No Time to Clean! How to Reduce & Prevent Cleaning the Professional Way by Don Aslett

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Don Aslett is THE guru when it comes to cleaning. His books on cleaning, time management and "decluttering" are as enormously popular as they are entertaining and educational. (I also really like his books on other topics too). "No Time To Clean! How To Reduce & Prevent Cleaning The Professional Way" is Aslett's new approach to cleaning for a new day.

The book is written in Aslett's easy to read and entertaining style and is accompanied by the artwork many of his texts are know for. I personally find the style, layout, and artwork enhance the reading experience, but make no mistake about it; Aslett's books contain a lot of meat with that sizzle. His down home practical advice is right to the point.

This book on cleaning is just under 200 pages long and contains 10 chapters. They include:

Intro: No Time To Clean! Aslett knows you don't have time to clean, so he points out that he will show you how to prevent cleaning as well as other strategies to solve your "no time to clean" worries.

One: Modern Cleaning's Biggest Mystery: The Time to Do It. Three page chapter with the focus of if you are cleaning more than a couple of hours a week, you are cleaning too much or inefficiently. Quick motivation to get started now!

Two: Adjusting Our Standards and Schedules. If it isn't dirty, don't clean it. Among the great tips in this chapter include advice on how clean things really need to be and how to set standards rather than cleaning by charts or schedules.

Three: Cleaning on the Run. Aslett shares some "whys" regarding cleaning and some tips on doing things before they become bigger. You might also be surprised at what you can get done in a very short amount of time, and the chapter shows you how to clean faster and ways to make things stay clean longer.

Four: The Best Way of All to Cut Cleaning: Prevent It! This chapter is all about preventing those down-the-road problems. Aslett provides some great suggestions on how to do just that.

Five: Too Much = Too Much Time Cleaning. Aslett is known for getting rid of junk. This is a very short chapter because he focuses on this topic in several other books. "Clutter's Last Stand" and his other clutter books are great if you need more help with clutter.

Six: Do Your Housework With a Hammer. This is an interesting chapter on designing your house, or parts of it, to make it easier to clean.

Seven: Other Hands That Can Help. If you are going to hire others to help you clean, you will benefit from reading this chapter first. Aslett provides some good advice regarding getting others to help with your cleaning needs.

Eight: The Big One: Getting Kids to Help Clean. Aslett suggests this might be the most important topic in the book. Besides the help you get cleaning your home, it will help young people late in life. He has some very good suggestions for getting kids to help out.

Nine: Quick Cleaning Room by Room. Tips and strategies for cleaning every room in the house as well as the garage and outside. Just implementing some of these would make a big difference.

Ten: Quick Cleaning Guide. This "guide" is 68 pages long and covers a ton of professional cleaning tips from dusting to pet messes. If you want to clean like the professionals and get more done in less time, Aslett shows you how.

Face it, cleaning is a big pain. It's one of the necessary evils. We have to do it, but none of us really enjoy it. (well... maybe a few do...) Cleaning is not a topic that you leisurely read about either. So pick up this book, read it (it won't take long) and implement the advice so you can clean more in less time and then get on with the better things in your life, after all that's what living is about. Highly recommend if you want to clean faster, better, and cheaper.

Alain Burrese, J.D. is a performance and personal development expert who teaches how to live, take action, and get things done through the Warrior's Edge. Alain combines his military, martial art, and Asian experiences with his business, law, and conflict resolution education into a powerful way of living with balance, honor, and integrity. He teaches how to use the Warrior's Edge to Take Action and Achieve Remarkable Results. Alain is the author of Hard-Won Wisdom From The School Of Hard Knocks, the DVDs Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking series, and numerous articles and reviews. You can read more articles and reviews and see clips of his DVDs as well as much more at http://www.burrese.com/

How Much Do I Need From My Garden?

Every year, gardeners are faced with one of two situations. One is seen every year when zucchinis are planted and if you are a parent you have heard too often this statement from your children. "Zucchini again?" The other situation is when the garden does not produce enough produce to get one through the season. In the past, knowing how much to plant was simply a guess but today we have tools that can guide us to a more appropriate educated deduction.

To utilize this tool to its fullest garden, one must first understand human nature. First, adults tend to enjoy vegetables more than kids. While there are exceptions to this rule, it is a general premise of this tool and contrary to what kids may say French fries are not a healthy alternative to fresh vegetables.

The second premise that this tool uses is the amount of space that is need for an adult compared to a child. Adults need 4 square feet of garden space per meal being served per day. Children, on average, need only 4 square feet per meal per day. What this means is that if you are only going to harvest for a dinner salad, then you only need one 4 square foot garden.

To aid in this understanding lets create a chart. The far left column will be the names of the people you plan to serve. In my example, I am going to use a family of three. The next columns represent individual 4 by 4-garden spaces or 3 by 3-garden spaces for the child.

In this example, mom is going to eat a salad for lunch and dinner. This means that she will have two columns that are checked. The father is only going to eat a salad at dinner so he only needs one column checked. The child is only 5 years old and in doing so only needs one 3 square foot garden space checked.

This family has also decided to try urban homesteading and in doing so needs to preserve vegetables for the upcoming year. Since each family will benefit from these vegetables, an additional column needs to be checked.

This family wants to donate some fresh produce to a local food bank. In doing so, they decide to grow an additional 4 by 4 garden space for their food donation.

Once the family's needs have been checked on the chart, it is a simple process by which the checks are added. The number of checks is then taken times the size of the garden space. This number is the number of square feet you will need to meet this family's needs

If you are using the square foot garden method, simply take the number that you came up with and times itself. This will give you the total number of plants, one needs for the season, which includes cool or warm season crops and Cole.

Having an idea of how much you need for a season will save on the budget, reduce waste, and will allow you to plan for the whole season. Once you have this information, you are prepared for the sea of seed catalogues that will fill your mailbox.