Humor

April 1 is the perfect day to share with you these 10 truly awesome organizing tips.

They could dramatically change your life. Use them at your own peril!

1. Laundry

Save enormous time and expense when it comes to washing your clothes. How? Stop washing them.

Instead, continue to wear your apparel until people start to complain or the dog will no longer sit next to you. Then abandon the attire at a charity bin drive-by – on your way to re-stock at the mall.

2. Filing

Do you procrastinate on filing because you’re never sure in what category something belongs? Well that’s about to change.

Whenever you have an item you want to file, give the new item its very own category. It looks better if you make up a nice label and suspension file, too. Genius!

3. Kids’ lunches

Provide each child with a mini bar fridge to keep near a power point at school (staff rooms, classrooms and principle’s offices will all suffice).

Then each Monday, stock up each child with a loaf of bread, luncheon meats, a tomato and some mustard. Hey presto – the lunches virtually make themselves!

4. Broken shower screen/Always running out of toilet paper

Kill two bathroom-birds with one clever stone. First, buy toilet paper in bulk. Then, fashion a fortress around the shower, made entirely of toilet rolls.

Voila – instant shower screen, plus a handy, ready-to-grab stock of TP. (Warning: Keep movement in the shower to a minimum. Or take a bath.)

5. Cheap petrol

Don’t spend more than you have to on petrol. Go where the bargains are – which is generally petrol stations out in the country.

Why not make a family day of it? Load the kids in the car and drive around the dustier roads till you find an offer that’s too good to refuse.

6. Garden

Want to enjoy the thrill of spring blossoms but tired of all the time and care it takes?

Just pop on over to your local plastic-flower warehouse and fill up your basket with azaleas, bougainvilleas, camellias, daffodils… (you get the idea – I’m doing an alphabetical thing here). When you get home, ‘plant’ the blooms in your garden. Install a outdoor bench and enjoy. Lovely!

7. Anti Aging

Forget Botox, cosmetic surgery and expensive creams. This priceless strategy is guaranteed to have people thinking you look half your age.

Here’s what you do. When someone asks your age, double it. Then sit back and drink in the compliments. You’ll have everyone wanting to know your secret.

8. Clutter guilt

Use this tip to rid yourself of clutter-related guilt forever.

Purchase a range of bins, barrels, boxes, filing cabinets, wardrobe systems, hampers and sundry organizing paraphernalia and arrange it throughout your home. Whenever you look at these storage solutions, you’ll realize how ugly, anal and time consuming they are. Suddenly your once-maligned clutter will seem like a lovable – but scruffy – member of the family. Who’s a cute pile of old magazines? You are! Yes you are!

9. Tasks

With this system you’ll be free of cumbersome diaries and planners forever, yet grow in productivity and time management. It’s simple, too – all that’s required is to limit your to-do list to a maximum of 10 items at a time.

Start with any 10 of your current tasks. Next, explain to your boss, colleagues and underlings that your current task quota is filled, but that you’ll be happy to accept new to-do items as soon as a space opens up. Expect a Jerry Maguire-like reaction. But better.

10. Garage

Is your garage so full of stuff there’s nowhere to park your car? This solution is so elegantly simple you’ll wonder why you never thought of it yourself.

All you have to do is move all your garage crap inside your house. Did someone say ‘instant car space’? Back her in, Eddy!

Image by Community Friend

Did you like this post? Please social bookmark it!

Sick and tired of hearing how important relationships are?

On Valentine’s Day it’s timely to remember those who don’t want to enjoy good relationships.

Follow these [lighthearted!] tips and you need never again concern yourself with having good (or any) relationships – whether with romantic partners, family or friends.

1. Be Right. Always.

Acknowledging mistakes and extreme behavior such as saying sorry is for wimps.

A better strategy is to insist you’re right, no matter what.

If your pigheadedness is met with logical arguments or convincing persuasion, resort to personal attacks (you smell), distractions (have you gained weight?) or all-purpose retorts (you are!).

2. Let Yourself Go

If someone really loves you, it shouldn’t matter that you make no effort to look after yourself.

People who want good relationships try to remain appealing to their loved ones – looking good, being interesting, maintaining personal pride.

Abandoning such pretentions means never having to say ‘pass the remote’.

3. Expect them to know what you want

It takes a certain amount of self awareness and thought to work out what disappoints you and to ask for something different from your loved ones.

Don’t waste your time and brain cells on this; let them work it out. Really, you’ve got better things to do – isn’t Jerry Springer on?

4. Sulk

Expressing your feelings and negotiating for what you want is a fast train to good-relationsville. Get off now!

Instead, sulk. It keeps the other person clueless so that deeper bonding is forestalled. Plus, it’s really unattractive and annoying, helping erode any lingering loving feelings your loved one may harbor.

5. Be needy

Over-reliance on your loved one is a great way to turn them off.

Develop a pathological need for reassurance, insecurity and inability to do anything yourself. Before you know it, Bob’s your uncle. And your loved one’s your mother. Sweet.

6. Be irrational

This is a toughie, because flashes of rationality can creep up on even the most hardened anti-relationshiper. Instead, commit to drama, histrionics, hysteria.

Excellent strategies include bringing up irrelevant points, throwing things and bursting into tears. Also, make taking extreme offense your default setting; if you can take offense, do take it, no matter how much you suspect your loved one didn’t mean it that way.

Seeing them as human, like you, only leaves the door open to rational understanding. Slam it shut!

7. Be aggressive

Develop a persona of easily yelling, shouting, screaming, hurling abuse – all are good.

The more anxious the other person feels about raising issues with you, the more likely they’ll keep things to themselves. This saves you from hearing about their pesky concerns while increasing their frustration till they’re so fed up they give up. It’s win-win!

8. Never move on

Harbor all past resentments. Letting go leaves you bereft when you need ammunition during completely unrelated arguments.

Buy a notebook (might I suggest a very large one) and keep it – and your heart – filled with bitterness. In no time your relationships will need more than cortical stimulators to resuscitate them.

9. Assume the worst

About the biggest mistake you can make is to assume your loved ones love you, and to see them and their behavior through this filter.

It will put you in the disconcerting position of thinking they have good reasons for things, hearing them out, and in alarming situations, realizing you misjudged them.

Instead, assume they hate you, are out to get you, and wish to see you perish in a steaming cauldron of rank gym socks. After all, isn’t that more likely?

10. Complain constantly

I’ve saved this gem till last because even robust relationships that can survive a lot will struggle in the face of non-stop negativity.

People have their own concerns, worries and insecurities, so continually assaulting them with a barrage of ceaseless complaint will eventually wear down the best of them. Add a whiny tone, unrelenting personal criticism and deep, slow sighs and you’ll be howling ‘I am a rock, I am an island’ in no time flat (and if you sing flat, that’s a bonus).

Don’t suffer the torment of love, friendship and companionship one minute longer.

Put these tips into practice with your friends and loved ones and you’ll – Hey! Where’d everyone go?

Image by James Jordan

Did you like this post? Please social bookmark it!