We’ve all experienced this seasonal panic: it's the night of the office holiday party and a good white shirt has gone missing!  Calm the chaos with a pre-holiday wardrobe check.

Assessing the State of the Closet for all family members before the holiday begins means never having to say, "It's in the wash!"

Planning for Christmas, catalog or online shopping has many advantages over the holiday mall scene. 

No long lines. No sore feet. No staggering to the car, weighed down by parcels and shopping bags. 

Shopping becomes a pleasure, conducted from a favorite chair. Make your choice, load your cart, sit back, and wait for the UPS man. Ahhhhh!

Still, it's possible to have too much of a good thing! Holiday promotions sweep in at the end of August, filling email inboxes--and disorganized shopping exacts a high price for convenience.

What's for dinner? It's the question of the hour!  Too many of us look for answers in the supermarket at 5 p.m. Harried from the day's work and harassed by by hungry children, we rack our brains to solve the what's-for-dinner dilemma.

Three meals a day. Seven dinners a week. From supermarket to pantry, refrigerator to table, sink to cupboard, the kitchen routine can get old, old, old.  No wonder we hide our heads like ostriches from the plain and simple fact: into each day, one dinner must fall.

What's the answer? A menu plan. 

Imagine a genie, a butler, a secret servant at your fingertips. Someone who remembers everything: when your kindergartner got his last round of immunizations, the name and number of that other Mom in the soccer carpool, what your second cousin named her latest baby.

Every home manager needs this informational paragon, but no one has to scour deserted beaches for a jeweled bottle. This secret servant is called a planner--and every home manager worth her gym socks needs to have one.

What is a planner? It's a collection of information, portable and accessible.

Holiday spending can be hard on the pocketbook--and bought on credit, "Christmas Day" can stretch into the new year for weeks or months.

Ease the Christmas cash crunch with creative ways to save money for Christmas! Financial institutions offer dedicated Christmas clubs for the disciplined, but savvy holiday planners have found other ways to accumulate cash for holiday spending.

Best idea: start now. Saving money for holiday spending is a little less painful with these do-it-now ways to come up with Christmas cash:

It's silent. It's sneaky. It creeps about in corners: clutter! When the state of the house aggravates you to your last nerve, it's tempting to launch an all-out battle in the war against clutter.

First, though, know your enemy! 

There are as many reasons for household clutter as there are clutterers. As Pogo says, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us!"

Take aim on your household's clutter problem by going to the root of the problem: your own thinking. 

What's your clutter personality ... and which of these internal voices strikes a chord?

Busy school-day mornings bring new focus on the master bathroom. Home to grooming rituals and personal care chores--and heir to all sorts of oddments and obsessions--the master bathroom is your launch pad to an organized day. 

What's the state of your private domain? Time to cut the clutter with a session of sorting, tossing and decision-making. A simple A-B-C concept will make short work of organizing the bathroom's limited space.

Taken a trip down the cleaning aisle at the supermarket lately? If you believe the ad hype, you can't keep a clean house without loading your shopping cart with a different cleaner for each surface, floor and sink in the house.

Hogwash! Simple recipes using products from your pantry make effective household cleaning solutions. An added plus: these natural products are more environmentally friendly than commercial alternatives.

When it comes to kids and housework, the blasted terrain is familiar: a dirty house, balky children, and frazzled, frustrated parents--and a new school year throws the issue into high relief.

Tired parents try it all, from chore charts to screaming fits. Canny children engage in housework sabotage, selective hearing or childish irresponsibility to duck assignments. The noise levels--and stress levels--rise along with the stacks of dishes.

How to negotiate a peace on the issue of children and chores? Try these family-tested strategies to calm the conflict and gain the goal.

Nothing can streamline an organized home like a well-crafted set of household systems, and today, we focus on laundry and clothing systems. What do they do? How do you develop them? What benefits will establishing laundry and clothing systems give to you and your family?

Chances are, you already have these systems in place. After all, a system is just a set of organized items, decisions or actions, designed to work together to achieve a common end.