Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate?

Movies and TV shows have depicted the drama that comes from the emotional and complex job of dividing inherited items among family. Most families can tell stories about fights that have broken out over Mom’s good china or Grandma’s doll collection. Perhaps you have already experienced this madness and fighting, but hopefully you have been spared so far from this torture. I’ve experienced this twice in my family ~ one experience was a positive one of reflection and family bonding. The other however, was a nightmare. As a result of how personal property was divided in my in-laws family, family bonds were broken. A brother and sister haven’t spoken in five years.

As we Baby Boomers age, these issues will become increasingly prevalent and they deserve consideration in your family. In the past few years as a Professional Organizer, I have had increasing numbers of clients who call on me as an objective third party to help in these family transitions.

When a loved one passes away, it is not just the items in a Will that need to be dispersed, there is also the personal property as well. Estate Attorneys reveal that it typically isn’t how the monetary assets are divided that causes conflict in families ~ it is the dividing of personal belongings that cause the emotional conflicts. Childhood and family memories are tied to these physical items. Unless the family is proactive in planning for this inevitable transition, conflict, misunderstandings and hurt can result. 

When I started working with families and seniors in transition, I found a wonderful book that helps families plan for this inevitable process. Written from a true story, the workbook “Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate” was researched and developed by the University of Minnesota Extension Service. Full of fill-in the blank forms and order of importance forms, the topics covered in this 83-page workbook are:

•        The importance of recognizing the sensitivity of the issues

•        Determining what you want to accomplish as a family

•        Deciding what’s fair to all involved family

•        Understanding that belongings have different meanings to different people

•        Distribution options and consequences

•        Identifying that the family relationships are more important than stuff

•        The importance of making agreements to manage conflicts if they arise

Some non-titled property that this workbook may help you to divide are china, collectibles, jewelry and family heirlooms. The workbook guides you and your family through the steps of developing a plan for the easiest and most painless way to divide everything, with the goal of preserving family bonds and remaining on speaking terms afterwards. This book is a great asset for any family who will be, or already is, in the emotional position of dividing personal property of a loved one.

 

 

 

Originally posted 2009-01-09 14:18:27. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Janet In the News – How to Get Kids to Help Around the House

Last Friday I received a call from Julie Marsh, a writer/reporter from a small city in northern California, who was writing an article for her Redding, CA paper about how to get kids to help around the house. I was excited to learn that she had found my blog and read about my book ‘Mom, Can I Help Around the House’ on-line and wanted to interview me for her article.

Even though we live on opposite ends of the US, and will likely never meet personally, as moms of two children of the same ages (12 & 9), we were like old friends in no time. We had a wonderful conversation about bringing our children up with Christian values, how we felt about our role and responsibility to our children to teach them to be self-sufficient, yet servants to their family, and later to be self-sufficient servants as adults in society. We also shared what life was like in our little corner of the world and some funny stories about how we each get our kids to help around the house. 

I thoroughly enjoyed sharing time on the phone with a fellow Christian mom.  Our conversation strengthened my belief and mission to continue in my role as my children’s first and most consistant teacher of home management and of life.  Thank you for that Julie ~ you did a great job on the article.

Here is a link to the article that appeared in the Redding, California newspaper on Feb. 9.

Julie’s Article – How to Get Kids to Help Around the House

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on how you see your role as your child’s first and most consistant teacher of life.

To learn more about my book and household chore system that she references, visit: http://www.KidsandChores.net or The Simplified Home.

Janet, The Organizing Genie

Originally posted 2009-02-10 20:05:52. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Decrease Childhood Obesity With Household Chores

In the past 20 years, childhood obesity has tripled in teenagers and doubled in younger children. While these statistics may be alarming and cause for concern for parents, they also don’t have to be a permanent reality. Incorporating household chores into a child’s daily routine has many benefits, two of which are contributing to your child’s overall health and to your child’s sense of self-sufficiency and confidence. Unfortunately, however, it was recently reported in the Wall Street Journal that the amount of time children spend doing chores has declined 12% since 1997 and 25% since 1981.

The fact is that children’s lives are much different than they were even a decade ago. Today’s children spend on average four hours per day watching TV, that was foreign to children a generation ago. Did you know that children who spend more than two hours per day in front of a screen (TV or computer) are more likely to have an unhealthy diet and are less likely to participate in physical activity? When you factor in homework time, hygiene and meals, there’s no time left for children to participate in beneficial activities like physical activity, time spent with family or in positive contributions to the good of the family.

With the rise in suburban sprawl and city living, children no longer benefit from physical activity when the space required to engage in the activities doesn’t exist. Sprawling metropolises and the conveniences within them make it harder for children to remain active in or around their homes. The simple acts of walking to school, riding a bike, or building a fort, once common activities for children, don’t factor into the modern child’s life. The absence of these activities contribute to the problem of childhood obesity, especially when one considers that it was once common for children to spend all day playing outside and contributing to the maintenance of the family property.

Children who choose to spend their extra few minutes of recreational time watching television and playing video games are at greater risk for developing a weight problem, since the minutes add up and eventually turn into hours toward a sedentary lifestyle.

Given the lifestyle changes of US children, parents must take steps to add opportunities for activity into their children’s daily lives. Simple steps can be taken to prevent and combat childhood obesity. Like many other things, it starts from within the home. In addition to changing children’s eating habits and attitudes towards physical activity, parents should incorporate vigorous exercise into their children’s daily lives in the form of chores. The benefits of requiring children to do chores doesn’t end with a clean house or even a newfound sense of responsibility – chores can also improve children’s health by keeping them fit, lean and less susceptible to medical complications associated with childhood obesity, including childhood diabetes and pre-diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, bone disorders, gastro-intestinal diseases, high cholesterol, hyperlipidemia, premature puberty and psychological problems. Keeping active by participating in household chores during childhood can also reduce a child’s risk of becoming an overweight adult and worsening pre-existing conditions.

It’s clear that scheduling household chores as part of a child’s regular routine is not only an investment in an orderly home and a well-adjusted child, but also an investment in a healthy body that can serve them well into adulthood and beyond. Children deserve every bit of a head start that parents can afford them. Contributing to a healthy lifestyle by requiring chore work is only one of the many ways that parents can condition their children, both mentally and physically, in preparation to live full, adult lives.

Originally posted 2008-10-03 06:51:58. Republished by Old Post Promoter

The Importance of Having Medical Information at Your Fingertips

When it comes to your medical bills and records, you are probably like 90% of the population. You get an explanation of benefits (EOB) for a recent doctor’s visit and it goes in one of two places. The EOB gets shredded or perhaps, you keep it and throw it in a drawer. 

Then what happens when you receive a bill from the doctor’s office stating the insurance denied the charge and you owe the entire amount. A frantic search ensues to find the Dr. appointment receipt and EOB so you can resolve the error. 

Like most households, each month you receive a variety of documents having to do with your health status. From referrals, explanation of benefits to treatment instructions, the piles of medical papers add up. Multiply this by the number of family members in your household, and you can see how disorganized medical records can be a never-ending problem and a cause of great stress in the event of an emergency.

So what’s the solution? You need a system for managing your medical records. Without one, chances are you’ll never find the paper you need when you need it. For anyone who has experienced a medical emergency themselves or with a loved one, you know how critical it is to have quick access to organized medical records. I learned this first hand in 2008 when my mother suffered a stroke and heart attack! I needed to be able to immediately put my hands on her medical records, which included all medications she was taking. My mother didn’t have any system in place that I could refer to, and due to her stroke, she wasn’t able to communicate to me where I could find all of that information. More on this later.   

The Medical Organizer Kit is designed to solve that problem, and it certainly did for us. This kit is a ready-made system and 3-ring binder with dividers where you can store everything relating to your medical needs and bills, in order to keep this important information at your fingertips. 

When my mother suffered her heart attack and stroke (simultaneously), our world changed that day. As the only child living close to my mother (and also a single parent of two children), it became my role to coordinate everything related to her sudden illness ~ from Dr. appointments, multiple medications, referrals, tests, treatment, rehab. therapy, diagnoses, and more. The amount of new information that was coming at me daily was difficult to wrap your arms around. If you’ve ever experienced a sudden or serious illness with a child, parent or yourself, you know what I’m talking about.

Fortunately, I remembered the new Medical Organizer system that I had recently added to my Simplified Home e-store ~ I now had a reason to use it personally. I immediately tore open this Kit and began organizing all of my mother’s medical information in the binder by the categories it provides. There was a place for everything including a notepad for taking notes at each Doctor appointment and therapy, and sections for storing business cards. For the next six months during my mother’s slow recovery, her Medical Organizer binder became the “go-to” place for all of the medical information we needed at our fingertips on a daily basis. The Medical Organizer went with us to every therapy, doctor’s appointment and test. I felt in control again and felt gratified that I was able to provide the support my mother needed.

As my mother continued to recover and her memory became more reliable to her, the Medical Organizer was a God-send for her to track the history from the date of her stroke. She felt in control by having all of her medical history at her fingertips as she continued her therapy throughout this past year.

The moral of the story is to be proactive now for the inevitiable emergency. It will be critically important to be organized and in control during a situation that is really out of your control. Having The Medical Organizer kit at my fingertips helped me feel in control, so I could be there fully for my mother’s needs.

In case you’re wondering … by the grace of God, my mother has returned to 95% of her old life, feeling a renewed sense of gratitude and appreciation for life. As am I and all those who love her.

Originally posted 2009-01-14 12:22:44. Republished by Old Post Promoter

BE READY … Life Can Change in an Instant!

Wednesday February 27th started like any other. As a baby boomer with both parents in their early seventies and fortunately in excellent health, it would not have occurred to me that the day would unfold as it did. On that late February day, I received the call that every adult child fears receiving and cannot fathom receiving.

My mother was due to fly to Florida for a vacation with friends on Friday and I was planning to take her to the airport. So when I received a call from my mother’s home phone number, I assumed it was her calling to finalize details of her trip. The voice on the other end of the phone however, calling from my mother’s home, was not my mother. It was an unknown person who informed me that it appears that my mother had had a stroke and the ambulance was on its way. From ten miles away, I listened breathlessly to the conversation happening on the other end of the phone as the ambulance arrived, asked the unknown person where to take my mother (fortunately she asked me) and they drove off with my mother.

As I arrived in the emergency room in shock and disbelief, I was acutely aware that this was the beginning of the nightmare that was my mother’s first stay in a hospital in her life, other than giving birth to my brother and me. After an extensive battery of tests, we learned that my seemingly healthy mother suffered not only a stroke, but also a heart attack … absent of any symptoms for either injury.

Life as I knew it, changed that Wednesday. For the next several days we sat in suspense by my mother’s side while neurologists and cardiologists worked tirelessly to bring her heart back to normal rhythm and the damage from the stroke to a minimum.

Since then, my mother has made remarkable improvements, and has now successfully transferred from an inpatient medical hospital to an inpatient stroke rehab hospital. In less than two weeks, she has gone from eating meals with her hands to nearly returning to the mom that I know.

My mother’s health crisis appears to be over for now as she will likely successfully and safely return to her life, for now. But my eyes have forever been opened and the cloak of naivete’ and innocence of “it will never happen to us” that I known for my almost fifty years, is gone.

As a Boomer and parent of two ‘tween daughters, I reluctantly accept my membership in the ’sandwich generation’. As a card-carrying member of one of the largest demographics in history, I must accept that time marches on. The reality of this crisis is like a huge wake-up call, that I must be prepared for the uncertain days, months and years ahead. So, be ready … life can change in an instant.

Now wiser and albeit a bit raw this very personal experience, I now look forward to continuing my The Simplified Life blog.

Originally posted 2008-08-21 05:53:48. Republished by Old Post Promoter