Every year people go nuts during the holidays, often starting the next year with a host of stress and health-related problems. Not to mention broke. Well here are 15 simple tips that will help you get through the holidays like a sane person and keep you out of the poor house to boot.

1. Prioritize – You don’t have to be at every party or buy absolutely everyone you know a gift. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. (You’ll be bankrupt and they’ll still be annoying). Decide ahead of time the people who are worth your time and money. Or if you are having a hard time paring the list down, let your budget dictate who will get the expensive bottle of wine. Your Boss? Sure. Your neighbor? Not so much.

Before you run out to the store or get online to purchase that cute new something for the house, look around your home first and see if there’s any item that you’re not really using or one that could actually be used for something else. Here are some of my favorites…

- Ramekins- You know those little round bowls that you get fabulous creme bruleé in? Well those lovely little bowls can hold everything from jewelry to paperclips.

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, then you know I LOVE multitasking products. Not only does it save money, but also, space and time! Olive oil is one of my favorite things to use. (I would buy a drum of the stuff if I could!) Here’s 15 ways to use olive oil for a bunch of stuff other than cooking.

1. Makeup remover - I use olive oil almost everyday to remove my makeup. It works especially well on waterproof mascara and eyeliner. I even use it to clean my face when I use the Oil Cleansing Method.
2. Lip Softener - Dip a toothbrush into a teaspoon of olive oil and brush your lips to exfoliate them. Guaranteed to soften your pucker instantly!

1. Recycle – Yep. You know how to do it, but do you actually do it? The easiest way to recycle is to make sure you have a designated area to do so. Need ideas? Check out these nifty ideas:
   

   How to Set Up a Home Recycling Station that Works

   Martha Stewart Recycling Center

   Hidden Kitchen Recycling area

2. Upcycle – I love doing this. Seriously. And I don’t mean doing the crazy stuff, like turning a car into a refrigerator or something. I mean simple things, like reusing binder clips, or embroidery hoops, or even litter boxes. For more Upcycle ideas check out my Upcycle Pinterest page.

So the next stop on my Spring Cleaning journey is my bedroom dresser drawers. They were a mess. And it always takes me forever to find stuff anyway, so I hunted around for things to use as drawer dividers or some type of separation tools.
As I’ve mentioned before, the best thing to do is to start by shopping your home first. So I poked around my basement and the back of one of my closets, (I’ve got to put that one on the list!) until I found these spring loaded drawer divider things that I forgot that I had!

I have a love/hate relationship with my two cats. They are fun and affectionate and really don’t care what I look like, or how off-key I sing or if my socks match, as long as I feed them. (I have a couple of friends like that too). But their hair gets everywhere, and although I have hardwood floors, it can be a real pain to keep the furniture clean.

In my continuing quest to organize stuff in our home, I had pushed cable organization to the top of the list. Both my husband and I have a couple of laptops, not mention various video game systems each with its own set of cables. I was tired of not being able to find the correct cable when I needed it, or resorting to a dusty game of twister when something blew behind the TV and spending an hour trying to find the right cord, before I could troubleshoot the problem. These ideas helped us, and maybe they’ll help you too!

image from unpluggd

“Hey babe? Have you seen an aluminum foil ball about yea big?” I gestured with my hands as my husband looked at me blankly and shook his head.

“Where was the last place you had it?”

“Oh, it was in the dryer. Have you seen it?”

eyebrow raise. blank stare. smirk.

“Uh..no.”

Sexy is pretty much used to my crazy household experiments, so nothing really phases him anymore. Now, obviously,

I am really scared of the ingredients in things like Liquid Plumbr and Liquid Snake and some of those hardware store chemicals out there. Almost all of them contain sodium hydroxide (a.k.a.-lye) which is highly toxic if it comes in contact with your skin, hair, eyes or breathing passages. Not to mention what it does to the environment once it’s out of the house, it basically kills all kinds of wildlife in its path and alters the ph balance of rivers and streams.. Some of the chemicals always come back up into the sink or tub and inevitably make it’s way on to our skin or into the air of the bathroom. Not.taking.that.chance.

For everyday sink, tub and shower clogs we do the following at the House of Brown:

I love binder clips!  They’re cheap, come in all kinds of sizes. and can be used for EVERYTHING! I was just noticing the other day just how many ways we use them around the house. There are a million and one uses for these things, but here are 12 of my favorite…

1. Holding snack bags closed
2. holding the ends of my twists when I’m styling my hair
3. Keeping a towel on my shoulders when I henna my hair
4. Cord keeper
5. Put at the end of the toothpaste tube so we get out every last drop
6. Holding photos
7. Hold hair accessories together when traveling
8. Clothespin
9. Keeping index cards organized
10. DIY money clip
11. Book mark
12. Keeping my ID/Train pass handy

Lifehacker even showed a video of a guy who made an iPhone dock out of binder clips check it out…