Separate new email alerts from phone call alerts in the settings on your smartphone so you don’t jump like a Pavlovian dog every few minutes and stay in a perpetual state of distraction. For example, make your phone buzz, but your email silent.

Keep medical information together and handy with a simple organizational tool like Buttoned Up’s Digital Life.doc. It’s an index for your most important information. In one place, you can collect your personal and family medical history, blood type, insurance information, physician names and addresses, and any other details you may need in a medical emergency.

With today’s enormous purses, keeping everything separate is key. Contain the chaos by keeping small things in zippered compartments. Keep essential makeup in a small makeup bag, find a wallet with good separators for your ID/credit cards/cash, and get a small case for tissues/mints/etc. By limiting where things go, you’ll stay organized, which is always fashionable!

Digital Valuables Doc will help you put together your home inventory with minimal stress

If catastrophe struck tomorrow, and you needed to piece together a home inventory to get properly reimbursed, could you do it? Don’t put off making a record of all your valuables (including clothes – you don’t want to be reimbursed for pennies on the pound). The Digital Valuables Doc makes it easy to do – it breaks down the big job of making an inventory into eight smaller steps, taking you room-by-room.

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Take a few minutes at the end of each day to get your desk under control. Put away all your pens and pencils, and do a quick sweep of your desk for items to throw away (old reports, coffee cups, etc). Put files on your computer desktop into the right folders. Then, prep yourself for the next day by arranging your papers from left to right, with the most important items to the left, so you’ll be ready to work first thing

Got company coming unexpectedly? Make your house look noticeably cleaner in 10 minutes. First, make sure the guest bathroom has toilet paper, soap, and a clean hand towel. Then, close the doors to messy bedrooms, grab a storage bin (or trash bag), throw in wayward toys and stash it in the hall closet. Finally, gather magazines, mail and papers from different rooms and arrange them in neat stacks on a desk or table.

To keep from forgetting to return emails and phone calls, take care of it the minute you think of it. Answer emails the first time you check them and return phone calls after checking your voicemail. Saving them for later can cause you to forget about them all together. If you don’t have time, the next best thing is scheduling an appointment for yourself to do it – don’t forget to copy and pasting contact information into the appointment notes.

So a few months ago my husband, feeling chivalrous, lifted my purse from my shoulder and slung it over his for a few moments while I picked up and soothed our little guy who just happened to be mid-meltdown.

He (my hubby) practically fell over.

And that is no exaggeration.

He gasped, “How much does this thing weigh?” Incredulous, he handed it back to me after a few blocks with a stern warning, “You are going to throw out your back if you keep lugging that thing around!”

I thought to myself, honey, you should try lugging it while wearing heels!

His reaction reminded me of the little French saying, “comme un escargot, avec la maison sur le dos.” Literally it means, like a snail, who carries its house on its back. Except it rhymes.

Apparently I am an escargot. And have been for some time — the reason I’m familiar with the phrase is because when I lived in France at age 19, I’d hear the French say it about little old moi thinking I couldn’t understand them.

That evening when we got home, just for grins, my hubby and I decided to weigh my little “purse.”

Want to guess how heavy?

Deep breath…

…33 pounds.

Yes, I was carrying around a purse that weighs about the same as my 3 year old.

The culprit was (and always is for me) paper. I am a scribbler. Yes, I use my computer to write and such, but I need paper to really think and organize myself. The only problem with my need for paper is that, in addition to my laptop and other miscellaneous electronic and makeup items, I end up lugging the equivalent of a few reams of paper plus a few notebooks everywhere I go.

Of course, I also have to be sure I always have a pen handy, so I had about 10 of those floating around too. And some Hot Wheels. Because you never know when you might need one of those.

And magazines. And two books to boot.

I clearly was in need of a purse intervention!

Something about seeing those numbers on the scale woke me up. An image of 70-year-old me, all crooked and hunched over, flashed before my eyes.

So that night, I vowed to turn over a new leaf.

How am I doing? Well, here’s what’s in my purse right now:

My wallet

A GiftCard.log

1 notebook

2 pens

My computer

My phone

Gum

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I shifted to a smaller purse. But I’m telling myself it’s because I’m a reformed woman now.

I want to know. What’s in your purse right now? Am I the only one with a problem?

Want to go organic without going over budget? Make the switch for frequently used items first, then with products you don’t use everyday. Buy items that are in season to save money. Try farmer’s markets, which sell inexpensive organic food, or food co-ops, that charge a fee but offer low prices on organic food. For listings of co-ops organized by state visit http://www.coopdirectory.org/. Buy your grains, dried fruit, and pasta in bulk, and try growing an organic garden. Finally, clip those coupons and hit up the sales on organic food!

My kids are no different from any other kids.

They prefer mac and cheese to quinoa, Teddy Grahams to apples, and lollipops to fruit.

While my oldest will eat his veggies without too much fuss, my youngest has a supernatural ability to find even microscopically cut ones and quickly spit them out before he (gasp!) ingests something healthy.

For the longest time it made meal time stressful and un-fun. Every night seemed to devolve into a battle of wills; one that I’d usually lose. I can’t tell you how many times I’d stand over the sink at 6:30 p.m., shaking my head in frustration as I scraped yet another batch of vegetables down the drain.

I think this picture adequately sums up his personality. As you can see, he’s clearly a “my way or the highway” kind of guy!

But that all changed recently.

Believe it or not, this little hater-of-all-things-healthy now inhales his kale, wolfs down his broccoli, and shrieks with glee when he sees green beans on his plate.

What the heck? How’d that happen?

Enter Mr. Highpants…

…and the Bicep Smackdown.

Wha??? I can feel you looking at those pictures of my husband and I quizzically.

Yes, we are a little goofy. But, as it turns out, goofiness is a killer operant conditioning element.

Here’s our killer eat-your-veggies routine that really works:

1. When our oldest eats a bite of his kale (or whatever vegetable), we feign surprise and shock when we actually SEE him grow! Literally, like right in front of our eyes. We murmur in disbelief to each other, “Wait…was that 1/4″ or no…I think it’s at least 1/2″! That’s just plain INCREDIBLE!” Both of the boys obviously delight in the conversation. In fact, our oldest is usually so pleased, he takes another big bite of kale.

2. When our oldest takes his second bite of vegetables, I just HAVE to go check out his bicep. Feigning nervousness (a hand that won’t stop shaking), I tentatively walk around the table to his chair – pausing in fear every few steps to heighten the drama. And then, when I feel his muscle…I go…flying! Flying across the room, bouncing off a wall, and eventually back around the table where I collapse in front of my super-strong son in a heap. Can you imagine – a bicep SO STRONG it knocks mom out?! The boys think that is HILARIOUS!

In fact, they both take big bites of veggies after that…which in turn, brings out Mr. Highpants.

3. Mr Highpants is my husband’s hilarious character invention that entails hiking up his pants well above the navel, 1950s style, and doing a version of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Every bite of veggies our youngest takes makes Mr. Highpants do a siller and sillier and sillier walk. So our little one keeps shoveling and shoveling and shoveling those veggies in.

Yes, this kind of routine makes dinner take longer. Yes, you have to repeat this clearly insane routine at random times to keep the conditioning-loop strong. No, it’s not restaurant-friendly.

But it works. Boy, oh boy, does it work! It even works when I’m home alone and Mr. Highpants isn’t around.

And it’s fun. So, so much more fun than fighting over vegetables.

What kinds of silly things do you do to circumvent a battle of the wills? What tricks do you have up your sleeve to get your little ones to eat their veggies?