganized home is to get rid of the clutter — and anything you don’t use frequently or wholeheartedly love is clutter.  You can’t clean around clutter, you have to just get rid of it.  And she is absolutely right.

Following FlyLady’s instructions, I started to clear up our clutter that very day, spending only 15 minutes per day on the task. This is critical.  For those of us with serious clutter and hoarding problems, the clutter can be so overwhelming that we can easily become overwhelmed and burned out from trying to deal with it.  As Marla says, our homes did not get cluttered overnight, and they don’t have to get cleared out overnight either.

Once I committed to clearing out clutter a little bit every day — and of course I sometimes neglected the task but then I just got right back on the wagon — our home gradually became clear of junk.  I think it took about six months total!  But once the junk was gone I couldn’t believe how much easier life got.

*FlyLady calls this phenomenon “Mount Washmore”

Remember:

Choose no more than one tweak per month – don’t try to pile them on!  Practicing a single tweak for at least a full month gives you the best chance of forming a real habit and life change.  Do not try to add another tweak until the previous tweak has become a habitual part of your life (this can sometimes take longer than a month).

This is all about loving yourself and creating a joyful life! Therefore, when choosing a new tweak to practice, pick one that is appealing and gives you a sense of anticipation.

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorywithserifs/

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• Tweak: Laundry Routine
• Tweak: Daily Probiotics