If You Missed Tonight’s Show…

Approximately 75% of the 25.8 million family caregivers in the US are women. And 41% of them are juggling taking care of children and their elderly parents. It can be an overwhelming process. Watch a replay of the show and learn what things are absolutely critical for managing the care of a parent without losing your mind.

Did you know, if not applied correctly, your 30 SPF sunscreen can protect more like a 2? Ouch!

Check this sunscreen guide to find out how your sunscreen stacks up.

There comes a time in all of our lives when the roles reverse. Suddenly, we are no longer the child and the parenting skills we’ve so carefully honed with our own kids now need to be turned toward our aging parents. It can be one of the most emotionally trying times of your life, especially if you don’t know how your parents feel about certain issues. Unfortunately, too many people wait until it is too late to sit down and have a discussion to learn their needs and wishes. Don’t wait for an emergency just because you feel uncomfortable discussing topics like finances, wills, and funerals. Nobody ever wants to watch their parents age, but if you have everything buttoned up ahead of time, it can ease some of the stress.

Alicia on “caring for an older parent”

“My Dad died 15 years ago and my Mom is almost 90 now. I’m the baby of the family by many years, so I’m seeing my mom age well before my friends are experiencing it. I’ve learned that it’s never easy, but having everything at our fingertips is vital. My Mom, who has dementia, just broke her hip a few months ago. It’s stressful when something like that happens and you’re worrying about their care and recovery. My sisters and I put together her living will and power of attorney documents years ago, before the dementia set in. We’ve also compiled all of her medical and insurance information and all three of us have it at the ready. I can’t imagine not having it all together. It would just make things that much worse. Now, when emergencies arise, we can focus on her care and comfort instead of scurrying around for paperwork.”

Even if you do nothing else, complete the first three tasks and keep the documents and information in one spot (Life.Doc or Medical.Doc binders are available at www.getbuttonedup.com):

1. Legal:

In addition to a standard will, have a lawyer draw up a durable power of attorney, which allows you to make financial decisions on behalf of your parents. Additionally, each parent needs a health care directive, also known as a living will, that spells our their individual wishes for medical care.

2. Medical.

Everybody should have a family history, but in addition to that information, keep a detailed list of all of the medications your parent is taking. In addition to the reason and the drug’s name, be sure to include dosage amounts. Additionally, keep a list of doctor’s names and contact numbers, since many elderly patients are under the care of several doctors and specialists at once.

3. Insurance.

In addition to your parent’s Medicare policy number and 800 information number, be sure to keep any information on supplemental or secondary insurance, as well as long term heath coverage, if they have it.

4. Finances.

It’s always advisable to discuss finances with your parents to learn more about their situation. Will they require financial assistance from you or will you need to know how they want their estate distributed? While a will can tell you how it will be divided, if you have a record of all of their accounts and policies, account numbers, and contact information, it can save you a lot of time and frustration later.

5. Coordinate Care.

Will your parents live at home, require live-in assistance, or opt for assisted living? Either way, aging parents require a lot of help. Whether it’s picking up their groceries or taking them to doctor’s appointments, their needs can be overwhelming for one person alone. Create a spreadsheet with various tasks and divide the work among various family members or friends.

Of Horcruxes, Cracker Jack Boxes and Colonoscopies

By Humorist and illustrator, Alisa Singer

Harry Potter fans will recall the scene in the series’ sixth book when Dumbledore agonizingly forces himself to drink a basin of vile green potion. It turned out that, in a cruel twist on the Cracker Jack box gimmick, Lord Voldemort had hidden one of his treasured Horcruxes at the bottom, to be accessed only by one who drinks the entire contents of the basin. The wise Dumbledore had deputized his protégé Harry Potter to ensure he finished every last drop of the foul liquid, no matter how much he protested.

Persons of my vintage may be forgiven for seeing Dumbledore’s self-inflicted torture as akin to the dreaded process of preparing for a colonoscopy. So, the evening before my own procedure I took a page from the great wizard’s playbook and recruited my teenage daughter to be my “Harry”, charging her with the job of making sure that I drank all of the several thousand ounces of the nauseous mixture my doctor required me to swallow.

With my daughter at my side to urge me forward I eyed my nemesis, an enormous plastic jug that looked like it belonged on a shelf in someone’s garage filled with antifreeze. I was overcome by feelings of loathing and trepidation rising from, as one might expect, deep within my bowels. (These are the kinds of feelings a clogged pipe might entertain towards a can of Drano, if plumbing fixtures had emotions.)

Nonetheless, I stiffened my sinews, summoned up the blood, screwed my courage to the sticking place and grimly began to drink, quoting liberally from Dumbledore throughout: “.. …Don’t like it …. want to stop…No more, please, no more …”, followed by choruses of “I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!” and “KILL ME!”

I was rather proud of how my daughter handled her responsibilities during my ordeal – the girl’s made of some stern stuff. Promises of designer jeans, a car of her choice when she turned 16 and a lavish destination wedding someday (with the groom of her choice) were as gnats against the great windshield of her determination. Her resolve did waiver a bit when I dangled the condo in Aspen but, ultimately, she did not succumb. Of course, I made it relatively easy for her. Only once or twice was she required to wrestle me to the ground, kneel upon my chest, squeeze my nostrils shut and pour liquid down my throat.

Finally, I gulped down the last few ounces and collapsed into a chair. (There was, unhappily, no prize at the bottom of the container, not even a Horcrux.) Assuming the aspect of a guppy floating on its side on the surface of a fishbowl, I waited for nature, abetted in this case by a wide assortment of toxic chemicals, to run its inevitable course.

It occurred to me later that this is likely one of those situations in which men and women might differ in their approach. I theorized that women, being natural “pleasers”, would tend to assiduously drink every last drop out of fear of disappointing the authority figure, i.e., the gastroenterologist. Whereas men, their brains awash in testosterone, would be more likely to discount directives issued by others and adopt a more defiant, “good enough, I’m done”, attitude.

I had one anecdotal bit of supporting evidence for this theory. The brother of a friend of mine, a not-to-be-named anchorman for a major television network, decided to do an on-air colonoscopy in the hope of motivating everyone who was AARP-eligible to run out and, with great alacrity, schedule their own procedure. His plan was to walk through the experience from beginning to end, finishing with a dramatic endoscopic image of his colon. Unfortunately, being a man, his preparation for the procedure was less than exemplary, with the result that the image of his colon wasn’t appropriate for prime time viewing. Not to be deterred, he made a secret deal to borrow pictures from a female TV celebrity who had earlier done her own on-air colonoscopy and whose colon was, of course, squeaky clean. (She, being female, had completed the prep process with the commitment to perfection she brought to bear in all things.) The audience never knew whose colon they were actually viewing.

I put the question to my own doctor, a prominent gastroenterologist who has performed tens of thousands of these procedures: “Are women more likely than men to thoroughly complete the odious evening-before exam prep?” After seriously pondering the matter for a moment, he said he finds both genders arrive similarly prepared as a rule; however, he pointed out that a woman’s colon is longer than a man’s (who knew?) and because they are also typically smaller people, it is harder for them to swallow all the liquid and get the job done. The fact that they are able to prepare as well as the men, given these obstacles, would support a conclusion that women are generally more committed to following instructions attentively, even under highly unpleasant circumstances. He also recounted an incident where the male CEO of a major company arrived for his procedure without having done any prep at all. He apparently expected the doctor to somehow “fix” this for him, being accustomed to not having to deal with disagreeable tasks in his life. To his surprise, the doctor sent him home to drink his gallons of noxious liquid.

I wondered whether Dumbledore’s own determination to drink every drop of the potion might not pose evidence inconsistent with my theory. I raised my concern to my daughter. “Ah,” she said, “you forget”. She proceeded to remind me of the dramatic disclosure made by J.K.Rowling to an assembly of her fans in Carnegie Hall in 2007 – Dumbledore, it turns out, was gay.

Alisa Singer’s humorous essays have appeared in a variety of print and online newspapers and magazines across the country and in Canada.

She is the author of various gift books designed to entertain and amuse baby boomers. You can learn more about her work and purchase her books by visiting her website: www.AlisaSinger.com or contacting her at ASingerAuthor@gmail.com.

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The article below and the illustration are by humorist Alisa Singer.

Dear Grumpy Aging Boomer,

I’ve been struggling with body image issues my whole life – even now as a middle-aged woman when I should know better – and I’ve noticed that all the admired female shapes are not to be found anywhere in nature. I’m thinking of the runway model’s inverted triangle and that classic feminine ideal, the hour glass. On the other hand, the least desirable female forms are the natural organic ones, like the bottom-heavy pear, the round apple and the shapeless banana. How does a woman ever get to love and accept the body nature gave her?

Signed,

A Natural Woman

Dear Natural,

Many an hour of my own youth was spent poring over magazines that preached acceptance and self-love while devoting most of their pages to glossy images of unnaturally shaped models, with tips about how to look more like them (more-or-less inanimate objects) and less like ourselves (more-or-less fruit). It took me all of my childhood and adolescence and a good portion of my adult years to adjust to my own pear silhouette and to finally acknowledge the pluses as well as the minuses of this particular design. And while I never ceased to lament the thighs that stretched outwards towards each coast, eventually I became proud of my relatively narrow waist and flat stomach. By “eventually” I mean right about the time my waist started to widen and my stomach began to protrude and I evolved into a new shape altogether, part apple and part pear, a bulbous freak of nature which for lack of imagination I’ll call a “papple”. Turns out, the real challenge for women of our vintage is not learning to accept the figure we were born with but, rather, the strange body we’re morphing into.

You see, as the body matures fat is increasingly distributed around the waist and upper abdomen. One of the cruel ironies of growing old is that we gain fat in undesirable places and lose fat in critical areas where we would prefer to keep it, such as the sockets of our eyes and those nice comfy cushy pads at the bottom of our toes and feet. Yes, our toes and feet! Not only does this seem grossly unfair, it also appears to defy the laws of gravity. You may well wonder how fat can move upwards from our hips and thighs to our waists instead of gravitating down to the balls of our feet. (Maybe Mother Nature figured we wouldn’t need padding on the bottom of our feet since she had expected that, by now, we’d be buried flat on our backs with our toes curled up.)

Fundamental scientific principles like gravity are not the only laws turned upside down by the aging process. There’s also those well established canons of fashion which we’ve carefully observed over the last 50 years, rules I’ve personally adhered to with far greater care and dedication than I ever paid to the tenets of judaism. Thus, being a pear, I dutifully added volume and detail to my upper body to balance my profile and draw attention away from my broader hips and thighs. Horizontal stripes were recommended and liberally applied. But as a kind of an evolving apple I would be advised to add heft and width to my hips to balance a larger upper body. What’s a girl to do – there are no fashion rules for papples!

But maybe that’s a good thing. The reality is that at this point, whether I add volume to the top or the bottom, I’ll never get a construction worker to even look up from his sandwich, let alone bother to whistle. Which is fine – in fact, it’s rather exhilarating. I am beginning to understand the attraction of organizations like the Red Hat Society, whose members (middle-aged/elderly women) gather in groups wearing bright red hats and purple dresses. The society was originally inspired by the poem “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, which included this stirring line: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me…” It’s all about exploiting one of the perks of aging (there had to be one, right?) – the independence to violate every rule of fashion. Pears can dress in loud patterns with pleats strategically placed to spread just at the hips; apples can wear brightly colored thick belts and loose fitting pants and skirts. And us papples – we can just run around naked. Who cares? Who will even notice?

So remember Natural, no rules means freedom and, as Janis Joplin told us a while back: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. Except, maybe, just a little around the middle but, please god, no more from the balls of our feet.

Signed,

G.A.B.

Alisa Singer’s humorous essays have appeared in a variety of print and online newspapers and magazines across the country and in Canada.
She is the author of various gift books designed to entertain and amuse baby boomers. You can learn more about her work and purchase her books by visiting her website: www.AlisaSinger.com or contacting her at ASingerAuthor@gmail.com.

The Journey On The Road Not Desired.

By Gil Ahrens, of The Whether Vein accessible at www.gilahrens.com/blog

There are things in life that we never hope for and certainly never imagine, unless in a bad dream. Or, we think, “won’t happen to me, maybe someone else, but not me.” Have you recently had some of those bad dreams turn into reality? Have you become, “someone else?” If not you, then no doubt many around you have. Whether through an accident or an injury, an unforeseen malicious illness, the death of a loved one, financial devastation, or a job loss with paltry replacement prospects, the adversity index for this generation is at an all-time high.

But adversity is simply a fact of life and it does not play favorites. Your rich uncle may have financial security, but he cannot save his wife from cancer. You may be an elite athlete, but you cannot prevent a drunk driver from slamming into your car and paralyzing you forever. And you cannot prepare yourself for the trauma and challenge when your child is born developmentally challenged.

Adversity doesn’t alert us before it strikes, but rest assured that its sights are trained on each and every one of us. We don’t know when it will strike or in what form, but we will all get hit eventually. Often hard, sometimes frequently.

Of course, the key is how we respond, because we certainly can’t prevent it. Why bother putting 50 deadbolts on the front door when the thief can enter easily through the back window? Sure, we can prepare, but only to a certain extent, provided we know what to prepare for. It would be a waste to steel your mind for a mental battle with cancer only to have Alzheimer’s wipe out your ability to think. And you don’t want to drive a tank in order to avoid a horrible car accident. It’s not very efficient and life – on many levels – will certainly pass you by.

So how should we respond? Well, the first suggestion is to breathe, if you can. If you cannot, then you either have bigger problems or are already in heaven, which is actually a good thing and cause for rejoicing. But, assuming you can breathe, please do so. The easiest way is to first exhale. It takes much less effort than inhaling and provides both physiological and mental clues that the next step is to inhale and take in air (unless, of course, there’s sincere desire to go to heaven, in which case inhaling is counter-productive).
But seriously, breathing helps enormously. Long, deep breaths help calm the mind and bring new life to the body. Focused breathing can create at least a temporary sense of space – a buffer zone – from the thorny issues and weighty challenges that can press down and seem to squeeze the air out of us.

With some good breaths and fresh air in us, it’s now easier to really assess our situation with a more balanced (or at least slightly calmer) perspective. It’s important to focus on the world around us, not simply our own unique situation. While we shouldn’t minimize or sugarcoat our predicament, it’s very easy to overstate its severity unless we contrast it with how others are faring. While most adversity stinks, it probably stinks a little less for those of us fortunate enough to live in the United States. Despite our many challenges and shortcomings, it’s still far better to be living in the U.S. than most any other place in the world. So, with the benefit of this perspective, the next response, despite its potential irony, is to be grateful: there’s probably always someone who has it worse, and almost certainly you’re better off than many of the world’s population.

Equipped with a grain of gratitude, however, does not really help you confront your adversity or, ideally, to overcome it. No, you need to harness the resources around you in new ways, and tap into new resources you wouldn’t have previously thought of.

The best resource, of course, is people. The friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues around you who will help you through your adversity. There is something innate in the human condition which understands that none of us can survive in this world entirely on our own, especially when we’re in need. Mothers get this at a core level because of how they nurture and raise their children.

So the people around us are our best resources. But in times of challenge, many well-meaning people who want to help do not know how. There is no training manual for how to care for and support others during unexpected adversity, and even if you knew yourself, you certainly don’t want to tell lots of people what you need and then have to manage them all individually.

Thankfully, there are great new online resources that can guide people in how to help and enable them to do so more efficiently and effectively, whether individually or as a group. For content and information, you can’t beat WebMD and HealthCentral, including its Wellsphere site that has an abundance of practical advice, tips, and expert content.

Nevertheless, how you connect and reconnect with your network is what it’s all about. Sure, there’s FaceBook and LinkedIn and MySpace and Twitter and Flitter and Ditter. But for my money, the best site available is LotsaHelpingHands. This is the only site I know of on which people can actively participate in the caring of a friend or loved on. The free website enables people to schedule and coordinate activities, and manage volunteer involvement.

Once your team of support is organized, you can move mountains. Having help is the first step in confronting the situation. Only with the help of others can you truly begin to clean up, re-organize, and rebuild a life of meaning. You’ll then be able to own the road you’re on, not as someone else wishing to be elsewhere, but as yourself, fully aware of who you are and not alone on the road you’re traveling.

About the Author
Gil Ahrens (www.gilahrens.com) is the author of Shattered, Shaken, and Stirred a personal account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual struggles after a teenage drunk driver slammed into their car — head-on — at 95 mph and paralyzed his wife. He spent the last 15 years as an investment banker, most recently as a Managing Director at J.P.Morgan. Gil is passionate about ice hockey, Formula 1 racing, University of Texas football, and good cigars…a vice he acknowledges freely. His blog, “The Whether Vein” accessible at www.gilahrens.com/blog.
Visit Gil online at www.gilahrens.com

Winners Announced

There were two winners of signed copies ofEverything I Know About Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts: Secrets and Solutions for Overpowering Perfectionism by Debbie Jordan Kravitz. The winners, already notified by email, are: Andi Willis and Vanessa Delgado!

Congratulations and we hope you will keep coming back to Buttoned Up to enter to win more giveaways. To those of you who did not win, you can still get an autographed copy when ordering through Debbie’s site, simply request she autograph it when ordering. You can order a book (soft cover is $19.95, instant download is $10) at: http://virtuallyorganized.com/more-from-debbie/. Don’t forget to review the excerpt from the book featured here at Buttoned Up!

Author Debbie Jordan Kravitz

If you are like me (or many of us) our parents are more active and often healthier than their parents were.

While that is great, there is not excuse put off an important conversation with them now about their finances and wishes…before an event or emergency makes it an urgent necessity. Take it from me, when my dad became suddenly ill in 1995, he had very little time to get his things in order. While he was organized and prepared, if my sisters and I had a conversation with him years earlier, those months while he was ill would have been much less stressful.

The conversation does not have to be morbid or sad.

Start by saying you want to make sure you are prepared in case anything were to ever happen to them where they need you to step in and help out. Tell them you just want to be there for them and this is a way to make sure you can do that and carry out whatever wishes they may have.

Here is a list of the basic items you will want to talk to them about and make sure have copies of this information or know where they are located:

1. A will

2. Health Care Directive – so you know who (it may be you) makes decisions with regard to care if they cannot. Critical to have for any hospital visit.

3. Power of Attorney – so people can make financial and legal decisions on their behalf if need be.

4. List of assets and who to contact for financial information

5. Insurance information – including health, medicare, homeowners, life, and long term care

6. Medical history – including medications they are taking

7. Location of important documents and items – for example passports, keys to safety deposit box

Don’t wait to do this. It is not an easy conversation but everyone will feel better once it is discussed and handled.

You can also look at our product, Life.doc, which is a great road map to help you with the important information you need to collect. I have one now for my mom (she is 89 and has dementia) and it is a lifesaver.

The author has agreed to give away two signed copies of her book – but wait! For those of you who do not win, you can still get an autographed copy when ordering through Debbie’s site, simply request she autograph it when ordering. You can order a book (soft cover is $19.95, instant download is $10) at: http://virtuallyorganized.com/more-from-debbie/. Don’t forget to review the excerpt from the book featured here at Buttoned Up!

To Win:

This giveaway is open to U.S. residents over 18. Here’s what you need to do to enter to win:

• Leave a comment on this blog (be sure to include your email when you submit the comment, so we know how to reach you).

• Extra Entry – mention this giveaway in a post or tweet with a link back and leave a comment letting us know you’ve done so.

• Extra Entry – sign up for Buttoned Up’s e-newsletter.

• Please post a separate comment for each extra entry so we know it’s been done!

• Entry period closes at midnight PST, Sunday, May 16th, and the winner will be announced Monday, May 17th.

**Note winner will be picked at random using Random.org and announced in the newsletter on Monday May 17th. Winners will be contacted by email. Winners will have seven (7) days to contact us and claim the prize before another winner is selected.

Author Debbie Jordan Kravitz

Everything I Know About Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts: Secrets and Solutions for Overpowering Perfectionism by Debbie Jordan Kravitz.

At the age of 35, Debbie Jordan Kravitz heard four words that would change her outlook on life forever:

“You have breast cancer.”

As a side effect of her battle to rid her body of cancer, Debbie eventually found a way to overpower her lifelong battle with perfectionism. She embraced her recovery as an opportunity to reinvent herself, follow her dreams and start living her life, as opposed to trying to perfect it.

This experience led Debbie to write Everything I Know About Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts: Secrets and Solutions for Overpowering Perfectionism (available from Maliza Publishing at http://virtuallyorganized.com/more-from-debbie/). Everything I Know about Perfectionism details secrets and solutions for overpowering perfectionism from a young breast cancer survivor and “recovering” perfectionist. Through Debbie’s experience, as well as the stories of other inspiring recovering perfectionists, you will discover:

• why perfectionists do what they do,
• the negative and sometimes secret consequences of living a “perfect” life
• life-changing “A-Ha” moments from recovering perfectionists, and
• solutions and strategies for overpowering your own perfectionism or helping the perfectionists in your life recover.

The following is an excerpt from Debbie’s book and highlights Laura, one of the many real-life stories of recovering perfectionists . . .

PROCRASTINATION AND PERFECTIONISM

Everybody procrastinates from time to time. It’s human nature to put off things that are unpleasant or difficult. But for perfectionists, procrastination takes on a different perspective and seriously damages productivity.

In the pursuit of unreachable standards, perfectionists endlessly spin their wheels rather than move forward. In some cases, they never even start a project. The quest for perfection can be so intimidating that productivity literally screeches to a halt.

That is when procrastination sets in.

Perfectionists often put off a task knowing that to make the result flawless, it will require a lot of work. It may even require several attempts; many, many attempts if perfectionism is in high gear.

Some reasons that perfectionists fall into the procrastination trap is because they can never seem to find the perfect time to begin a task, the perfect tools or supplies for the task, or the perfect time to finish the task. Rather than just jumping in and making do, they wait for this perceived perfect situation in which to work. Inevitably, one aspect or another does not measure up to these high standards, and rather than risk failure, the perfectionist pushes aside the task for yet another day. For perfectionists, procrastination is about much more than just poor time management skills. It is about avoiding potential failure.

Laura’s Story

As an adult, procrastination resulted in a cluttered house, a disorganized business and haphazard financial records. She put everything off rather than risk not being able to get it done perfectly. As her disorganization grew, Laura found herself even more overwhelmed, and she saw perfection becoming less and less likely every day. It was a vicious cycle that continued for years.

Laura decided she needed to change her perfectionistic ways when she realized her young children were in danger of inheriting her over-the-top expectations. She lived by the belief that if her house couldn’t be perfect, any effort was just wasted effort. “Perfectionists want it Home and Garden beautiful in one day. When it doesn’t happen and we get discouraged, we give up the whole idea. We crash and burn, so to speak.”

Laura’s house was chaotic and disorganized, and her impressionable children were watching everything she said and did. “This is not what I wanted them to emulate.” Laura confronted her husband with the fact that what they were both doing around the house was simply not working. “My perfectionism was a ball and chain around my leg, and I had to get rid of it if I wanted to get control of my life and give my kids a better life.”

Laura stumbled across the book Sink Reflections, by Marla Ciley (a.k.a. “The Fly Lady”). Laura began to reinvent her ideas about housework as it related to her perfectionism. “First my belief system had a major overhaul, followed by an overhaul of my thoughts.” Gradually, she began to live by the wise words of Ciley. Laura constantly reminded herself, “Progress, not perfection,” “Even five minutes of work on a problem is progress,” “Your house didn’t get dirty and cluttered in a day, so it will take more than one day to clean it up.” Slowly, the clean spots got bigger. “I started to feel like I might actually be able to kick perfectionism to the curb and create the life that I wanted, and deserved. The tide was turning. I still have a lot to do, but I feel that I am fighting a battle that I will eventually win.”

As Laura and her family work toward a more organized living space, she is conscious to eliminate the need for perfection from the end result. With her family’s happiness and harmony in mind, Laura is able to achieve her goals. “I still catch myself in my old thought patterns, but I recognize them and deliberately replace them with something more constructive. I can honestly tell myself that things are better and that I can improve, even just a little bit, every day.” Laura compares her struggles to overcome perfectionism, disorder, and clutter to peeling an onion. “Each time I clean up a space in my home, I shed another layer of clutter and disorganization. It is not clean, yet, but I am definitely getting closer.”

You can read more about how Laura battled perfectionism, as well as other motivating and inspiring stories of “recovering” perfectionists, in Debbie’s book >“Everything I Know about Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts: Secrets and Solutions for Overpowering Perfectionism.” (2009, Maliza Publishing) available as a soft cover book for $19.95 plus shipping, or as a downloadable ebook for $10 from http://virtuallyorganized.com/more-from-debbie/. For organizing tips and ideas, visit Debbie’s blog, http://VirtuallyOrganized.com.

Buttoned Up will be giving away copies of Debbie’s great book. Our contest will begin on Wednesday!