7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Home When on Vacation
In early spring each year, Seattleites trade their winter boots for flip-flops, and take off in search of warmth and sun. Before you order your Uber to SeaTac, use these 7 simple strategies to protect your home while you are away.
10 Reasons We Keep So Much Paper
It seems that everyone struggles with paper clutter. At the beginning of each year, we encourage clients to go through filing cabinets, recycling or shredding unneeded documents. For some folks though, the paper clutter is deeper than a few old insurance explanation of benefits or old quarterly financial statements.
Organize to Protect Your Identity
Data breach. Customer information stolen. Identity theft. Those words regularly appear in the news, making you, the consumer, angry. You wonder why companies can’t seem to figure it out–either stop collecting personal information or protect it! Despite companies’ security efforts, the risk of identity theft isn’t going away. Criminals world-wide seem to be one step […]
10 Quick Ways to Make Your Kitchen Holiday Ready
During the holidays we use our kitchen more than any other time of the year. We will bake cookies. We will host family and friends for dinner. Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s Eve give us plenty of opportunities to use all our dishes, kitchen gadgets, cookbooks, appliances, and panty items. This makes it a perfect […]
Are You Drowning in Paper Piles?
Where does all that paper come from? Paper used to be a rare and precious commodity, but today most families are drowning in it. Mail is delivered daily: utility bills, financial statements, medical explanation of benefits, store catalogs, magazines, election pamphlets. Children’s school work and art projects also create volumes of paper. Work-related documents can […]
Self-Activation: What’s Getting in the Way of Getting Yourself Going?
If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “I can’t adult today,” you know the feeling. It’s known as “self-activation” or “getting that heavy ball rolling”, a phrase coined by author Ari Tuckman. Self-activation is harder some days than others. It’s harder depending on the task at hand. There are certain tasks which really make us cringe, […]
13 Ways to Downsize Mom and Dad’s Estate
Imagine the following scenario. Your 80-year-old father is relatively healthy, but recently you’ve noticed he’s become more forgetful and confused. You and your siblings suspect it may be time for your father to move to a retirement home or an assisted living facility closer to where you live. He currently lives alone in his 5,000-square […]
7 Things You Need to Know to Freeze Your Credit Today
A while back, my friend refinanced her house and then she froze her credit. We had been discussing identity theft when she told me about this. I’d never heard of this concept before. Times have changed I guess, because now phrases like “data breach” and “identity theft” seem to be a part of daily vernacular. […]
A Homework Station for Every Student
School is in session and that means homework assignments will be assigned soon. Your child will be more productive and motivated if they have a dedicated space – a homework station – where they can complete their work. The important part of a homework station isn’t where it is located or how fancy it looks, […]
RESET and get Strength from Structure
It’s September, and some parents refer to this month as the “true new year.” For busy parents of school aged children, it feels like that anyway. Now that everyone is back in school, we parents have a wonderful opportunity to hit RESET on all those routines that may have gone by the wayside during the […]