You’re off at work all day and there are no kids at home to mess up the house.  It’s just you and the little mess you make.  How hard can it be to clean the house?

Well, that was what you thought until you looked at it, knowing that you only have 15 minutes before that special bloke arrives.

Don’t worry.  15 minutes is plenty.  Here’s what you do.

1. Arm yourself with your tile and grout cleaner, fire away at all the areas that need it; the shower, the vanity, the kitchen sink and let it sit for a bit.

2. A dash of toilet cleaner around the bowl is next, then step away and attend to the piles of stuff; letters and bills etc that have piled up on the end of the kitchen bench. Find a spot for them. Even if it’s a box labelled “Filing” that you’ll get around to soon!

3. With the surfaces free don your dusting glove (make sure you have one of these life savers) and walk around, room by room, running your dusting hand over all the surfaces.

4. Next up is the damp cloth for wiping down dirt and grease … and if you’d like to speed the process up, and work one room at a time, put your dusting cloth in one hand and your wiping cloth in the other! This saves you going back to rooms you’ve already been through.

5. Whack the kettle on, take your bathroom armoury with you and wipe down the surfaces that you sprayed earlier. Having the spray sit on them grotty areas gives it time to do its job – and makes cleaning it much easier and quicker.

6. A quick wipe down and brush of the toilet, run a mop over the floor and a vac over the carpeted areas and you’re done … perfect timing as the kettle has just clicked off.

Easy peasy.

15 minutes down, house clean, kettle boiled and man at the door.  Perfect.

PS A friend of mine sprays Mr Sheen in the air just before her guests arrive –  house may be dusty but it smells like it’s clean! Any tricks up your sleeve?

All of us enjoy an excuse to get together and have a few drinks with the girls, but whether you are putting on cocktails or mocktails, you can cater for a girl’s night at a fraction of the price if you make your own rather than buying pre-mixed drinks.

Here are some easy and delicious drinks that you can mix in seconds and dazzle your guests with:

Champagne Cocktails: Place a sugar cube in the bottom of a champagne flute, add three dashes of bitters and allow to soak into the cube then pour in one measure of brandy and top up the rest of the flute with champagne.

Brandy Alexander: Fill a cocktail shaker to ¾ with ice then add one measure of brandy, one of crème de cacao, and one measure of full cream. Shake and pour liquid only over fresh ice, or serve with no ice in a martini glass.

Pina Colada: Add 4-6 cracked ice cubes to a cocktail shaker, pour in 3 measures of rum (different recipes call for different combinations of white and dark rum, but using one or the other works fine) 3 measures of coconut cream and 3 measures of pineapple juice. Shake well.

Manhattan: Stir one dash of bitters, 3 measures of whiskey and one measure of sweet vermouth over 4-6 cracked ice cubes. Pour into a chilled cocktail glass and decorate with a cherry.

And for some fun mocktails:

Virgin Mary: Pour tomato juice over 3-4 ice cubes, add a dash each of lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce (or black pepper sauce) and Tabasco (chilli) sauce, stir well and serve in a long glass with a straw and a stick of celery to garnish. This is also touted as a great hangover cure.

Cinders: Add 4 ice cubes, juice of 1 lime, ½ an orange, 150 ml pineapple juice and a few drops of bitters to a cocktail shaker. Shake well and serve with soda water or dry ginger to taste.

Muddy Puddle: Juices of ½ lemon and ½ an orange poured over ice, topped up with cola and garnished with a slice of orange and serve with a straw.

Sparkling non-alcoholic apple juice makes a great champagne substitute, try it instead of champagne in your favourite mocktail recipes, or serve it on its own in a champagne flute.

There is nothing as good as a night with your best girls and lots of laughter.  Make sure you do it often.

You’re rushed off your feet, just arrived home form a crazy day at work, barely have time for a spritz with the deodorant, let alone a shower … and you have someone special coming for dinner.

You could do a cheat, ring the local takeaway, hope it arrives in time, or that you have time to go and collect it, plate it up nicely and shove the containers in the wardrobe so your special person doesn’t see them in the bin.

Faking a home cooked gourmet dinner, however, is easier. It is also cheaper, you don’t end up with a globulous Thai red curry sauce on your Jimmy Choo’s and there’s a good chance it will be quicker. Your special person will see that you’ve whipped it up yourself and feel even more special and you can easily fake the “oh, I’ve been working on this for ages!”

Pasta is your friend. Bow tie pasta, penne and rigatoni make a pasta meal look spectacular.

Avoid spaghetti and fettuccine, both of which have been known to cause major embarrassment at dinner parties.   You know what I mean….

Pasta takes ten minutes to cook, during which time you “create” the sauce.

Cherry or sun dried tomato, olives, smoked salmon, tinned tomato, garlic, olive oil or a small jar of cream can create the most gourmet of meals.

Smoked salmon will require some preparation (slicing – very difficult) but the rest simply come out of a jar or punnet.

A small amount of olive oil in a pan, crush a clove or two of garlic with the flat part of a knife, remove the skin and toss it in.

Stir through whatever it is you decide you want in your pasta:

• whole cherry tomatoes, coated in garlicky olive oil,
• sun dried tomato or smoked salmon in a creamy sauce, or
• olives in a tomato sauce …

 The choice is yours and the only effort is the opening of a tub of cream or tin of tomato (diced, preferably). The cream or tomatoes need to be brought just to the boil and then it’s ready to serve.

They all look pretty good as they are, but a sprinkling of grated parmesan, or some torn basil leaves just finish it off.

Turn the lights off and light a few candles and your fake gourmet will not only look gourmet, but it will feel it, too!

If it still all sounds too much, contact me and let me whip you up a meal and escape without being spotted.

Whether you like it or not, those nearest and dearest to you will insist on having children. This means that at times you’re going to be faced with kids that aren’t yours, and that you don’t necessarily want.

First up, there’s little you can do about the reproduction choices of others, so you’ve just got to accept it or become a monk on a mountain high up in Tibet.

Let’s be upfront about it. Kids are messy, noisy and interrupt conversations at the most inopportune times. BUT – they are also easily bribed and respond well to being made to feel special. You can use this knowledge to your advantage.

If you want some time to chat, eat in peace or just be left alone, your safest bet is to find out what they like and give it to them when you next meet.  You can get away with it where parents can’t.  Yes, it’s a bribe but if ever there is a time to bribe someone, this is it.

Don’t make assumptions about what kids like.  You’re bound to get it wrong.  Don’t assume all kids like to colour in just because you did, or you’ll probably have rebellion on your hands.

“I HATE colouring in!  You can’t make me do it.”

Taking the time to find out their age appropriate interests will also make you the Best Person In The World and really boosts the chance that they will do exactly what you ask them to and when you ask them to do it.

If you don’t like having kids in your own home, organise to meet your child-bearing friends elsewhere. Do some research and track down places that have an outdoor play area.  It’s a rare child that doesn’t want to get out to play on equipment they haven’t experienced before. You get peace, they get fun.  It’s a fair trade.

Here are some special tips:

• Avoid wearing white as much as possible.
• Large dangly jewellery has a good chance of being sucked on, by the babies and toddlers, and inadvertently caught and pulled hard by pre-schoolers and above.
• Anything of value; financial or sentimental, is best put in a safe spot. Interstate is good.

As tempting as it sounds, avoiding children is really not the best answer, especially if you want to keep in contact with your friends.   You can tolerate them or manage them.  When you manage them you’ll find they’re not as bad as you once thought they were.

This week I thought I’d share this article by Katherine Giovanni with you….

Why should you hire a concierge?  I can think of a hundred reasons actually. Here are just a few …

People around the world are trying to squeeze thirty-six hours into a twenty-four-hour day, and when you do that you don’t do it very well. If you continue to do it on a regular basis, then eventually your body will resent it and you’ll get sick. Concierge are here to give you your health back. They’re here to give you the extra hours that you have been craving and will do what has to be done, so that you can do want to do like spending more time with your children or spending a few extra hours at work.

Companies around the world are also getting into the act. They are not only starting to use concierge, but they are making them a part of their corporate benefit packages. They are reasoning correctly that the less time people spend running personal errands during the workday, the more time they can spend at their desks and, subsequently, with their families at night.

Still not sure you need a concierge?  Here are a few more reasons why you need to hire us …

• The average U.S. worker admits to frittering away more than 2.09 hours a day, not counting lunch, on personal business. This costs companies an estimated $759 billion a year.” – Salary.com and AOL Survey.
• The average worker skips 24 minutes of his or her lunch break every day, the equivalent of approximately two weeks more holiday per year (figures from Data Monitor).
• Since 1969, family time for a working couple has shrunk an average of 22 hours a week. U.S. Government
• Workplace stress is costing the Australian economy $14.81 billion a year. Medibank-commissioned research
• Stress related presenteeism and absenteeism are directly costing Australian employers $10.11 billion a year. Medibank-commissioned research
• According to the Health and Safety Executive, 6.5 million sick days are taken every year as a result of stress — costing £7m per week and £1.4m per working day.
• Approximately 13.7 million working days are lost each year in the UK as a result of work-related illness at a cost of £28.3 billion per year – National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

When looking at these statistics, it is easy to see why time has become the commodity of the century and will be even more so in the decades to come. The popularity of concierge services stems from the fact that people are stressed out, overworked, and need help dealing with life so they can spend their free time nurturing themselves and their families. As good workers become harder to find, businesses are looking for concierge services to offer as perks to keep valuable employees happy.

That being said, below is a list of 20 ways you can use a concierge (the real list of what a concierge can do for you is endless)…

1. Obtaining tickets to concerts, special events and sporting events
2. Transportation Services – train, plane or automobiles … concierge can get it!
3. Travel and Vacation Planning
4. Business Referral Service – need a landscaper or a plumber?
5. Restaurant Recommendations and/or Reservations
6. Pet services
7. Internet Research – need research done and you don’t have the time to do it?
8. Personalized shopping and delivery
9. Dry cleaning pick-up and/or delivery
10. Grocery shopping
11. Senior care
12. Picking up or returning a gift
13. Bill paying
14. Auto Maintenance
15. Home Organization
16. Delivering a Meal – breakfast, lunch or dinner
17. Prescription Pick-up and delivery
18. Repair and Service Calls
19. Sick Care – sick in bed? Call a concierge and they’ll do your errands, arrange for dinner to be delivered and can be on hand to help your family out

So get your life back!  Hire a concierge to do what has to be done so that you can do what you’ve always wanted to do.

About the Author: Katharine Giovanni is an award-winning author and the world’s leading concierge trainer and consultant as well as a Certified Concierge Specialist (CCS) and Speaker. She is one of the founders of Triangle Concierge and is the Chairman of the Board and Founder of the International Concierge and Lifestyle Management Association (ICLMA) as well as the author of several business books including her award-winning book Going Above and Beyond and The Concierge Manual.