Harmony at home

But if you ask her, Ireland will tell you she’s an overworked, overstressed and overtired mom.

“I’m a mess,” she said honestly. “But I’m a happy mess. It’s hard. There are days when it’s overwhelming.”

She also knows how overwhelming and frustrating life can be for the many women who buy her products and visit her Web site seeking advice how to make their homes more beautiful and run more smoothly. That was the motivating factor behind her new book, “Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity,” which was released Tuesday.

“This book is about what moms go through. It’s filled with questions she’s been bringing to me for many years. She knows I don’t have all the answers, but she knows I’ll seek them out.”

The book helps Ireland fulfill the mission she adopted when she began her company: finding solutions for families, especially busy moms. She said those seven words guide everything she does.

“My customers let me know loud and clear that they don’t want fluff from me. She doesn’t want hairstyle tips, photographs or autographs from me. She wants solutions and she wants them now,” Ireland said. “I understand the needs of our customers because I am her. I’m a busy mom. It’s a daily balance to do the best we can each day and taking one day at a time; it’s tough and we need help, and that’s OK.”

In the introduction to her book, Ireland said she communicates with moms every day: online, at the grocery store, at church, at speaking engagements and on her company’s Web site.

Divided into seven chapters, Ireland explores core issues that mothers face daily: managing money, establishing a happy home environment, developing a healthy lifestyle, keeping children safe, finding and living their passion, making faith a priority, and balancing all of that with personal needs. Each begins with a small introduction by Ireland, which is extremely open and revealing about her life, including challenges, mistakes and obstacles to her success. That is followed by questions she has received from customers, along with answers and a checklist to help stay on track. Additionally, there is advice from experts, including chef André Carthen of ACafe and landscape designer Nicolas Walker of J du J.

“It’s written in a way to be a manual, a guide for her,” she said.

She said part of her inspiration for writing the book came after taking a close look at her own life. While visiting her corporate partners at the World Market Center Las Vegas during a trade-show for the home-furnishings industry, she realized she had been so busy working that she wasn’t sleeping enough, was guzzling coffee and gobbling down cookies. “I was so busy taking care of everybody else and doing what I was supposed to do, that I was not leaving just an ounce of time to take care of myself. I could really see its toll.”

The main points Ireland hopes to get across is that it’s OK to seek out help and how important it is for women to take care of themselves.

“If I can give one point of what this book is all about, it’s that we, as moms, have to get over ourselves. We have to get our heads of the sand. … We have to face our fears, go forward and move through them.”

She also stresses the importance of making the home free of clutter and a place that is warm and welcoming, suggesting small changes such as aromatherapy and offering tips on color, wallcoverings, furniture placement, lighting, flooring and accessories.

“Our surroundings can have a huge influence on our state of mind, and if we’re already discouraged, an oppressive living space will increase our sense of being overwhelmed. Whether it’s the lighting, the colors, the clutter or simply the feeling evoked by a combination of factors, when your home environment doesn’t work for you, it’s extremely difficult to be happy,” she writes in chapter two.