Articles for mom
We all have them, those little pieces of papers called receipts in the bottom of our purse, the drawer, the desk, your work bag, maybe even your glove compartment! Receipts are a large part of our every growing Paper Clutter. I have found a way to get them organized for free. You can too !
I own my own small business and the receipts can be a bit overwhelming, I easily spend a total of 3-4 hours a month organizing and entering receipts into an excel chart. How much valuable time are you spending organizing your receipts. Those receipts you may be saving for budget purposes, receipts for tax purposes, receipts for work, receipts for business ? Regardless of the reasons why you keep a hold of them, if you consider your time is worth at LEAST $10.00 an hour then you should check out ShoeBox start as a free member and scan and upload those recipts. Organize your receipts into groups, export them as excel or PDF.
I KNOW i spend more then 2 hours a month dealing with all these receipts they are right up there with all the paper bills for me (we will talk about those another day !). So now I simply place them all into an envelope (I convinced my 9 year old son to address them for me;) and mail them away and awaiting them to show up on Shoe Box where I can save them and have them ready for tax season.
I also organize my childcare related receipts and children’s medical and activity receipts so that I can easily send Dad a copy so he knows what his share of expenses are and it keeps it readily available if needed in the future.
So for $20.00 and the cost of a stamp I have one more thing you will NEVER see on this Busy mom’s to do list! No more organizing and entering receipts. Join me in the Receipt Revolution Moms!
The electronic organizer of choice for this busy mom has always been a Palm. I have never been able to let go of my “paper” mom planner but my palm has always complimented my paper based family Organization systems.
Last fall I signed up for a new cell phone and went with a Palm Treo Smart phone. Which leads me to my morning discovery …. Splash ID. I have encountered some technical difficulties with Vista on my work computer and one of the problems is that I have to reload all my email accounts for work which in turn pointed out a glaring concern in my organization system. I have NO one place to store passwords. OK, so I do, a little page in the back of my dayplanner that I attempt to encrypt with my own secret code. OK, I am not five anymore and unlike my son who loves breaking codes, I can’t remember what codes I used when I created some of these passwords!
Of course I have also learned that we need STRONG passwords and really shouldn’t be using the same password for all of our accounts (which i have remedied) but now I really can’t recall half my passwords.
So this morning I downloaded the 30 day trial of Splash ID and will be upgrading to a paid version if this works.
If you aren’t a palm user this program also works with your blackberry and a variety of other hand helds as well.
Click here to download your 30 day trial and see if it works for you.
It’s a great goal for next week to all you busy moms … create a system for storing all your memberships and passwords in one place.
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It is not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it” – Margaret Thatcher
I don’t know about you other moms, but those days when I lounge around doing nothing it’s usually because I have mentally shut down a sure sign that this mom hasn’t been looking after herself. When I studied Early Childhood Education one of my professors actually encouraged us to take care of our selfs with a mental health day as required. I learned that for me a morning walk and sneaking away (even if it meant cutting class) to hit the rowing machine at the gym.
Keeping mom healthy isn’t just about eating right and getting exercise. Those morning walks may count for exercise but it really those walks are about my state of mind. Clearing my thoughts, keeping things in perspective.
Our mental outlook not only helps us physically, studies of optimists found that those at age 25 were significantly healthier at ages 45 and 60 than those who were pessimists*.
Wouldn’t it be great to hold the following powers in your super mom hand ?
- less stress (think of your to do list)
- more patience (think of the morning school rush)
- cognitive clarity ( a presentation at work ?)
- a higher rate of acheivment in most areas of your life
Aren’t these things we want in our lives and to pass onto our children ?
Optimism; some of us may be born with it but the great news is the rest of us can choose it. By modelling optimism, we can install this trait in our children.
Maryann Troiani, Psy.D. offers five great tips to feel super optimistic in her article
5 Ways To Feel Super-Optimistic: Tips for Your Health, Wealth, & Career Success.
Take a moment to write them down … you just may see those super mom powers increasing this week!
*Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman’s scientific articles.
We discovered a great online Task manager that will help you manage your household or business tasks.
Help your older children learn to break assignments and projects into steps, with a start and end date. To register simply Visit Task Anyone and give it a try.
Create your task with one click, adding a start date, end date and priority.
Send your task to others using the mail features available.
I am currently using this service to organize some projects I am in charge of at my children’s school, and a home improvement project as well !
If you are a busy mom juggling home and work this tool may help you organize your tasks, project planning online and with their printable checklist feature.
~Organized MOM
I have been working a lot over the last few days. Creating contact lists for one of my clients, reviewing the adserver beta version for another, and preparing to Re-launch Organizedfamilies.com.
While researching goal setting resources yesterday afternoon I stumbled across Life Tango. A website that helps you determine, map, and reach your goals. We all have personal goals and business goals. I have found that using a goal setting approach to project planning has always helped me stay on course so I decided to give Life Tango a try for one of my business goals for the year.
After registering, I created my goal and about 6 milestones I have to reach in the next two months to stay on track.
Do you have a goal that you are trying to reach ? I challenge you to join Life Tango or check out some Goal setting programs to help you reach your goals.
Of course when ever I wander to a new topic I immediately want to google I believe my “google it addiction” is right up there with my chocolate addiction. Today I stood and watched my significant other hum and haw about looking for directions lost during my bathroom renovation to install the new light fixture my answer “google it”, when my son asks me a question I answer and always follow up with hey lets go “google it”
I googled “mom goal setting” to see if I could find other moms online looking for information about goal setting. The title Mom Defrazzler had me laughing even before i opened the blog. Mom Frazzled yes this would be most moms I know at some point during the day. After finding the front page of the blog I discovered she was discussing the importance of visualizing and writing down your goals. Which I Was working on myself this week.
Here are some other paid programs to help with goal setting. I am hoping to get the chance to review some of these over the year (another business goal).
Goal Pro: 30 day free trial – The journal and scratch pad features are great.
Goal Maker: Great for teams, over come procrastination, motivational, allos you to assign goals and tasks.
Affirmware’s Sculptor 3: This goal setting software is about affirming your goals and reaching your dreams. Ten minutes a day to reach your top three dreams or goals.
It may take a bit of time to locate a program that works for you, but once you find one the rewards of reaching your business goals faster will be worth the time investment.
