What do you want to find time for?
There are a million necessary little things that come up every day to keep you from doing what you really want to do. Often those little things overwhelm us and make it difficult to see that we actually CAN do what we want. TimeLess Concierge works hard to find the little tricks and secrets that will make your life easier - so you can have time for YOU.
So, what exactly do you want to find time for?
Selling your own house
I've recently had the opportunity to help someone sell their house. It occurs to me that there are a few things you should know if you plan on doing this yourself:* CLEANLINESS: Go through your house, eliminate all the clutter, HIRE A PROFESSIONAL HOUSE-KEEPER, and make sure your house looks clean.
* STAGING IS IMPORTANT: Hire an interior designer or if you want to do it yourself, at the minimum put up a fresh coat of paint, make sure the furniture is simple and clean, and any nicks, scratches, or scrapes are covered up.
* PROFESSIONAL PICTURES MAKE A DIFFERENCE: I was actually able to do the photographs for my client and had to do a lot of editing afterwards to clean things up. However, even the best photographers edit. Sometimes that's what makes them the best. Clean up your photos using the GIMP - a free photo editing tool. Minor quick edits can be done in Microsoft Office Picture Manager and slightly more in-depth edits can be done by Adobe Photoshop Elements.
* GET THE DETAILS: You can find your property's history at your local county office. Potential buyers are going to want to know things like square footage, land zoning and potential problems, previous owners, and past and current taxes.
* FLIERS/BROCHURES: You can find some easy templates to use at the Microsoft website in their templates section. BUT be sure to print these on NICE PAPER. If you're going to have these professionally printed at a printer, use a JPEG or GIF format. They can use Publisher or Word, but say that format doesn't come out right every time. They prefer the JPEGs.
* LIST SOMEWHERE: You can list on For Sale By Owner, but definitely get a web location with lots of pictures. The more pictures, the better. You can also set this up using an online photo gallery. Here's an example using Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/BellviewHome
* LOVE YOUR LOCAL REALTORS: Even if you want to sell it yourself, it's still a good idea to cozy up to the local realtors. Encourage walk-throughs and have open houses. You can advertise an open house in your local paper and send out an announcement along with a sample flier to the real estate agents in your area.
REMEMBER that even when you do everything right, it can still be difficult to sell. Don't give up hope and keep trying. You can only truly fail if you don't truly try.
Preparing for Spring
Spring is beginning to creep in around the edges of winter. The daily temperature is warming up and while winter certainly isn't gone, it's definitely on the downhill slide.So what does this mean for you and your time? With the end of winter and the beginning of spring in sight, you need to start shifting gears.
February is garden-planning time. Draw a layout of your garden now to get ahead when it's time to plant. You can take one evening or weekend day to sketch out a quick diagram of your garden and decide what you want to plant. Interestingly, Microsoft's Visio has a guide for this. Remember to check out the tried-and-true favorites: Better Homes and Gardens, National Garden Association, Burpee, and others. Garden-Helpers.com has a February Garden planning guide to help you get going. According to their guide, now is a good time to prune fruit trees (before blooming) and right now is the time they say you should fertilize your trees and shrubs. About.Com also has a quick zone guide.
But what if you aren't into gardening? There are a lot of other things you should be thinking about. If you've got studded tires on your car, keep an eye on your local news to find out when it's time to take those off (if your local transportation department has a website, it should also be listed there).
And of course, the urge to do some Spring Cleaning will start soon. The container store has tips and ideas for getting yourself prepared for that.
Your skin care needs will be changing too. As the weather gets warmer, be sure to drink lots of water and keep moisturized. And wash your hands frequently as cold and flu season are still clinging on.
And of course, to save you some time, I've created a quickie checklist of Spring Things to Think About Now - just to make your life a little easier.
(see the Spring Planning Link List for links to these as well as other interesting planning places)
Quick Poll
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Spring Planning Link List
Spring is approaching. Would you like to be prepared?
Here are a few links to places that can help you prepare for Spring, whether it's to do some spring cleaning, get ready for garden season, prep your car or whatever else you need to do to get yourself in order - Hopefully you'll find something here that can help you do that.
- Amy Knapp's Family Organizer, Organizers
- Offers family organization and time management calendars for busy families and stay at home moms. I actually use the Family Organizer for business and I LOVE it! I added tabs along the edge so I could find each month without having to search every time, but once I did that I've found this organizer is fabulous for keeping me on track.
- February Gardening Calendar at Garden-Helper.com - Your Online Garden Planning Resource
- February Gardening Calendar at Garden-Helper.com. Know what should be done in February to plan a successful garden. Garden-Helper.com provides a place to learn, share, plan and shop for your garden. Garden-Helper.com - your online garden planning resource.
- Regional Gardening Guide for February
- February may well be the toughest gardening month. Gardeners in warm climates don't know what kind of weather to expect from day to day or from day to night. Gardeners in cold climates just want to see the sun again. (From About.com)
- Plan a vegetable garden with Visio
- Microsoft's Visio shows you how to plan your vegetable garden using the Visio program. Good luck and happy planning!
- The Container Store > Spring Organization Tips
- Spring organizing tips from the Container Store! (If you're an organization nut, this is a great place to shop. If you need help organizing, this is still a great place to shop!)
- How to organize your home and office, organizing tips, articles on organizing
- LifeOrganizers.com is a rich resource of office and home organizing articles, tips, and fresh, easy ideas on how to get rid of clutter from every part of your life, from the garage to your filing cabinet to your spiritual matters. We show you how to organize anything and everything
Tips and Time-Savers
Links to great ideas and things for making your life easier!
Cool things I've found while browsing. Keep checking back, because I keep searching for fun and useful things to add!
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- OrganizedHome.Com Printables Gallery - Printable Planner Forms
- Simplify life at home with free printable checklists, chore lists, calendars and planner forms for your Household Notebook!
- Eastgate: Tools for Information Farming
- Lots of cools tools for "information farming." Be sure to check out the Tinderbox By Mark Bernstein. It "stores your notes, ideas, and plans, helping you organize, analyze, and share information." Lots of fun!
- D*I*Y Planner 3.0 (Classic/A5 Edition) | D*I*Y Planner
- Make your own planner! We've all looked at those handy little planner books and though, "Wouldn't it be nice if it just had this or if it didn't have that?" Now you can make your own exactly the way you want it!
- Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary
- So this is not exactly a time-saver, but it is a great tip! This is a great visual thesaurus/dictionary tool. For those of us who are visually-oriented, this is absolutely fantastic. The best way to describe it is to say Go Try It Out!! Look up words in the Visuwords online graphical dictionary and thesaurus to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.
Places to go, Sites to visit
- TimeLess Concierge website
- TimeLess Concierge - the website! We're just getting started, but there are still things to see. Keep checking back for changes and upcoming features. Our quarterly newsletter will soon be available as will our partners and employee favorites pages. Join our mailing list so we can keep you informed of ways to save you time and make your life easier.
- The Marketing Maven on Squidoo
- Wendy Maynard, Your friendly marketing maven, writes tips and tactics for small business owner and entrepreneurs on how to attract more customers and make more money.
- Waiora - for better health
- Visit Waiora for the highest quality, all-natural, anti-aging products (as seen on NBC's Today show). Live healthier.
- Kinesis, Inc.!
- Are you ready to take your design and marketing to a new level? Kinesis specializes in graphic design, web design, and marketing solutions for small- to mid-sized businesses.
- Procrastiwriter.com
- Write what you want. Say what you think. Do it before you forget.
- Erin's Blog at Blogger
- Erin Gilpin's little blog of interesting thoughts and things.
- KittenChops: Home
- I discovered KittenChops Illustration and Design on the back of a Theo Chocolate bar. I really like the creativity of the artwork - definitely worth taking a look at. Check out the KittenChops "Shop" and "Treats."
Great Stuff on Amazon
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Amazon Price: $10.40 (as of 07/10/2009) 
The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner: A Powerful Plan to Finish Rich in Real Estate
Amazon Price: $15.96 (as of 07/10/2009)
The Automatic Millionaire Home Study Course
Amazon Price: (as of 07/10/2009)
Start Late, Finish Rich: A No-Fail Plan for Achieving Financial Freedom at Any Age (Finish Rich Book Series)
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 07/10/2009)
New Del.icio.us!
- Free Online Idea Management and Collaboration Service | Wridea.com
- Styleneat
- 10 Twitter Tools to Organize Your Tweeps
- Apartment Therapy Re-Nest | Spring Cleaning Tip #10: Make A Cleaning Schedule
- Understanding how you process information to help you get organized, part 2 | Unclutterer
- 100 Terrific Productivity Tools for the Bored or Unemployed | Online College Tips - Online Colleges
- LifeOrganizers.com How to organize your home and office, organizing tips, articles on organizing
- 100+ More Ways to Organize Your Life
- Ask the Experts: 5 Steps to Clutter-Free Living - TIME
- Hacking a GTD Moleskine — socialuxe
- Outlaw Design Blog » How to Organize Graphic Design Files
- Organize.com - Organize your kitchen, closet, bath, garage or home office! 1000's of Ideas
- Understanding how you process information to help you get organized, part I | Unclutterer
- Unclutterer: Daily tips on how to organize your home and office.
- Task.fm - a personal digital assistant
New Word of the Day
- bravura: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
- bravura: a showy display.
New Guestbook
Karendelac wrote...
I gave you 5 stars. There is such great variety in your lens. Some of the home selling tips are very good. All the Best, Karen at Karen's Kinkade Art Store
Posted July 29, 2007
Added Interest and Networking
by ErinGilpin
Erin Gilpin and Liza VanDriel are the founders of TimeLess Concierge, where we help you make more time for yourself and have less stress. We are...
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