What To Clean If You Only Have 15 Minutes

OK – Panic time. The fill-in-the-blank called and they will be knocking on your front door in 15 minutes.  You fix your hair, get the kids to wipe the chocolate off their faces and send them to straighten their rooms. 


Then, you turn around to survey the damage in the rest of the house. Yikes! Like your momma always says, it looks like a tornado tore a path through your home.  You’ve got approximately 14 minutes left. What do you attack first to get the most bang for your cleaning buck?


1. Pick stuff off the floor. It always makes such a difference to actually “see” the carpet. If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated playroom for the kids’ toys, close the door. Easy. If not, keep an extra laundry basket handy and just fill it up. Don’t bother sorting, just scoop up all the toys and “stuff” and move on. If your vacuum is easy to use, run it quickly. If it is a pain to find it and deal with the cord, forget about it. 


2. Head into the kitchen. If you have piles of dirty dishes everywhere, you have two choices. You could try to load the dishwasher. It might, however, be easier to rinse everything quickly, fill the sink with soapy water and pile it all in. Don’t worry about actually washing them. Let your company think they interrupted you. Give the counters a once over with the sponge or a wipe so nothing sticky is left for your guests to discover. Done. 


Get more tips like these in 30 Days to an Organized Home


3. Times ticking down. Run over to the bathroom. Nothing is more embarrassing than having someone ask to use your bathroom when you just know it is gross. Toss all the toys in the tub and close the curtain. Get everything off the counter and into a drawer. Grab a bleach wipe and wipe down the counter, the faucet, the sink and the toilet. Grab a wipe made just for mirrors and get that toothpaste spray that you have been purposely ignoring off the mirror. If you can, clean the toilet bowl as well. Be sure there is toilet paper. 


4. Just a minute or two left. Straighten the cushions on the sofa. Toss the throws the way the magazine stylists do instead of having piling them up like a pillow. Corral all the stuff in the shoe pile and hang up the coats.


Get more tips like these in 30 Days to an Organized Home


That’s it. 


That’s all you’ve got time for but this little list should make everything more presentable. Whether you are a neat freak or on the messy side, we all have days where we get caught off-guard. It happens. The point to remember is that you only need to give the “illusion” of clean. No one is going to open your closets or drawers. No one is going to peak behind closed doors. At least, I hope not. 


Get more tips like these in 30 Days to an Organized Home

How to Improve Your Self-image

Could your self esteem have fallen on the wayside just like the leaves from the trees or gone into hibernation with the bears? Without wasting more time, start making preparation for your lost esteem. Regardless whether your self confidence is fading, growing stronger or have already disappeared; it makes a lot of sense for us to nurture it. Your self appreciation powers you up to withstand unpleasant and tough times without even flinching. We get bliss and happiness when living is easy. 

The following are effective means that can be applied to improve your self confidence through enhancing your self image.

Outline all your positive qualities:

Focus on your strengths. List all assets and strengths that make you better such as experiences, skills, social and physical resources and talents among other things that make you feel great about yourself. Include all the compliments that you have been given by others. Letting yourself remember all your valuable assets is a sure way to keep you motivated to face each new day with greater self-esteem.

Accept yourself:

When you realize that you are a one desirable package as opposed to being a single individual item, your self image is greatly enhanced. Admit that you are not above reproach but the few shortcomings should not undermine your entire intricate, multifaceted and desirable package. Consider taking your photograph where you are broadly smiling and paste it in a suitable place such as a bathroom mirror. Each time you look at the smile, the image should help you to think of the positive characteristics that make you.

Trust in your competence:

Make a list of the challenges that you have successfully overcome. This increases your self appreciation since you get confidence that if you tacked other problems in the past successfully, at least you have knowledge, ingenuity and skills that can help you to combat the new challenge. Your past success is very essential in enhancing your courage. If you doubt your capability, just take note of al the challenges you have successfully accomplished irrespective of how small they might have been. Ensure to congratulate yourself if the challenge required greater effort and pat yourself on the back.

Believe in your worth:

This is improvement of your self image. You need to recognize that you are important and sometimes you will have to disappoint others to accomplish your goals. Just think of essential things that you would like to do and get them done. Demand for what you want and create a room for saying no for the things that are not very good for you. When you accept that you also deserve respect, you will have the self confidence to do what you desire whether others are approving it or not. 

Flash back:

Just try to think about some recent misfortunes you had and things went amiss. Compel yourself to name at least 5 things that you successfully combated even after some things having gone amiss. This is a sure way of enhancing your self image and self worth too.  

Overcoming Poor Behavioral Pattern

It is true that everyone needs positive and high self esteem in order for them to live a desirable life. However, your self confidence might be eroded by poor behavioral pattern. If you have too much esteem you are likely to become a social snob and difficult character to deal with. Establishing the difference between healthy and unhealthy self esteem can sometimes be hard to distinguish. Luckily, here is all the information you need to learn about unhealthy behavioral patterns that would in turn boost your self-esteem.

Being too full of ourselves:

If you cannot appreciate correction when you make mistakes, this is unhealthy behavior. You are so confident in yourself that you don’t think you can make a mistake or require advice from other people. There is no one with all skills and ability to accomplish all tasks perfectly. It is crucial to believe and value your personal decisions but if it goes to the extent where you cannot accept positive correction or advice from others, you are overconfident and this is likely to do you more harm than good to your self worth when you will make mistakes that you cannot fix by your own.

Arrogance:

This is a feeling of superiority. Extreme self confidence is a major cause of this condition.  The esteem easily leads the patient to get engaged in risky activities such as criminal activities. Over trusting in your skills and talents may hinder you from progressing. It is essential to share ideas and learn from others what you don’t know.

Egocentric:

Characteristics of unhealthy self love and vanity are other common self appreciation characteristics that show you have unhealthy self esteem. You believe that only what you have done surpass standard quality or are worthy. Healthy esteem does allow a chance of listening to opinion and advice from other people.

Overbearing:

Overconfident persons tend to take heavier burdens than they can manage instead of allowing others to help them. Healthy self esteem would not drive you to taking excess burdens that are guaranteed to make your life difficult.  

Over assertive:

This is extreme self confidence that your decision is always right. You may have the skills and ability in your field of profession but sometimes you might need assistance in doing some things. This can interfere with your social status since you feel no significance to associate with others. The final results end up you having extremely low performance.

Lack of humility:

Unhealthy self-esteem can make you a really hard character to deal with. Some people become bullies or criminals. The reason for becoming harsh is pushed by the desire for gaining the extra attention and recognition that you feel is not yet recognized. Healthy self esteem comes with humility since there is no unearned recognition to be sought.

Holding grudges:

Unhealthy esteem make people feel that they should not be corrected or advised. Correcting them positively can make them hold hard feelings against you for a long time. They will never forgive and may raise the subject occasionally later.

Perfectionism:

You tend to develop a sense of excellence. You develop an attitude that your work is supposed to be flawless. This can be a great setback since if you make great mistake, you will get devastated and discouraged instead of learning from the mistakes and making improvement in the future. 

How To Develop Positive Self Esteem (Getting Rid of Fear)

Perhaps you have just realized that you really need to boost your self esteem and overcome your fear but you have no idea about how to go about it. Actually, building self-esteem is a challenging task that can be more easily said than done. Nevertheless, with unwavering determination it is possible to accomplish your goal. The following are some suitable strategies for breaking your fear to rebuild confidence.

Identify your weaknesses.

Know the things that drain your self confidence and solve them.  Take a paper and outline. The reasons could be anything from regrets, acne, negative or post traumatic experiences to friends at school. Everything that makes you feel unworthy, inferior or ashamed about your personality should be included in this paper. Then tear it into small pieces and discard it. This helps you to relive the burden.

Negative thoughts are another great weakness to overcome. Ensure to remain positive even when you are not really feeling the same way. Self-pity and sympathy for others are destructive habits that you should avoid by all means. You should also avoid letting others make you feel inferior. A person can only belittle you if you give them a chance. Only speak positively about yourself regarding your future and personal things. When you are congratulated about something, accept the compliment positively. A smile would also fit in the picture.

Inform your loved ones and friends.

A problem shared is half solved. Discuss your fears with loved ones and friends willing to listen to you. You will be surprised to learn that you are not the only one affected by such issue. Your friends might also have had similar experience hence may recommend suitable solution that helped them to recover such as contacts of a counselor.

Learn from your mistakes.

Perfectionism is out of question in this world. You will always make mistakes once in a while. However, learn to accept your miscalculations instead of sulking over your weakness. Every time you feel you lack something in your life, seek immediate solution to the fears instead of ignoring and assuming you have no ability to fight back. Develop methods of encouraging yourself. Look at your face in the mirror and smile. Research shows that your psychological and emotional responses are affected by the person you see in the mirror.  You should also behave as if you have extra ordinary courage even when you have none.

Know your success.

Everyone is good in specific areas.  Since low self esteem is a mental condition that creates inferiority complex, look for the field that you excel most and express yourself through the avenue. This will help to develop positive attitude that would in turn expel your fear.  Find a talent you can use to express yourself perfectly such as writing, art, music, etc.  Following your passion enables you to feel unique and accomplished; a condition with high fear therapeutic effect.

Be grateful.

Low self esteem is founded on lack of certain things. Accepting thing you have a suitable way of suppressing insecurity and low confidence emanating from not having enough of things such as money, emotional validation, good luck, etc.  This step helps you to acquire inner peace with yourself which does wonders to you.