I was on vacation in Australia for 17 days and arrived home on December 31st. It was an amazing trip, BUT after twenty-four hours of traveling and more than two and a half weeks away from home, all I wanted was to take a hot shower in my own bathroom and sleep in my own bed.

I opened the door to our house, walked in to a pile of mail and holiday packages, and started the long process of sorting bills and washing my dirty, smelly clothes. In that mess, I came across a box I was expecting from BlogHer containing Head & Shoulders Green Apple Shampoo and Conditioner, the perfect products to take with me into my long awaited steamy shower.

I am a long time (15+ years) user of Head & Shoulders, so I knew I would like the products, and I was excited to try the new scent (I often use the minty variety).

I would not say I have a big dandruff problem per se, but it keeps my hair looking really nice, flake-free, and is a great value. So off I went into my shower. There is nothing like a steamy shower in your own house after a long time away.

It felt great, and I loved using the new Head & Shoulders Green Apple products. My hair was really not in good shape. My scalp had been burned and was itchy and peeling.

The products were amazing (loved the scent and I could still smell it the next day) and helped me, in just fifteen short minutes, to feel like myself again.

It didn’t help the jet lag, but it did make me feel relaxed, clean, and back to normal.

Now why is all of this important in the scheme of getting “Buttoned Up”?

When you take a long trip and you plan and get organized for the days away, it is also important to think about a few things that can help you out when you get home.

Have a few items of food that won’t go bad (e.g. cereal, frozen food, bottled water) in your kitchen, make sure you have plenty of laundry detergent on hand, and stock your shower with a few of your favorite products (like Head & Shoulders Green Apple) so that first shower is a great re-entry back into reality.

Now we want to hear from you for a chance for you to win a $50 Visa gift card.

What’s your routine for feeling great after a long trip away?

All you need to do is leave us a comment to be entered for a chance to win.

Contest rules below.

Hope to hear lots of great tips to help all of us next time we have to leave home.

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a)Leave a comment in response to this post

b)Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c)Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d)For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older.

Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail.

You have 72 hours to get back to us, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

This sweepstakes runs from 1/30/2012 – 2/28/2012.

The Official Rules are available here.

Be sure to visit the Promotions & Prizes page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggersí reviews and find more chances to win! And visit the Life Well Lived section on BlogHer.com for more great tips on looking your best.

It’s time to get your love buttoned up!

February is all about the heart. Not only does Valentine’s Day fall smack, dab in the middle of the month, but it’s also “American Heart Month” and therefore time to take care of that all important organ. With this theme in mind, we’ve put together another great monthly challenge for you!

By the end of this challenge, you will:

1. Actually have enjoyed Valentine’s Day because you were prepared for it!
2. Be ready to remember every important day (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) in the lives of your loved ones in 2012.
3. Have taken concrete steps to care for your health.
4. Actually have figured out how to carve out (and enjoy) some me time.

And much, much more!

How the February #GetButtonedUp Challenge Will Work

Each day during the month of February we have a specific organizational task for you to complete. Download the 29 day calendar by clicking on the link below.

Get Buttoned Up Challenge – February

When you complete the task, let the buttoned up team know your status by commenting on the Facebook check-in post for that day and either email or Tweet the picture of your completed task. We will enter anyone who has completed all 29 days of the challenge successfully into a grand prize drawing. All winners will be selected using random.org.

Participating in the #GetButtonedUp Challenge is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Let us know you’re in by commenting on this post below AND by heading over to Facebook to comment under the post about being a part of the February Challenge.
2. Letting us know you completed your daily task by commenting on the Facebook GetButtonedUp Challenge Check-In post each day
3. Sending a picture of your completed task to Sarah – via email sarah @ getbuttonedup dot com OR via TwitPic to @SarahButtonedUp & using the #getbuttonedup hashtag.

Grand Prize

Grand Prize: $100 donation to the charity of your choice in your name
2 Runner Up Prizes: $50 donation to the charity of your choice in your name

Join In By Commenting Below!

NOTE: All are welcome to join in the challenge.

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/27/join-in-the-february-getbuttonedup-challenge/feed/ 28 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/26/tutorial-create-knockout-valentines-gifts-using-our-free-printables/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/26/tutorial-create-knockout-valentines-gifts-using-our-free-printables/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:08:30 +0000 Sarah http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=18711

These Valentine’s Day Cards are cute enough to stand on their own, but if you’ve got time, you can easily embellish them.

How? By gluing each card on to a colorful piece of construction paper and attaching some candy, or punching 2 holes in the card and slipping in a lollipop. You can even tape or glue the cards onto candy heart boxes. See below for some inspiration!



Click here to download the first set of cards seen below.



Click here to download the second set of cards seen below.



Have a HAPPY Valentine’s Day!

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/26/tutorial-create-knockout-valentines-gifts-using-our-free-printables/feed/ 4 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/25/tool-free-printable-valentines-day-cards-3/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/25/tool-free-printable-valentines-day-cards-3/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:00:29 +0000 Sarah http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=18697

Deliver smiles this Valentine’s Day without spending a dime.

Download and print these adorable cards on premium paper stock, cut them out and voilá—you (and your kids) are ready for the big day. They’re cute enough to stand on their own, but if you’ve got time, you can easily embellish them by gluing each card on to a colorful piece of construction paper and attaching a lollipop (come back tomorrow for a tutorial on this!)

Click here to download the first set seen below.



Click here to download the second set seen below.



Have a HAPPY Valentine’s Day!

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/25/tool-free-printable-valentines-day-cards-3/feed/ 4 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/24/fire-safety-winners-announced/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/24/fire-safety-winners-announced/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:32:36 +0000 Anne Marie http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=18693

Thank you to all who left fire safety tips on our post; Fire Safety Tips Every Family Should Follow and on Facebook!

The two winners are:

Kelly Schulthies

and

Shelly Binion!

Join us in congratulating them on their win!

Stay safe!

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/24/fire-safety-winners-announced/feed/ 1 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/23/15-cures-for-your-toy-hangover/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/23/15-cures-for-your-toy-hangover/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:16:38 +0000 Sarah http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=14111

As I settled back into my routines this week, I had a fleeting thought: did the holidays even happen this year?

One glance at the playroom confirms it most certainly did. And good GAWD, this momma needs to learn restraint! The onslaught of toys has completely overwhelmed our rather simple organization system consisting of two bins. Time to upgrade.

I went looking and found 15 organizational tools and hacks that would help any overwhelmed parent deal with their toy tsunami & thought I’d share.







What about you, Did you go a little overboard on the Holiday gifts without having done a little toy purging in advance? What’s your favorite trick for corralling the toys?

{Feature Photo Credit}

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/23/15-cures-for-your-toy-hangover/feed/ 6 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/18/strategies-for-organizing-spices/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/18/strategies-for-organizing-spices/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:06:01 +0000 Sarah http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=18655

Day 13 of our 31-day January GetButtonedUp Challenge was all about organizing spices. The problem most have with spices is that they lack an organizational structure for them, resulting (inevitably) in a big, hot jumbled mess.

A cluttered and disorganized spice shelf/drawer/bin wastes precious moments, which makes the entire meal prep process more stressful than it needs to be. It also is probably costing you money too; if you can’t find the spice you’re looking for, you’re more likely to buy duplicates. In fact one challenge participant admitted to having 3 bottles of cinnamon she didn’t even know about…

So what are the secrets to whipping a spice cabinet, or drawer, or basket, or…whatever into shape? There are really only two pieces to this puzzle: containment and arrangement.

Part I: Containment

Some people organize their spices in drawers, others in pantries, still others on cabinet shelves – or even along the back of a stove. No matter where you put them, you need a way to keep them from spreading out in a jumbled sprawl. Fortunately, there are a lot of ingenious ways to do just that.

An expandable spice drawer insert

I personally use one of these expandable spice drawer inserts in my kitchen and I love it. At $17.99 from Amazon.com, it is one of the best $20 I have ever spent.

A revolving spice rack
Whether you go with a specially made revolving spice rack, like this one from Pfaltzgraff, or a simple lazy susan, like Michelle does in the picture below, both make containing AND finding the spices you’re looking for much easier.


Plastic bins
Challenge participant, Elli, uses a simple plastic bin to great effect in her pantry. This is a wonderful option if you want to keep your spice jars from taking over precious pantry shelf real estate unnecessarily.


Other great options include wall-mounted spice racks, magnetic spice bins that you can keep on a fridge or even on a metal tray, or built in spice drawers (Sheila, yours made us jealous!).




Great ideas for organizing loose spices

Two of our challenge participants, interestingly both living outside the USofA, had loose spices to organize. Buying in bulk is a wonderful way to save significant amounts on spices – but it also poses an interesting organizational challenge.

Filomena cleverly recycled old fruit juice bottles as spice jars, which is a wonderfully inexpensive way to achieve a uniform look.


Joy also used recycled jars, although on a larger scale – think Folgers vs. apple juice. While not all the bottles she used were the same, they do have a useful degree of uniformity based on their relatively large size.


Other free upcycle/recycle ideas for containers include: mason jars, old jam jars, and baby food jars. Just be sure to go with jars that have a wide enough opening to fit in a tablespoon.

Another, albeit more expensive, option for containing loose and bulk spices that ensures uniformity is to purchase a set of jars.

The Quattro Stagioni Spice Jars available at The Container Store for about $2 each have a wonderful shape and mouths wide enough for a tablespoon.

Take your organizing one step further by creating labels for each one. Cut out a little round sticker for the top or a rectangular one for the front and write what’s inside with a sharpie. If you want each label to have the same shape, use a label template like this one we created. Print out on a sticker sheet and cut around the outlines.


Part II: Arranging them intelligently

To alphabetize or not to alphabetize, that is the question.

Fundamentally, it comes down to you and how your brain likes to categorize and organize. Personally, I’m a fan of organizing by type of cuisine. So I arrange the Indian curry spices together, the sweet baking spices together, and so on. But the bottom line is: whatever is more intuitive to you is what will work best. The one thing you can’t do is skip this step. Trust me, it’s the fastest route to spice perdition.

Cathy, a challenge participant keeps weekly spices on the lower shelf, large jars on the next shelf up and the ones she only uses occasionally up toward the top. Looks pretty darn organized, doesn’t it.


{feature photo via: Dav.I.Son – amazing tutorial on how to transform baby food jars into magnetic spic holders}

Tell us about your spices? Are they organized or a mess? If they’re buttoned up, what’s your system? If not – how much time (and money) do you think you waste because of it? Challenge participants – how long on average did you spend organizing your spices? Has it been worth the energy?

]]> http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/18/strategies-for-organizing-spices/feed/ 8 http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/17/4-ways-to-break-productivity-torpedoing-digital-habits/ http://getbuttonedup.com/2012/01/17/4-ways-to-break-productivity-torpedoing-digital-habits/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:08:04 +0000 Sarah http://getbuttonedup.com/?p=18642

A few years ago, Disney Pixar released the movie Up. It’s a sweet little film about a rather crotchety old widower and a young scout who accidentally end up on an adventure together. Not long after they touch down in a far-off land they are greeted by a dog named Dug. He’s a loveable golden retriever who bounds affectionately into their arms and then shocks them both when he speaks English via a special collar translator worn around his neck. The only trouble is, he often interrupts what he’s saying mid-sentence, shouts “squirrel,” and points for a second or two.

In a lot of ways, we humans are a lot like cute, furry Dug. Only our “squirrels” are the bings and buzzes emanating from our digital devices. One minute we’re working productively on something, but the second our phone vibrates, we will drop everything and turn to it…squirrel!

These constant interruptions literally torpedo our productivity. It is estimated the average person wastes 2 hours/day on email, 40 minutes/day on Facebook, 12 minutes/day on Twitter, 10 minutes/day on LinkedIn – and an additional 96 minutes/day switching back and forth between tasks. That means all of our squirrel chasing is costing each of us about 22.5 hours in lost productivity a week. That’s a staggering amount!

Why are we “addicted” to our phones, email, and other e-communications?

There are two big reasons why we feel compelled to incessantly check our phones, emails, facebook pages, twitter accounts, and the like.

The first is because there is a powerful conditioning loop at work. Our digital devices often “reward” us with feelings of belonging and significance when we respond to them; that email from mom, the high-five from a boss, they make us feel good. These two emotions are paramount to humans. If we were rats, they would be our cheese. When a stimuli, like an email ping, is paired with a powerful reward and then delivered at unpredictable intervals, just as happens with our digital devices, we will literally become addicted to the behavior associated with getting the powerful reward. In this case that means we literally can’t resist the urge to check email or grab our phones when they beep at us.

The second reason we’re addicted is because of a little human trait social scientists call reciprocity, or the compulsion to respond in kind to others. It is a trait that enables individuals to make contributions to the larger social group without worrying they are losing out. We are all taught from a very young age to return favors, lest we be shunned as an ingrate. Guess what, it applies to communications too. One social scientist, Professor Robert Cialdini, actually conducted an experiment a few decades ago in which he sent holiday greeting cards to a few hundred people he chose at random from the AZ white pages. Low and behold, he was soon inundated with holiday cards from them, even though they had no idea who he was. You see, our compulsion to respond is hard-wired.

4 strategies for overcoming your compulsion

Although the pull to drop everything and respond is strong, we are not at the mercy of our digital devices. Here are four, relatively simple strategies for resisting their siren call.

1. Reduce the intrusiveness of the stimuli.

Since the stimuli trigger a conditioning loop most of us are unable to resist, one of the most effective things you can do is reduce the intrusiveness of the stimuli when you need to focus on something. That means, turning off all alerts, buzzes, dings, pop-ups that could distract you from your work at hand. If you have a Mac, you can also “hide” your dock while you are working on something, so you won’t see any visual indicators that you have mail. We recommend turning them off for good because you don’t ever really need to be at their mercy.

2. Remove the reward dispensers from your environment (temporarily).

There are programs, like Freedom, and Concentrate that enable you to lock yourself out of “rewarding” programs like email social media sites when you need to really focus on a task. The programs are $10 and $29 respectively, but worth their weight in gold. Using them elevates you from rat in a cage being conditioned by external forces to that of the scientist who is actually doing the conditioning.

3. Reward yourself for good behavior.

Use the powerful emotional rewards of significance and belonging to strengthen new, more productive behavior. For example, if you currently respond to every email, text, etc. the second it comes in, try rewarding yourself with a peek at those emails after you finish a task successfully.

4. Send fewer emails/texts and make what you do send brief and to the point.

Did you know that you can use the power of reciprocity to actually curtail the amount of email you receive? Consider this, Kim Davis, a woman we interviewed for our book Pretty Neat, tried a little experiment. She added a signature line to all of her emails that simply said, “Please keep our email boxes uncluttered, only reply all if it is critical everyone receives your reply.” She immediately noticed a drop in reply all clutter in her inbox. She also noticed others in her department, and then in other departments, adopting her signature line as well. In that spirit, if you send fewer emails, you will receive fewer emails. And if you make a point of sending brief, concise emails, you are more likely to get that same kind of missive in return. Make reciprocity work for you, not against you.

Do you have these four areas buttoned up? If not, which of these areas do you struggle with? Have you ever tried a program like Concentrate or Freedom?

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