Clean Your Home Office Day

If I was to ask you, what does your desk look like RIGHT NOW, what would your answer be? Is it cluttered with paper and rubber bands, or is it fairly neat? I think that at some point, our desks haven’t been in the best of conditions. If we look, we’ll see paper we’ve procrastinated in filing, craft supplies left out from five days ago, and loose puzzle pieces. These things clutter your work space until your sanity level is in desperate need of refill. Isn’t it frustrating to work in a messy area? Or maybe you’ve become accustomed to the mess, and you don’t notice it.

TIPS TO CLEAN OFF YOUR DESK

* If it’s not too embarrassing, take a photo of what your desk looks like before you touch anything. When it’s finished, you’ll always be able to see what a difference you made!

* Go through the piles of paper and discern what is rubbish, what needs filing or what needs editing and what are personal papers. Discard the rubbish, file the filing papers including the personal papers and put the to-edit pieces in a folder for easy access.

* Make a pile of everything that doesn’t belong on your desk – from broken bracelets to hair bands. Rubbish goes straight into the bin. Find the right home for everything else.

* Dust and wipe down the desk so it’s nice and fresh.

* Take another photo of what it looks like now that it’s in order to remind you of what it could look like!

Let me ask you another question; What is the purpose of your desk? Is it for you to do your schoolwork, or is it for recreational and craft activities? Is it where you do your office work, or is it just for storing papers? Determining your purpose for your desk helps you know how your system needs to operate to achieve the greatest efficiency.

Here’s how the Letchford Family functions:

In our family, we have a tray on top of our desks where we keep our school diary, pencil case, ruler, finished work folder and an assignment folder.

* In that assignment folder (a presentation folder) we have sleeves for every subject we study. There we keep unfinished work, loose pieces of paper and lists.

* In the finished work folder we place all our finished work ready for Mum to edit.

Keeping paper in folders keeps paper out of sight, neat and it doesn’t matter if there’s a bit of a holdup.

Other Paper work systems

* Furthermore, we all have a box under our desks where we store our notebooks and text books we are working on.

* On a bookshelf, we keep our filing folders for finished work, which are separated into different categories: Bible, Character, General, Interest, Writing, Art and Timeline.

Our system makes it easy to file finished and unfinished work, keeping the paper fresh and neat.

My Mum also keeps a system in her office. She has a bookshelf, full of magazine boxes labeled with her different subjects. On the right of her computer is a rack with folders she accesses daily. On the left is a pile of assorted paper. She also has several filing cabinets with information she uses not-so-regularly. Although there is the stock pile from time to time, it keeps her assorted papers under control!

Our God is a God of order; look at this verse in Job 25:

"1Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,
2Dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace in his high places.
3Is there any number of his armies? and upon whom doth not his light arise?
4How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?
5Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.
6How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?"

We are made in God’s very image! I think God wants us keep our space orderly, so we can be efficient with our time and have the freedom to help others instead of working on our own area.

Whatever system you use, I encourage you to find one that achieves the greatest efficiency. Show responsibility, add a good dose of individual creativity, stick at it diligently and enjoy your clean desk!

Miss Jessica is a 14year old homeschool girl who lives in Australia. She loves the Lord and enjoys music, reading, history, computers and sewing. Jessica has a warped sense of humour and is always ready for a giggle. She helps her mum around the home and participates in the local church music team. You can find out more about Jess at her blog Little Miss Giggle.

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Basic Cake Decorating Tutorial

by Lady Jess

Basic Cake Decorating
Kathy Brodock
Teaching Good Things
www.teachinggoodthings.com

This DVD was a step by step lesson on cake making and cake decorating. Mrs. Brodock has been baking and decorating cakes for over twenty-years, and now she wants to share her knowledge with the next generation of homemakers. You can find all kinds of different tutorials on homemaking skills from cake decorating to quilting.

She says "I have created hundreds of cakes for just about every occasion! I have catered countless parties and weddings. In addition, I have taught dozens of cake decorating classes to adults and children. I have packed everything you need to know about basic cake decorating into this one-hour DVD."

"Is it hard to squeeze the extra money from your budget to take a class? At a fraction of the cost of taking classes, you can learn the basic techniques in the privacy and convenience of your own home."

The level of difficulty would be simple for anyone who is familiar with baking cakes, yet also easy enough for someone who is not. This DVD tutorial was easy to follow along with,and she made it seem quite like "a piece of cake". This was much easier to follow than most popular cooking shows and a down to earth viewing that wasn't intimidating. You could tell that Mrs. Brodock has experience with baking cakes and that she has a passion for using her creativity while teaching. Listening to her voice throughout the video brought a comfort feeling that reminds me of baking with my own mother, yet my mother doesn't have that sweet southern accent.

I admire this family for putting together this video in their own home to encourage others in this simple, but important, homemaking skill. Because this was a homemade film it makes it seem as if I was there in her kitchen as if Mrs. Brodock was speaking directly to me.

I thought that this tutorial video demonstration was very informative. It had many great ideas in it and many different techniques and tips that I feel is very useful. I think the decorating idea that I enjoyed the most was both the roses and the regular waves. I think that I will have to make myself a cake soon and put this lesson to good use for my family. Mrs. Brodock made it look so easy! I really enjoyed what this tutorial gave me, and I'm sure you will too!


Lady Jess is a teen lady who is homeschooled along with her siblings. She assists her mother in teaching her younger siblings, is an interpreter in her church's deaf ministry, sings in the choir, and is assisting her family's ministry for Literacy for Adult Education.