The Sandwich Generation: Middle-aged individuals who are pressured to support both aging parents and growing children.

People in the Sandwich Generation are caught between the obligation to care for their parents – who may be ill, unable to perform various tasks, or in need of financial support – and children, who require financial, physical, and emotional support. These obligations demand considerable time and money. With the added burdens of work and personal issues, as well as the need to contribute to their own retirement, affected middle-aged individuals are under significant amounts of stress.

Here are some tips if you're experiencing Sandwich Generation stress:

• Take care of yourselves and do what you need to do to stay healthy. This includes having some fun and living life to the fullest. Don't put your lives on hold.

• Don't neglect your marriage. Make time for one another.

• Be practical. You can only do what you can do. Don't overload yourselves either emotionally, physically or financially.

• If you have “Boomerang” adult children returning home, make sure all your expectations have been shared. Require them to be responsible adults even though they are living in your home.

• If you decide to have an aging parent live with you, again, share all your expectations. Remember that your parent can and probably wants to have responsibilities in your household. Let them be involved, productive members of the family.

• Protect your privacy and time alone as a couple and as individuals.

• Realize that any unfulfilled dreams may cause problems in your marriage. Talk about these with one another.

• Don't hesitate to ask for help from community and governmental resources.

If you're not yet part of the Sandwich Generation, start talking now about the possibility of someday being part of it. How do you think you would handle it?

Whether you go all out with spring cleaning, or just cover the basics, here are some tips to save you time and energy:

• Have all your supplies on or near you to save time. Wearing your tools on your belt can cut your cleaning time in half.

• Start at the top and work your way down.

• Mini-blinds: Call an ultrasonic blind cleaner. They're in the Yellow Pages and they're affordable. Not only do they come to your house and take the blinds down, but the ultrasonic waves clean the blinds' headrail mechanisms and ropes. The dirtiest blinds can look brand-new! Call for a free estimate.

• Use lemon oil on all those porous wood surfaces that have suffered through the winter's dry heat. Not only will the lemon oil treat the wood and restore the moisture and shine to it, but it will cover most scratches from the pets or kids that have nicked up your oak baseboards.

• 85% of the dirt that comes into your home comes from the bottom of shoes. No wonder those carpets always look so bad after the winter months! Call a qualified carpet cleaner to thoroughly clean your carpets, and be sure to reapply carpet protector on all the carpeting. (Normal foot traffic and carpet cleaning removes the carpet protector from the fibers over time.)

• Ovens: Buy the professional strength oven cleaner for non-self-cleaning ovens. For self-cleaning ovens, be patient. Most ovens take three hours of actual “burn time” to clean the oven interior effectively. Then you only need to wipe the oven clean.

After all this, don't even think about making dinner. You deserve an evening out!

– Adapted from www.healthyhousekeeper.com

Professional golfer Tom Kite is known not only for his many tour victories (18, including the 1992 U.S. Open), but also for his steadiness under pressure.

That trait is rooted in his character, but he also consciously worked to enhance it. One skill he developed was making use of his failures. Many players go home if they don't make the cut at the end of the second day of a tournament. Kite, however, figured out that he could learn more if he stayed, even if he wasn't playing. He would practice all morning when the practice area was less crowded, and then watch the top golfers all afternoon. He learned how they played the tough holes, and especially how they handled the pressure of having all eyes on them. His failure had opened a window, and he remembered everything he saw.

– Adapted from BusinessWeek