I stumbled upon the Reluctant Entertainer blog and started reading her posts on perfectionism and entertaining.

I think so many of us women aspire to be Martha Stewart with perfect everything that when we fall short, we feel inadequate.

I liked what I saw on the blog and so I ordered the book.

It is a beautiful, hardcover book with gorgeous, glossy pages.

Sheer pleasure for a tactile girl like me!

I’m also very visual and I loved looking at all the photos of food and of easy ideas to decorate your table.

Basically, I’m terrible at reviewing books because I take no notes but I have put some stick-e-tags to mark off the things that spoke to me.

Here they are:

“get out of the jail cell of perfectionism by asking yourself, “am I having people into my home to impress them or to bless them?”

(Like Sandy, I also believe perfectionism is a jail cell that will keep you in bondage)

“Authenticity is honest and doesn’t try to needlessly impress others. And the great thing about being authentic is that it attracts other authentic people – those who are soulful and who make the greatest friends”

(authenticity is one of my highest values)

Some of my take aways:

I love how she says that when you apologise profusely for things (food not being perfect, this not good/ that not good, etc.) you make your guests feel uncomfortable. I will stop doing this immediately

I also love how she tells people to figure out your style. If you’re a relaxing brunch type of gal, go with it. It doesn’t all have to be supper! Who knew?

We used to have people over for suppers in the pre-twins days and now I honour their sleep (after waiting for it so long!!!) so we don’t have people over in the evenings. I’m now a lunch-time person. But I’ve been freed to have people over for tea and muffins and not feel guilty about it.

Sandy says, “true hospitality is not about being perfect, cooking a fancy meal or spending a lot of money. Rather, it’s about an open door and an open heart.”

Amen to that!

Are you a reluctant entertainer who is trapped in perfectionism?

Do you know your entertaining style?

P.S. If you related to anything I said, either get the book or subscribe to her blog (there is so much insight in the comments too).

P.P.S. I’m not being paid to write this review. She doesn’t even know I exist

I was searching through some old posts to answer a reader’s “behind the blog” question and I came across an old, old post.

This one about Ali’s organised closet. By the way, Ali has the honour of being the first blogger I ever met in real life

Here’s a sneak peek of her organised clothes. Mmmm – bliss.

I want to start something on the blog where I feature YOUR organised spaces.

Organised and beautiful spaces inspire me and I want them to inspire you too.

Are you up for it?

• Send me a compressed pic (s) of your organised space. If you’re brave, include the before pics too.
• If you want, you can also tell me a tiny little bit about what you were trying to do or what the problem was. E.g. desk wasn’t working because of ___. you did ____ and now it looks like this.
• Big or small, I celebrate all your wins with you.

I would love to feature a different space every week but that depends on how many emails I get.

I also need to get someone to make me a “I was featured at Organising Queen” button.

PS Please get out your cameras and start snapping away. Email marcia AT organisingqueen DOT com

I used to hang my jewellery inside my wardrobe door until the necklaces got too much (let’s blame it on my etsy addiction).

I’ve been looking for a metal jewellery organiser but none of them had anywhere to put the rings and loose bits – only space for earrings and necklaces.

Until I saw this one at Mr Price Home for R100.

I snapped it up immediately.

I first decluttered things I hadn’t worn for a while. Two of those still had their price tags on so I returned them.

Then I hung each and every necklace on the horizontal rod, added my one pair of hanging earrings and added the jewellery box with my rings to the tray.

here’s a close-up of all my hand-stamped jewellery except for the one I was wearing.

I love it all organised AND it’s pretty

How do you store your jewellery?

P.S. The book is only in the back so I could take close-ups of the necklaces…

Let’s talk about the difference between URGENT and IMPORTANT.

Urgent refers to a time deadline.

Important means it is high value.

Every day things come across our path that are of low or high importance, and low and high urgency.

Grab a piece of paper and draw a big square. Now draw a line down and another across. You should now have 4 smaller squares.

Along the top, write High Value and Low Value. And along the left-hand side, write Deadline and No Deadline.

Basically, you want to always focus your time in the blocks on the left.

The top block is high value AND high urgency, which means it must get done NOW and it is VERY important. I like to think of client work in this block. Clients are why most of us are in business and there are usually deadlines attached. If you’ve ever bought a product of mine, you’ll know that you’re redirected to a page telling you I have a 24-hour turnaround time. Private 1:1 clients know that I’ve committed to ALWAYS respond within 24 – 48 hours.

The block below that is HIGH value but LOW urgency and it is here that you need to focus if you’re ever going to move towards your goals. Why?

Nobody is standing over my head saying “you need to work on an email teleseminar” but I know that if I want to reach my goal of running x number of live teleseminars this year, I need to MAKE TIME to do that.

And it’s the same for you.

Whether your goal is to improve your fitness levels, get your home organised or have 3 hours of free time every week, you’re going to have to put some work into that quadrant.

That’s if you want to reach your goals.

I don’t even like to bother with the other two quadrants but I know that’s going to drive some of you crazy so let me just give you some email examples –

Low value tasks with a deadline are things like “send this email to 10 people within the next hour”. They have absolutely no value and the deadline is usually imposed by other people. Most interruptions also fall into this block.

Low value tasks with no deadline are emails with jokes, funny pictures and the like. My suggestion is to get these out of your inbox permanently as they disrupt your focus and waste your time!

For the next two weeks, your challenge is to focus on the top two quadrants and only do tasks that fit there.

• Bonus – really step it up by making sure that you definitely get AT LEAST one task in the “goals” quadrant done every day.

I’m getting to be reasonably organised with my photos but I’m still not where I want to be.

There’s the downloading and backing up, the sorting into folders, the printing, the putting in albums or on the walls.

All so much!

My favourite thing that I do is I make a folder called “photos to print” and as I’m sorting and organising, I copy and paste (this is important so I can delete the whole folder afterwards) the photos in here. When I go to my printing place, I can just say “print all the pics in the photos to print folder”.

Easy-peasy.

So share with me, what is your absolute best tip when it comes to organising your photos?

I wrote previously about how I set reading goals for the year and month.

I also have a reading notebook where I have a page a month with the following columns:

Number

Title

Author

Date read

Rating out of 10

Do you have a reading notebook?

The rating is important for me because I don’t keep any books that score anything less than 8 out of 10.

If I didn’t enjoy the book that much why should I allow it space on my bookshelf?

I recently found out about Good Reads and I’m hooked.

You can create shelves - I have 3 – to read, currently reading and read – set yourself reading challenges (mine is 60 for the year), and organise and analyse your books to your heart’s content.

At the moment I’m using the notebook together with GR but I may abandon the notebook totally within a month or two.

I almost can’t wait for the end of the year just to have my analysis made easy

Do you use Good Reads? Do you use a notebook?

P.S. If this is old news to you, forgive me. I’m slow.

I’m going to be doing a talk later this month on organising for children.

What are your biggest challenges in this area?

I’ll also be hosting a free teleseminar and I’ll share the 5 most common areas, so have at it – let loose with your frustrations, concerns, challenges or where you’d just like some ideas.

P.S. I thought I’d show you my minimalist children. When we get to them in the mornings, their beds have nothing but the sheet and maybe a book.

Connor started this trend and I see he’s taught his sister well

I’ve just checked my credit card statement and there’s a total of just over R1000 in credit.

Can I tell you what that’s due to?

I returned things to 4 stores that I bought on impulse.

Apparently when I got home I just tossed them in a cupboard and forgot about them. Which means I really didn’t need or want them that badly, right?

Well, when I sorted out a shelf in my study and found all these new notebooks, unused, I hauled them out, found the cash slip and put them in a bag.

That sparked the fire.

I then quickly went around the house, hunting for unused goods still in their original packaging that had been bought in the last 2 months.

A few days later I went to the shops and returned all those things. All in about 45 minutes. Driving there and back put it at just under an hour.

One of those things was a gorgeous, gorgeous brown leather handbag…. drool…. except… I have no brown clothes that fit me at the moment so it’ll be some time before I need one.

And if I were to be 100% honest, I already have two brown handbags, one of them leather (bought in Malaysia).

My reason for returning all these items?

Not needed.

Which is true.

My challenge to you this weekend is this – go around your house and collect all the things you thought you needed but haven’t even opened, and take them back to the store for a credit refund.

Who’s up for the challenge? Post your intention in the comments.

I will pick one of you to get a free copy of my financial freedom e-course

We’ve all heard the saying, “time is money” and to a certain degree, that is true. However, today I want to challenge you by saying that time is MORE IMPORTANT than money.

Why?

Because you can always do something to make more money but you can never get time back. NEVER.

See where I’m going with this?

But what about your time?

Once you fritter away your time on unimportant things, you can never get that time back.

An email made its way around about a year ago about a man who gave his son two jars, one empty and one with marbles. There were enough marbles for the weeks he had left to live (assuming a man’s average mortality). He told his son to move one marble to the empty jar every Saturday so that he’d realise that he could never, ever get that time back.

Yes, the story is a bit hokey but it DOES have a point

I’m a practical sort of person so I like to do an exercise with my clients that I’d like you to do with me too.

Divide your monthly salary by 21.67 (the number of days you work each month). If you’re self-employed, use your average earnings by the number of days you usually work.

That’s your daily rate.

Now take that number and divide it by 7.5 or the number of hours you work every day.

That’s your hourly rate.

Now, when you spend an hour surfing the internet, replying to chain letters, reading blogs when you should be working, VISUALISE yourself throwing that money in the bin.

If you’re like me, it’ll shock you and make you realise the value of your time.

This week I’m challenging you to calculate your hourly rate and next time you’re tempted to procrastinate or just mess around, STOP and ask yourself if it’s really worth it.

My guess is no.

Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focussed action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full. Visit  http://purposefultimemanagement.com for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.