Dear Friends,

It’s two days until Thanksgiving. You have been busy with school with your kids. You have been working on your routines, but you aren’t quite there. You think about the Weekly Home Blessings, but it’s been hard to fit them into your day. Now, you are looking around and wondering how you will be ready for Thanksgiving.

First, take a deep breath. Fill up your water bottle. Put on your lace up shoes.

The FlyLady wrote an article on Crisis Cleaning. It will help you get ready for the Holiday this week. You will need to use your timer and listen when it tells you time is up. Enlist the help of your children. You can do this!

Crisis Cleaning is not meant to be the way you clean your home. You need to work on your habits a little at a time. You need to incorporate a quick Zone Mission and a quick Home Blessing each day. It fits best for me to do one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

If you are not doing swish and swipe in your bathroom, I want you to do it this week. It takes 2 minutes or less. If you are taking 15 minutes, you are taking too long. Declutter the top of the bathroom counter and leave it decluttered. It makes wiping the sink and counter a breeze.

Everyone needs to pick up behind themselves. I do not mean for you to be a drill sergeant about this. Ask each person nicely to pick up behind themselves. If they are resistant, remember that you control many things in the house. Collect power cords to devices and the WiFi. Collect devices. Pull the plug on the TV. Stay home. Motivation can be found.

You might have mountains of laundry (clean or dirty). Work as a team to get it under control. Teach your children to do laundry. Teach them ALL of the steps (sort, wash, dry, fold/hang, put away). If things are hung up quickly from the dryer, you won’t have as much to iron. I do very little ironing.

Flat surfaces are hot spot magnets. A friend recently told me that she cleared a side table and moved it from the Living Room because it was such a clutter magnet in the Living Room.

Have you been decluttering and have a pile of stuff in your house? Put it in your car and drop it off today or tomorrow. Stop trying to figure out the best place to donate it and just do it.

Where else do you have issues in your home? You can do this!

Your Home Blessing for today is to dust and vacuum.

My menu plan for Tuesday is beef roast, potatoes, and a salad.