The Posh Blog

POSH Space hosted our first Girl’s Night Out at Viva Chocolato! on December 2^nd.  We started the evening with a delicious wine and chocolate pairing.  We then shared some of our favorite tips to reduce your stress during the holidays.  Then it was time to turn the tables and let our Girl’s Night Out guests tell us what their favorite tips were.  Here’s what the ladies voted for as their favorite tips: 

1. Convince family to travel to your home-DON’T TRAVEL.  From Holly
2. Tell your children that they will only be receiving one special gift so they are pleasantly surprised if there are more.  From Karin
3. Santa doesn’t wrap gifts.  He places each child’s gifts in a pile with their stocking laying on top.  Saves paper and time.  From Amy

 There were lots of great tips, even one hilarious tip that got the attention and applause from everyone!  If you want to hear more about those tips you need to make it to our next Eat Chocolate, Drink Wine and Make a Difference Girl’s Night Out in January. Do you have a favorite tip that you want to share?  We would love to hear about it, post a comment below. 

Keep it simple this holiday season. 

Enjoy the good life! 

Angela

The holidays are in full gear and if you’re like most people you still have many items on your list to purchase.  As your Organizational Advisor I would like to suggest that you consider non-clutter gifts this holiday season.  “Great, so now I have one more thing I have to look for” you may be saying to yourself.  Don’t worry, there are many non-clutter gifts that are easier to shop for and some won’t cost you a penny!   Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Give Experience Gifts:  For adults this could be tickets to your favorite college football game (Go Horns), your favorite NBA basketball game (Go Spurs Go!), a round of golf, tickets to the theater or a concert, or a gift certificate to a Spa like Lake Austin Spa.  For children you could give an admission to an indoor playground, an admission to a theme park like Sea World, or a season pass to the Children’s Museum or Zoo.  If you have older children you could get them admission to a summer camp (you’re probably going to do it anyway, you might as well get credit for it as a gift).  Or you could give your family trip a to Disney World or another destination. 

2. Give Consumable or Usable Gifts:  The obvious consumable gifts are cookies, fudge, candy, wine, coffee, hot chocolate and other holiday treats.  Another option is to create a basket based on what the person you are shopping for likes.  For example for someone who loves to cook Italian food you could give them a collection of items like a bottle of wine, a bottle of fine olive oil, a jar of delicious pasta sauce, and gourmet pasta.   

Some ideas for usable gifts are items like: bubble bath (both for children and women), fine shower gels, and exquisite hand lotions.  Think of items that will be used and then the remaining product will be discarded.  Oh yes, and don’t forget flowers.  Personally, if my husband is reading this, I would love to get flowers once a week…okay once a month would be nice too.

3. Give the Gift of Time:  Ahhhh, one of my personal favorites.  Who doesn’t need more of this?  Give someone the luxury of time by giving them a night to watch their children, pay for a visit from a house cleaning services, Professional Organizing services ( I know a great one by the way), a meal delivery service, washing Mom’s car once a month, washing the dishes for a month, or a Mom’s Day Out.  The options are endless and don’t have to cost large sums of money. 

So take these ideas and run to your nearest computer to see if you can order some of these items on line and save yourself a little time by avoiding one more trip.   

A gift that won’t add clutter to the house, now that’s the good life! 

Enjoy!

Angela 

Copyright (C) 2008 Angela Ploetz, POSH Space  www.theposhspace.com. 

  Isn’t it amazing that the holidays are already here?  Where did the time go?  The good news is that there are still 22 days left until Christmas, the bad news is that there are only 15 days left until what UPS predicts will be the busiest day to ship packages for the holiday season.  So, what’s an organized person to do?  Read my blog of course!   I have done the leg work for you and pulled together some resources to help you determine where, when, and how much it will cost to ship your packages.   

One of the best web-sites I found was from UPS.  One their site you can calculate your shipping time and cost by inserting your package origin, destination, weight, and shipping date.  You can also find store locations if you don’t know where the nearest UPS store is.  The UPS web-site also has some great shipping tips to make sure your packages arrives at the right location in one piece. 

 The U.S. Postal Service web-site also features a tool to help you calculate your postage.  They also have a holiday mailing calendar  and the international mailing deadlines.  Did you know that the deadline for mailing Military packages to Iraq and Afghanistan is December 4^th? 

Obviously there is a lot to consider when mailing packages so take a look at some of these web-sites to determine what your deadline will be and what service you will use to mail your packages.  Personally, I will be setting a goal of December 15^th to get my packages out.  What’s your goal? 

My packages arriving before Christmas rather than in the New Year, that’s the good life. 

Enjoy,

Angela 

Copyright (C) 2008 Angela Ploetz, POSH Space  www.theposhspace.com.