THE PRINCESS PLAN BASICS

Changing all aspects of our lives from living like paupers to becoming royalty.
December 31, 2009


Occasionally I have mentioned that I am working on the Princess Plan. Some of you are very familiar with my Princess Plan, but others have never heard of it. Since it is the beginning of a new year everyone is making plans for what they want to accomplish in the New Year. Myself included. I’ve drug out the Princess Plan and dusted it off. I had started it this time last year and was doing so very well on it until we got the BIG HIT from Murphy in late February, I think it’s still a good plan. So here are the basics of it.

The premise of the Princess Plan came from my realizing that clutter in all avenues of our lives was making us live like paupers. Think about it. If your home is in a mess you can’t find things, so you purchase another item to replace the one you can’t find because it’s easier. You can’t find a bill, you clutter your finances with late fees. How often has clutter caused an item to be ruined?

No menu plan, you tend to eat out and clutter your finances more.

Financial clutter aka: debt causes you to have cluttered emotions, which will clutter your relationships with friends and family it’s all connected and as a result you live like a pauper in at least one area of your life. I’m tired of being a pauper, I want to be the princess my Papa always called me. So I developed this plan and as long as I stick to it I find that we are slowly working our way toward living like royalty in all aspects of our lives.

When I set it up I used the Royal theme to help title and give substances to each aspect. You can use different titles or whatever. This is my personal plan and how I set it up.

I tend to work in twelves when making lists so I started with twelve basic goals. As always in my life this is NOT a to do list, but a goal list. I am not a person who works well with demands, a list that is titled “TO DO” sounds like a demand to my brain, so I set goals. The world will not end if I don’t get a goal done, but I will be very proud if I do.

I am a list person, meaning I work better if I have a list to follow. Some people hate lists, so they would just forget setting up the outline as I have it. And just work in general, but for those of us who need a list Here’s how it goes.

Twelve works well for the Princess Plan because then I can work some on each of the 12 main goals a month.

So I took those original twelve goals and broke it down to a certain amount to do each month for 12 months. In my example I will take the goal I have to “totally clean and organize the whole house.” That is an overall goal and looking at it in that HUGE lump is pretty daunting. But when I break the house down to twelve areas to work on solid one area a month it becomes a little more manageable. So the CASTLE segment was born.

Once you have determined the 12 segments for your house then break those 12 segments into four parts per segment—one for each week of the month.

Those four parts get broken into seven goals, one for each day. With details on EXACTLY how I want to do that day’s jobs. It sounds hard but if you set it all down to paper in an outline format you’ll see it’s “just a little” each day. Like I said I’m a list person, so I include EVERYTHING in my overall master goal list, right down to how I will dispose of the clutter I find as I go DAILY. As each of the sections is completed then it’s just a matter of keeping it picked up daily after that segment is completed to get to my goal. Being the S.H.E. (Sidetracked Home Executive) that I am I know that I will tend to put up just a few things in other areas daily too so by the time I get to the last area it will be fairly simple to do.

Just as Dave Ramsey suggests starting with the smallest debt and snowballing up to the largest to keep giving yourself a reward of seeing accomplishment to encourage you to move on to the next one I suggest starting with the easiest area to fix first, say your cleanest or smallest room and then trying to take care of removing 5-10 items daily from the remaining areas of the original 12 so by the time you get to the room from HELL there will be so little left in it you will find it a snap (after all you will have removed permanently 240-480 minimum items from that room already).

Here’s the outline I mentioned I use.

THE ROYAL CASTLE: goal to totally clean and organize it by year’s end.

I. Kitchen by the week

A.-D Break the kitchen into four segments to do one segment a week

1-7 Break the week segments into 7 parts (One part for each day)

a. Break it down into EXACT steps of how you will do that day’s goals, remember to include taking 10 items PERMANENTLY out of each of the remaining areas.

II. Master bedroom by the week

III. Repeat with the other segments for the year in this category. So you will complete one area a month.

Now go down your original list and do a similar outline for each of the other eleven areas. So you will actually be doing 12 different small type segments a day. The 12 items might be finances, exercise, cleaning various buildings, preparing for Christmas/birthdays whatever the “clutter is in your life.

My annual list? It’s below. If we do #7 like we want then my outline will need to be adjusted accordingly because it’s a little hard to clean at home when you are three states away. #12 is going to be the hardest to do with our current state of employment, but remember this is a goal list. The world will not end if it doesn’t happen. It would simply be a wonderful reward to work toward, we all LOVE Walt Disney World and haven’t been in four years, we miss it deeply.

It will of course not happen if our finances do not improve, it is a reward goal. The apple hanging from the string so to speak. We all need a reward to work toward. It will get the exact same type of monthly, weekly, daily breakdown the other areas will get, but they will be appropriate for it. Money will only be put back for the trip AFTER we are actually doing great on our finances again. The only money in the beginning that will be put back will be the change from our pockets once a week. If we see we are not going to be able to make the December 2010 trip we all desire all the put back money will make a great snowball payment. (which is what will most likely happen).

Annual goals:

1. Totally clean and organized the house—THE ROYALS CASTLE

2. Sell off all excess items, vehicles, critters, etc. THE ROYAL TREASURERY

3. Garden year round successfully HER MAJESTY’S GARDEN

4. Preserve all excess foods, get to the point that we only grocery shop for the very basics we cannot produce ourselves.THE ROYAL PANTRY

5. Clean, organize, repair, and paint the garage THE OUTER KINGDOM BUILDINGS

6. Clean, organize, repair, and paint all out buildings, pens, and porches THE OUTER KINGDOM POULTRY

7. Mystery shop five days a week, traveling whenever we can. THE ROYAL TREASURERY

8. Take all excess weight off of all three of us THE ROYALS

9. Lay in two years worth of firewood HEAT FOR THE QUEEN/DRAGON’S BREATH

10. Reduce our debt by at least one half THE ROYAL TREASURERY PART II

11. Go to entirely scratch cooking THE PANTRY OF THE ROYALS

12. Go to Walt Disney World on a cash basis PARTY TIME!—THE ROYAL BALL!

So that’s the basics of the Princess Plan, will we accomplish it all? Not if Murphy has anything to say about it, but then Murphy can be defeated it just takes an “I can” attitude. I am realistic about this, finances being our biggest problem right now, but as I tell myself and the guys “this too shall pass”. After all we are so much better off than others we have blessings galore and most important, we have each other.

So, now I challenge you to make your own Princess/Prince plan. What are your goals, what will you achieve in 2010.

Jan whose family is so much closer after the BIG Murphy visit and who wishes you a Happy New Year in OK