Author: Rosie

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    Newsletter January 2025

    Hi friends, Just wanted to send a quick note and say we are still alive and working on our new app. We are really looking forward to sharing it with you all! We’re sorry that we didn’t manage to release it in 2024 as we intended. At this time of year, all the social media messages are pushing the idea of huge, aspirational goals – “A New Year, a New You.” I am myself not immune to thinking a new journal and a nice new…

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    Newsletter October 2024

    Hello friends, I hope September treated you well and that you are safe and sound from the terrible storms. It’s springtime here in New Zealand, but we still enjoy some of the trappings of the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn. (I do look forward to my yearly pumpkin spice latte as we get further into the month) The teens have already dragged Tim down to the local beach for their first swim of the season, but it is far too chilly for me at this stage! ⭐️ New features survey results…

  • Newsletter August 2024

    Hello friends, Seems like August is zooming past us! We will have family visitors around this weekend for our daughter’s 20th birthday, so I’ve been whipping around, tidying up here and there. Today I tackled a (slightly overloaded) shelf of tabletop games in the living room. Time passes, interests and energy levels change, so we’ll be sending some old games off to new homes, and others will be packed away elsewhere for now. Fortunately we’re past the age of having little kids who tip out…

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    Newsletter June 2024

    Hello, friends! How is your June going? It’s the middle of winter, here in New Zealand. Where we are (Auckland) it’s pretty mild, so for me this just means a light cardigan on errands day. Or a puffer jacket if I go for a walk down the chilly beach (for mental health purposes, and to say hello to local dogs) ⭐️New Home Routines app later this year!⭐️ We’ve been working hard at a refreshed version of Home Routines. Our first version was released in 2010…

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    “5 by 5s” five star rating!

    Recently I’ve been really enjoying catching up on the excellent videos and resources produced by Steph at The Secret Slob. She has a great speed cleaning hack that she calls “5×5”. She uses a timer to keep on task, and zips around cleaning five rooms, for five minutes each. If she has extra time at the end of a room, she pops back to the “worst room” to do a little more there. (There is so much more on her Youtube channel, have a look…

  • Half-Tidying avoidance

    “Half-tidying” is when you only sorta-kinda put things away.  You know, you open the bathroom cupboard, scrunch up your eyes and just shove that new shower-puff into the nearest space. I’m prone to this because if I look properly I get stressed about where the “correct” place is to put that thing, and in order to locate that “correct” place I think I need to empty everything out of the cupboard and have an extended Tetris-type arranging party and it will take hours I tell…

  • Half-Tidying (AKA I’ll just leave this here)

    Here are some things I have “just” put in the wrong place “for now” in the past day or so. You know. Then Dan Howell (Danisnotonfire) from the You Tubes talked about it better than me. (note: video includes cussing) One week ago I did a hard-core complete tidy of this room and yet here I am standing in a post-apocalyptic laundry pile. … So, how did this happen? I’ve thought about it and I think it’s because people tend to only ever do half-tidies….

  • Doing a small thing is better than doing nothing when you’re feeling stuck

    Here’s the thing.  There’s a lot of productivity advice that says, well, if you don’t know what to do, do the thing that’s in front of you.  If a job is going to take less than two minutes, do it NOW. Put on your big girl undies, lace up your Doc Martens and get the heck on with it. This advice is just jolly splendid when  I’m well rested and having a good mental health day and I’m right up for the kicking of butts…

  • Mmm, frog

    I’m kind of fond of frogs. My maiden name was a little bit froggish (well it had a “croak” in it!) and I used to love the Mercer Mayer books about that mischievous wee froggy and his shenanigans with his boy. Anyway, there is a lot of advice shared about eating frogs in the productivity-sphere of the internet. It all comes back to a quote from Mark Twain, who said: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to…