Care Packages for the Home: Dozens of Ways to Regenerate Spirit Where You Live

Too many families these days seem to be in "survival" mode. Rushing from one activity to another, trying to juggle work commitments with home responsibilities, today's families often find themselves with little time to attend to the inner needs of everyone involved. In CARE Packages for the Home, author Barbara Glanz offers countless ways to help families forge more caring, creative, and joyful places to live. Through the stories of real-life families, schools, and neighborhoods, Glanz encourages readers to take action by adapting the ideas to their own families. One family, for example, keeps a "Family Fun Box." Each person can write down things they'd like to do as a whole family, and once a week, they choose one idea from the box. Another holds a "My Family Is Special" celebration each month. Yet another uses a secret hand squeeze that can signal "I love you" no matter the time or place. Whether your family is a single-parent family, a blended family, an extended family, or a retired family, this book contains special ideas just for you. Barbara Glanz is an internationally known author, speaker, and consultant whose books include The Creative Communicator-399 Ways to Make Your Business Communications Meaningful and Inspiring; Building Customer Loyalty-How YOU Can Help Keep Customers Returning; and CARE Packages for the Workplace-Dozens of Little Things You Can Do to Regenerate Spirit at Work. She lives in Western Springs, Illinois.

6 x 9, 336 pages

Barbara Glanz is a well-known author of books on successful business communication and customer relations, as well as workplace advice to make the office a more human and spirited place to be. Now she has turned her considerable insight to warming up the home, with a virtual cornucopia of ideas and firsthand anecdotes about families of all kinds--extended, single-parent, retired people, and multicultural. Hundreds of creative ideas to generate feelings of warmth and togetherness fill the book: a family with 10 children gives each of them the task of doing one helpful job every day for a neighbor; a Thanksgiving Tree with written notes hung on its branches detailing what family members are individually grateful for, to be read aloud when gathered for dinner; spending an entire, leisurely day with the whole family in pajamas playing games, telling stories, and reading aloud together; and simple, entertaining games that can be played at the dinner table with children and adults participating equally. Glanz offers ways to establish traditions and meaningful family rituals, methods to make mealtimes both pleasant and memorable, and suggestions for learning to be more empathetic to others and how to show children the value and pleasures of doing meaningful volunteer work. This is a book for families who feel like the speed of today's world and pace of change may be making their lives less fulfilling and enjoyable than they could be, and it shows how to reverse that trend on your own family in creative, moving, and even whimsical ways. --Mark A. Hetts