Staying in touch with family and friends is important. These days with technology were able to email, text or video chat and connect instantly. But when was the last time you sent a letter, birthday card or thank you note in the mail? If you dont have a lot of time to shop for cards, address and mail by your friends next birthday theres hope! Check out Hallmarks special occasion cards where you can add a photo and message to a real card. They address, stamp and mail your card by a specific date. It challenging to keep all those birthday cards and dates organized. Make it easy on yourself and do it once a year from the comfort of your home or office of course.

Take your organized kitchen up a notch with batch cooking. If you are going to mess up the kitchen by chopping, grilling and baking try to do it just once a week. Double or triple recipes for browning meat, preparing sauces or entire meals then separate into resealable bags, containers or pans and freeze. Just pull out of your freezer when ready to use. This will cut your cooking time even more and allow you to prepare healthy meals. It will also save you money on convenience items such as shredded or precooked foods that you can prepare yourself. Its important to keep your freezer organized by labeling the ingredients including the date. Liquids can lay flat in a resealable bags and plastic containers can stack taking up less space.

Going to the movies is always fun. Especially when you know your going to see a great flick. We usually plan our movie with plenty of time to park, pick up tickets, get popcorn and sit down. You have to be organized for this event if you want to get a good seat. At least in Chicago! One way to make our experience go smoothly is by ordering our tickets online before heading out. It will save you so much time waiting in line. Why wait when you could be sitting in your seat watching the previews?

Grocery shopping can be overwhelming. First you have to shop, then you have to transport everything back home in time to prevent frozen or refrigerated foods from thawing or spoiling. Once you get home you have 15 mystery bags of groceries to put away. One lucky bag contains a quart of ice-cream, another has a carton of milk and somewhere there is a pound of fresh fish. There is a lot to do when it comes to food shopping. It can take a few hours from start to finish. Make it easier on yourself from the time you unload your grocery cart to the last can of beans put away in the pantry. Get organized before you leave the house by bringing your own reusable grocery bags and cooler bags for all your refrigerated and frozen items. Separate your items in the checkout by refrigerated, pantry items, cleaning products and paper products. Be sure to notify the cashier that you would like to keep your items separate. When you return home you can immediately grab the items that need to go into the refrigerator or freezer and put them away. Different types of bags will help you distinguish what goes where, refrigerator, freezer, pantry or sometimes even the garage for overstock items.

Managing your time is easier when you have a calender. Getting a new calender to start off the new year is a major decision! How will you keep track of your daily activities, work and social schedules? Will it be your computer, phone or the good old paper calender so you can write things down? Whatever you decide make sure it works for you. If you use your computer its easy to set reminders to your pop up, text your phone or email. Phones have many options including actual ringing and can sync with your computer. But your paper calender isnt going to do remind you so you have to make sure you can cleary see important events. Be sure to look at your calender on a daily basis or you could miss events. Whatever tool you use, I hope it helps you get to where you need to go...on time!

What's your favorite type of calender?

As you brave this years extreme holiday shopping its important to be prepared for the experience. The crowds and long lines are just a few things you will encounter. If you want to achieve your shopping goals its important to get organized before you head out the door. Make a list of what you need and where you need to go. Be sure to have any additional details about what you need. Do you clothing or shoe sizes, favorite color or any other specifics details? Are you setting a table and need dimensions for the tablecloth? Gather everything before heading out so you don't have to make a 2ND trip for returns. And hopefully your recipient will not have to return your gift either.

Sorting socks from the clean laundry is a time consuming activity. Cut down on your laundry sorting time and get organized quicker by purchasing identical socks! If you wear sweat socks or trouser socks, get the same color and brand whenever possible and buy in bulk. This way if you are washing ten pairs of socks they are all the same color and size and easier to sort. It is also easier on the eyes and much faster way to get things done!

Are you constantly changing batteries in your kids toys but cant find the right tools? Toys that require batteries often get drained quickly due to usage or not getting switched off. So they need to be changed often. Changing the batteries can be difficult because special tools are needed to open battery doors. Common tools like tiny screwdrivers are often needed. You almost never use these anywhere else but its important to have handy for the battery replacements.
Set up an area to store and organize tools for your kids toys. Since kids toys come with lots of special instructions from assembly to battery requirements, its better to be organized and have the tools required and not spend your time looking for the right tools.

Have you lost your keys again? If it has become on ongoing struggle to keep your house keys organized...stop! Go beyond just trying to organize your keys. Make it easier on yourself when your keys are buried at the bottom of your purse or you've lost them again. Get keyless locks! Use a keypad to unlock your doors or even use your fingerprint. Wow! Wave of the future here! They come in all types of styles from deadbolts to doorknobs and even lever handles. Keyless locks will give you one less thing to worry about each day.

Still trying to keep track of your spending but haven't had a moment to spare? Check out Mint from Quicken. Its a online money manager that takes 5 minutes to set up and you can see your account activity in seconds. From Home loans, credit cards, coffee shops and doctor bills. It gives you alerts when something has posted to your account and breaks down your monthly budget.
One of the features I love is being able to split up your ATM withdrawals in order to keep track of that $50 in cash.
The thing I love most about Mint is its free!

Need a little help organizing your birthday wishes this year. Enter birthdays in your email account and set reminders to repeat each year so you never miss a birthday. Have the reminder sent to your email or text message to your phone. Another birthday reminder is birthday alarms. This service allows you to email your friends, they fill in the correct day and an email reminder is sent to you. You can also use the service to send greeting cards. No more running to the local card shop for "belated birthday wishes" because you forgot a birthday again!

Ever have one of those mornings, you are running a few minutes late and arrive to your bus stop just in time to see the buses tail lights going off into the distance? You try to backtrack and think about which morning routine backfired causing you to be late. But have you ever had one of the most perfect morning commutes where you step onto your bus just as the bus is pulling up to the bus stop? I must say that is pure bliss. You sit there with your coffee and newspaper so delighted you actually enjoyed your morning commute. Hooray for you!
Now you can have pure travel bliss every day with the new CTA tracker that allows you to see the bus routes on a map or get the estimated arrival times of your bus. It is an amazing new system here in Chicago. If you want to get estimated arrival times you log onto the site, enter your route, the direction you are going and the bus stop. It gives you the arrival times of the bus or you can view a map to see the buses on the route nearing the stops. You can subscribe to the Bus Tracker to get e-mails of predicted arrival times and service alerts. The best part of the service is you can get view the bus tracker on your phone. Technology is the best!

I am always looking for practical ways to get organized and save time. Yesterday I did a couple loads of laundry and realized how happy I was that I had a 2 in 1 bottle of laundry detergent and fabric softener. It might not seam like a big deal but wheeling a cart full of clothes, and detergents to the laundry room is a task in itself. Not having an extra bottle or box of fabric softener to carry to the laundry room is priceless. It is also one extra step I can take out of the chore. And a 2 in 1 product saves space and easier to keep organized.
What is your favorite time saving product?

At the end of the day, take a few minutes to organize your office space. Put everything away, make a "To-Do" list and please turn off your computer! Computers eat up a lot of energy when left on over night. Try about 2.8 billion a year and that is just the U.S! Computers that are kept on overnight and on the weekends omit 20 million tons of carbon dioxide. Yikes!
So please, start a new office organizing habit this spring and turn off your computer at the end of each day. Your computer will run better, you will save some money and get organized at the same time.

We are all busy these days and dont have time to waste or money. So the next time you are unsure about how to spend your entertaining dollars make sure you do a little research. We like to watch movies either at the theater or at home on netfix or our cable channel. But I must say there is nothing worse then wasting time and money on a flop of a movie. Make sure you check out At The movies for movies in theaters now or Rotten Tomatoes which also gives feedback on older movies out on DVD.
Just like organizing your closet you must organize your entertainment!

Use technology this holiday season to organize your gift giving. Big stores like Target, Amazon and Toys R Us have online wish lists that you can use to do your shopping for friends and family. A wish list is just like a bridal registry where you register for items you would like, but you can use it for other events like holidays, birthdays and graduations. Create your own online wish list to make it easier for your gift givers. Buy gifts that someone actually wants. You don't want to add clutter to someone else's home or your own.

Its important to stay on top of your home and office organizing. The more you get into the habit of putting things away after you are finished using them the easier it will be later when you need to find them. When you don't put things away you will only make more work for yourself later, create clutter an easily become disorganized. If you are working on a project, put away your files away and clear off your desk before you move onto another project. This way you can focus 100% on your next project. Get in the habit of putting things away now instead of later it will help you stay organized.

I just heard of this great new site where you can organize all those little pieces of paper of random information in an easy to use format. Convert documents into checklists for shopping or keep track of your health information and other personal information like hobbies or goals. Download templates for easy recording and share pages with friends and family. Check out Jibidee.com and it is free to sign up!

The cost of gas is at a all time high right now. So joy riding and running errands in the car is becoming a thing of the past. Here are a few tips to getting organized before you step on that gas peddle.

#1 Batch your errands in the same area so that you can drive straight to your final destination. Map out every other location to stop at along on the way. This is how the delivery drivers do it!

#2 Save your errands for one day so you are not going back and forth in the car.

#3 Before running out to buy more of something, check your home for possible replacements or other alternatives. Get creative!

#4 Buy online whenever possible

#5 Walk or ride your bike

#6 Share your ride with friends and family.

The kids are getting out of school soon. But before they unload their book bags full of crayons, paper, rulers and calculators find out what they need for next years supplies. Recycle this years supplies for next year by storing them for the summer away from the other art supplies. You may have to buy a few things things this fall but you will not end up with duplicate items that barely get used. You save money in the process and shopping time.