Time management and housekeeping: Do they really go together? They can if you set goals and take it one step at a time.

First, you want to identify what you want. What is your “Clean IQ?” Are you a neatnik or more relaxed? This is your decision based on your own priorities.

Now that you know what level of clean you want, you will set some goals to reach that level. Go through your house, room by room, and decide what needs to be done to bring it up to your expectations.

Perhaps your first priority will be to organize the room. Based on that decision, write down everything that must be done to accomplish it. Don’t worry about cleaning it right now. You’ll worry about that aspect of the project later.

And speaking of projects, I would treat each room, or part of a room, as a project. Break each room/project down into doable tasks. Go through all of the rooms and areas of your home at once.

After you’ve gone through all of your rooms and written down everything , write down everything else that you know needs to be done, such as picking up your dry cleaning, having your car serviced or writing a letter to your friend. Write it all down and get it out of your head. This is what I call a brain dump!

You are going to have one heck of a list! But, remember, you are going to take each item as a baby step.

Your next step is to set up a schedule to work on your projects. Be reasonable in setting up the time you have available. You’re not going to get it all done in one day. After all, it didn’t get unorganized in one fell swoop!

All done? Good! Your next step is to look at all of your rooms and decide which is most important to YOU to get clean and organized first. I always like to start with the laundry area because when you start going through your other rooms, you’ll nearly always have some laundry. If your laundry room is already clean and organized, it makes doing all of that other laundry much easier.

Now, get yourself four boxes and label them STAY, MISPLACED, GIVE AWAY and TRASH. Go through your rooms: rrom by room, area by area, item by item and put each item into the appropriate box. Take trash items to the garbage bin immediately. Box up the charity and/or garage sale items and deal with them as soon as you can. Take your misplaced things and put them in a central location. Don’t try to put them away at this point. If you want to be REALLY organized, sort them into boxes by the room they should go in.

Now, clean your room according to “your” level of clean and begin putting everything that belongs in this room where it should go. If it doesn’t have a place, find one that makes sense, probably where you are most likely to use it.

One room is finished! Go on to the next room in line of priority. Wash, rinse and repeat!

You can get clean and organized. It just takes time and persistence…and getting a little cooperation from your family, of course.

Jude Wright is the webmistress of 40 websites, most of which relate to Home Management. Visit cleanandorganized.com CleanAndOrganized.com to see how YOU can become clean and organized.

Finding your own decorating style is easier than you think. Whether you are young and moving into your first apartment or a seasoned citizen ready for a change, the process is the same. The key is to just surround yourself with the things you love.

As we age, our tastes change. I certainly don’t decorate today like I did in my twenties. In my twenties, I thought that everything had to match. I thought that I had to choose a style and stick with it throughout my home. No matter which style you chose, Mediterranean, modern, Early American, you picked out your living room set as a whole, with matching sofa, loveseat and chair, and matching end tables and coffee tables. We wanted everything to be brand new and, above all, match! We purchased a dining room set or a bedroom set. Well things have changed ladies! We do not have to be slaves to decorating trends or someone’s idea of what is “in style”.

Here are just a few tips to get you started in making your home reflect your own sense of style.

1. Keep a 3 ring binder and clip out photos from magazines of anything that you like. Don’t worry about the colors or styles. If you like it, clip it out and put it in your binder. This binder will become a constant source of inspiration as you decorate your home.

2. Hang on to those family heirlooms – If you love grandma’s gate leg table or her old hand painted plates, proudly display them. The key is to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. My grandmother had a gate leg table sitting in her hallway with the phone on it. When I was a teenager, I announced to my grandmother that I wanted that table! 40 years later, it still sits next to my bed and is one of my most treasured memories. My grandmother’s hand painted plates hang above my kitchen cabinets. In fact, other than my bed and sofa, there is not one piece of furniture in my home that I purchased new. Don’t be afraid to shop garage sales and flea markets. If you see something you love, buy it! If it’s not the right color, paint it.

3. Surround yourself with your collections – I lean toward the romantic cottage style of decorating with lots of whites and pinks; however, I also have collections of roosters and antique birdcages. How do you incorporate roosters and antique birdcages into a romantic cottage, you ask? You just do it! Everywhere you go in my home, you will see a rooster or an antique birdcage. Now you probably aren’t going to see this combination shown in any home decorating magazine, but I don’t decorate my home for them.

4. Choose colors that make you happy. Maybe those pink walls in the bedroom wouldn’t appeal to a prospective buyer, but unless you’re getting your home ready to sell, who cares? I plan to be carried out of my home feet first, so I certainly don’t worry about what a prospective buyer would prefer.

In the end, you’ll find that if you just trust your own instincts and surround yourself with things that make you happy, you will have created a warm, inviting home that will make every guest feel comfortable and welcome. More importantly, you will have created your own retreat away from the rest of the world.

Marilyn Kelley is the owner of Casual Cottage, casualcottage.com casualcottage.com, an online boutique for those who love romantic cottage style decorating.

It is also important for those in the market for a plasma TV to be aware of other purchases that may be required besides the television itself. One of the most important things to keep in mind is the fact that in most cases these TVs will not come with their own tuner. The buyer of the television therefore needs to be prepared to provide a cable TV, satellite TV, DVD, VCR or computer input.

It is also important to purchase only the highest quality cables to connect these external devices to the plasma TV. These high quality televisions are very sensitive, and using the highest quality cabling will help owners get the most out of their new TVs.

The PAL Format

PAL is short for phase alternating line, and it is a color encoding system that is used to broadcast television signals in large portions of the world. The PAL form

The terminology PAL is generally used to refer to the 625 line/50Hz television system found primarily in European countries, and to differentiate the system form the 525 line/60Hz systems, known as NTSC, that have become the norm in North America, Central America and Japan. It is important for buyers of DVDs to understand this difference, since not all DVD players are capable of playing both formats.

PAL formats are used in a number of different countries throughout the world, including all of Europe, many parts of Asia, and many parts of Africa as well.

The NTSC Format

The NTSC format, on the other hand, is primarily used throughout Central and South America, including the United States, as well as in Japan. Again, it is important for both television shoppers and DVD purchasers to be aware of the differences between the competing PAL and NTSC formats, and to make sure they purchase the right products for their part of the world.

The term NTSC is an acronym for National Television System Committee, the industry wide standardization body that was responsible for the creation of the format.

The National Television System Committee was first established back in 1940 by the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) in order to resolve conflicts which had arisen over the introduction of a national analog television system in the United States. In March of 1941, the committee issued a technical standard for black and while television, built on an earlier recommendation by the Radio Manufacturers Association.

After a few years of inaction, the National Television System Committee came back into being in 1950, this time in order to make a decision about color TV. The committee unanimously approved what is now known as the NTSC color television standard in 1953.

Throughout the years there have been a number of changes in the NTSC standard, known as NTSC I, NTSC II and NTSC III. The specifics on each type of NTSC are as follows:

*NTSC I first became the standard in 1941, starting in the US and later moving to Canada. The NTSC I standard was the original black and white broadcasting standard.

*NTSC II is the color version of the NTSC standard.

*NTSC III was developed to deal with the new digital television revolution which began in the 1980s,and unlike NTSC all aspects of the NTSC III format have been rigidly designed.

The NTSC format is used throughout North America, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as throughout Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Bermuda, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Panama among others. The NTSC format is also used extensively throughout South America, including Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela, as well as Japan and many other parts of Asia.

The SECAM Standard

The SECAM standard is commonly used throughout France, and in fact the acronym SECAM is short for sequential couleur avec memoire, or “sequential color with memory”. SECAM is an analog color TV system first used in France, and recognized as the first color television standard to be used in Europe.

Like PAL, NTSC and other color standards, SECAM is a compatible standard, meaning that those black and white television receivers that predate its adoption are still able to show the programs, although only in monochrome. This compatibility is achieved by adding a second signal to the basic black and white signal. This signal is designed to carry the color information to the television set.

The work on the SECAM standard began in 1956, and by the end of the 1950s the standard was in place. It was still too early, however for widespread introduction of the standard and the devices capable of playing its signals.

The first SECAM standard was introduced in France during the 1960s, but the color television was not an instant hit in France. A year after the final SECAM standard came online, only about 200,000 color sets had been sold, in contrast to the million that were expected.

In addition to France, the SECAM standard was eventually adopted by the former colonies of France and Belgium, as well as the countries of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, came the introduction of competing standards, and many Eastern European countries have since made the switch to the PAL format.

With all these competing color television standards on the market, it is easy to understand why it can be so important to choose a plasma TV capable of playing several different formats. The advent of these multiformat capable plasma televisions has been one of the most important technological improvements in the world of electronics, and those in the market for a new television set or DVD player would do well to keep these standards in mind as they shop.

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110-220 Volt Electronics – A multisystem TV is a TV capable of receiving and displaying different video systems like PAL, SECAM and NTSC. You’ll be able to operate a multisystem TV in 99% of the world. Their dual voltage design allows them to be plugged into either a 110 voltage source or a 220 voltage source. In some cases, the plug on the television will not fit your country’s outlet, so an inexpensive plug-adapter will be needed. They can generally be picked up at an electronics store such as planetomni.com planetomni.com for $1.95. With a multisystem TV, such as a plasma, CRT tube type, LCD or DLP, you’ll likely need a codefree (sometimes called region free) DVD player. These exist in many forms. When used with a PAL-NTSC TV you’ll be able to see the full 625 lines of resolution available in the PAL system and the full 525 lines used in the USA NTSC system. There exists a converting type of DVD player which is codefree in that it can read all of the world’s 6 regions and both standards, PAL and NTSC. 140,000 other products are available here: planetomni.com planetomni.com Tel. # 800-514-2984

The bathroom has many purposes and should be one of the most important rooms on the list when considering a home improvement project. Bathroom home improvement can be so over looked by many people as they simply do not understand how much value can be added to your home with some well thought out bathroom home improvement plans.

This article will look at the little things that can make a big difference in your bathroom home improvement project. If you think it will be too expensive to really add value to your home by spending more time on the bathroom you are wrong.

The first thing you could do to your bathroom to add value without spending allot of money is to add some decorative trim around the ceiling. This will give the room a nice look that you may not see in many homes. Trim can be much less expensive than redoing the entire wall with paint or wall paper.

You might be able to add some nice curtains around your mirror for very little cost to really give your bathroom home improvement project a classy look. This may be another idea that seems just a bit different, but again it is these types of simple touches that can add real value without costing you an arm and a leg to complete.

Paint your bathroom sink and give it a very classy look. You may want to consider painting some nice designs on your sink to give it a touch of class. You could visit some home improvement showrooms and see if they have any sink painting designs to go by. If you are unsuccessful at finding any examples you should be able to find some nice designs online.

You might want to check out your larger home improvement retailers and get some good ideas for a creative