Reasons to Rake Leaves with Your Kids

Sometimes it’s hard to get your children to help out with yard work. If you can show them how fun it is, the chances of them participating increase tenfold. Raking leaves is the perfect cleanup activity for a wide variety of age groups. The folks over at Mommy Lounge have put together 13 reasons why kids should rake leaves. Here’s our favorite:

The special treat you get afterwards: After an hour or two its always nice to reward yourself for a job well done. Some hot chocolate, tea, coffee (not for the kids) and some delicious cookies would work perfectly.

Don’t Spend Your Whole Day Cleaning

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a Mother is how much disorder children bring into our lives. The house is strewn with toys, streaks of grape jelly decorate the walls, and the floor is sticky with who-knows-what substance. Your youngest child seems to wake up sick on every holiday and your middle kid throws tantrums in the most unexpected places embarrassing you to the core. Kiss predictability goodbye until you ship your kids off to college. Don’t let disorder drive you nuts. Instead of chasing your kids around all day picking up every block they toss onto the floor, or wiping down every sticky fingerprinted window, just relax. Does the thought of relaxing while watching tiny saboteurs rip your house to shreds evoke shudders of anxiety? Don’t let it. Here’s why you should wait until the end of the day to clean and tidy. If you do it any earlier, your house is going to get destroyed again. And again. And again. The result? Frustration and resentment towards your kids and your role as a Mother. Do this instead. Have a designated area in your house for toys. Either have your children play ONLY in that room or allow each child to select three toys to bring into the common area of the house. Right before dinnertime, put on some peppy music and make a game of cleaning up the house. Have the children put the toys back where they belong. As for messes, only clean them up immediately if they are going to cause a permanent stain. Otherwise, wait until your pre-dinner clean-up time to give the house a quick wipe-up. Why do the same thing over and over and over again and drive yourself crazy? Put one big clean-up time on your daily schedule and let yourself have fun with your kids the remainder of the day!

The Truth About Sponges

I’ve heard all sorts of tips on when to throw away sponges. From don’t use them at all, to toss them in the micro to kill off bacteria. I happen to be a fan of sponges and use them for all types of cleaning. That’s one of the reasons I was so excited to find this tip from the Unclutterers blog:

In our household, we discovered a trick: the Good Clean sponge [for dishes] is used as-is, straight out of the package. When it gets downgraded to the Wiping Sponge [for kitchen counters and the table], we cut one of the corners off. When the sponge gets downgraded again to a Skunging Sponge [the dregs of cleaning], we cut another corner off. This way, each sponge is easily identifiable by its shape. People who have more than 3 life cycles for their sponges could adapt this by cutting off additional corners as the sponge continues to move down the ranks.

Thank you Kathryn for that wonderful solution!

How to Pretend Your House is Always Clean

Michelle over at BlissfullyDomestic.com had some great tips to share about sudden cleaning. You know, the cleaning you do when your mother-in-law says she’ll be over in 5 minutes for a quick visit with the grandkids. Well now, using these tips from Michelle, you can make the most out of those five minutes! My favorite tip:

Swiffer Wet Jet is your friend.

Reduce Lint Trips

Lifetips.com had this little gem for saving a few moments every time you do laundry:

Keep an empty tissue box on or near your clothes dryer to put the lint in each time you empty the lint screen. Also, put used dryer sheets in the tissue box. When the box gets full, dispose of it — instead of carrying a handful of lint from each dryer load to the garbage can.

Remember, little things can sometimes add up to a lot. Before you know it, you may have time to enjoy that extra cup of coffee!

Clutter Control!

Beyond Easter Baskets!  Looking for an easy, attractive way to control clutter in your house, and in your child’s room?  Try an array of baskets.  The kids can’t seem to keep books stacked neatly on shelves?  Try a laundry basket.  If a big gawky plastic basket doesn’t fit your decor, try a wicker laundry basket.  You can find them at home goods stores or even Walmart, and they make a great portable, simple way to corral those board books that seem to multiply. 

Try smaller baskets for crayons, video games (especially the small ones like those for Gameboys), hair bows, and even kitchen counter clutter like vitamin bottles, coffee accoutrements, and snacks.

Got Bored Kids?

There is nothing more frustrating than having a bored kid hovering around you asking, “what can I do?” It’s important to teach children that boredom is a natural part of life and that they need to learn how to entertain themselves. If they’ve run out of ideas, resist plopping them down in front of the television to keep them occupied. Instead, sit down with your children and write out as many enjoyable activities that you can on index cards. Place the cards in a large fishbowl and have the children pull one out when they’re bored. If they aren’t in the mood to do that particular activity, give them one more chance to pick out a different card. If they’re still uninspired? Give them a chore to do. Have a different fishbowl with chores written on index cards. Chances are your kid will change his or her mind and go for the activity instead. Search the web for kid-friendly sites that list numerous children’s activities for ideas to write on your index cards. If you do need a break from your nagging children, allow a small amount of TV doled out in 30 minute increments. Don’t allow more than two hours of viewing per day.

Reuse Old Lemons

Being the frugal moms that we are, it’s good to know that some food items have multiple uses. Lifetips.com provides us with this handy hint:

If you´ve got a lemon that´s a little past its prime, cut it in quarters and run it through your sink disposal to freshen your drain.

See - those lemons aren’t just for making lemonade!

Organize your Chores

When I stumbled on this website I was so happy! Finally an unbiased solution to delegating chores! Introducing ChoreBuster.com a website that will help you create a chore schedule for every member of your family. ChoreBuster.com will even email you a new chore schedule every week or month!

Enter in people and chores
Specify how hard / undesirable each chore is, and how often it should be done
ChoreBuster automatically generates a fair schedule of chores
Schedule emailed to you daily or weekly - no need to log in

Create a Cleaning Routine

One of the best things about creating a routine is that after you have done it enough times it becomes habit. Once it becomes habit, you don’t notice that you are doing it as much. That’s why, for both ourselves and our children, creating routines out of cleaning can make it more bearable. Busy-moms-online.com has put together a list of 5 suggestions for developing a cleaning routine that will work for you. My suggestion: use it to help your kids get through chores as well!

Do one task at a time, but do it for the whole house. This is another effective way to break the work up. For example, you could dust the entire house from end to end and be done with it. Then you could move on to sweeping or vacuuming. Doing things this way will save time by eliminating a lot of the “stop and go” as well.

Baking Soda for the Laundry?

Had to give this one a try. It turned out much better than Oxy-Clean and at a quarter of the price. Thanks Lifetips.com!

Add about 1/8 cup of baking soda (instead of dry bleach) in the wash cycle of your laundry. Clothes will be brighter and smell cleaner (as a result, you can reduce the amount of detergent you use and save money)!

Remove the Scent of Smoke from Clothes

Have you ever gone over to the house of a smoker for a visit? Even if they haven’t been smoking during the visit, you’ll notice a smoke smell on your clothing when you return home. Lifetips.com has a suggestion for getting that smoke smell out:

File with an emery board instead of cutting if the nail isn’t very long, or if it’s more sharp than long.

Use a nail clipper designed for babies. The regular ones are harder to manage (and actually do look big enough to take off a baby’s finger).

Save Time On Doing The Dishes

Doing the dishes is drudgery at its best. It’s time-consuming, gross, and frustrating. If you have to wash your dishes by hand, it can take forever. Even if you have a dishwasher, you have to take time to rinse, and sometimes scrub the dishes before running them through to ensure they’ll get clean. Don’t miss a load or you’ll see a mountain of dirty dishes grow in your sink. Strange small flies may appear! Take control of this daily headache with a few simple tips. As mentioned, don’t miss a load. Getting behind on the dishes can throw your schedule into a tailspin and nothing is worse than realizing there are no clean spoons after you’ve already poured the milk into your cereal. Try to have an empty dishwasher each morning that you can add dirty dishes to as you go along. Once it’s full, run it immediately so you don’t forget. Paper plates are always great though not environmentally conscientious, but you don’t always need to use plates for everything. If you make a peanut butter sandwich for your child for lunch, simply place it on a napkin that acts as a plate as well as serves its original purpose. Have each family member use the same cup all day to avoid getting an unnecessary amount dirty. Also, clean food-encrusted pans immediately after use to save yourself from having to scrub later. Use these easy tips and dirty dishes won’t drag you down!

Keep Those Mirrors Fog Free

It’s 10 minutes before you have to leave for school and this morning it’s you who’s running late. To top it all off, the shower mirror is fogged again and you can’t see enough to be able to put your makeup on straight. The solution has been over at lifetips.com all along:

Reduce bathroom mirror fogging by cleaning it with shaving cream on a weekly basis. This trick also reduces the fogging of eyeglasses.

I wonder if that’s the gel or foam version?

Delegate Chores to Your Children

Chores are great things to give your children. Sure they’ll free up a little bit of your time, but they will also teach your child personal responsibility. Follow these tips from BusyMomsOnline.com to ensure a smoother path to teaching your children to do chores - at all ages.

Begin training your children to help you around the house when they’re young. Children as young as two can start learning to pick up their own toys, put their dirty clothes in a hamper, or feed your pets. Toddlers want to help, so start teaching them when they’re eager.

Short List of Chores

Every organized home has a minimum number of chores that need doing on a consistent basis in order to stay looking clean. What each of us needs to do is decide what that minimum list is for our house… and stick to it. With these tips from OrganizedHome.com you can find out what your magic minimum is.

What’s on the list? Every family has slightly different needs, but most Magic Minimum checklists provide for these functions:

basic accounting chores: bank deposits and bill-paying
meals and menus: clean dishes, grocery shopping
laundry: necessary clean clothing
home management: once-a-day pick-up, weekly cleaning of bathrooms and kitchen

Cleaning Tips from the Professionals

Ever wonder how cleaning professionals manage the tedium of cleaning homes? The International Executive House Cleaning Association has put together a list of motivational tools professionals use that everyday moms can apply to their own households:

1. Come prepared for the task at hand.
You’ve probably noticed that most professional housekeepers use carts stocked with everything they’ll need for the cleaning task at hand. Alternatively, they don’t carry more than they need. Go through your cleaning supplies and eliminate all but the necessary tools, and store them together in a portable container.

2. Stick to a schedule.
By scheduling tasks, you’ll be less inclined to avoid or forget them. Decide which cleaning tasks need to be done every day, every week, or on a less frequent schedule. (Download a free cleaning checklist.) You’ll spend less time thinking about what you have to do and have more time to do it.

3. Establish a routine.
Work top to bottom and left to right. You’ll save time if you don’t have to retrace your steps, and cleaning will be much faster and easier if you develop a regular routine for each area of your home.

4. Work in teams.
Professional housekeepers often work in teams. Making a king-sized bed may only take a few minutes for one person, but with two people it takes only seconds. Enlisting the help of family members will not only make the job go faster, but you’ll also keep each other motivated.

5. Collect a paycheck.
Beyond a passion for clean and healthy environments, one thing that motivates professional housekeepers to clean is looking forward to a paycheck. Of course, while having a clean and orderly environment itself is a great “paycheck,” why not give yourself an extra reward for a job well done?

Clutter Control

Spring Cleaning is a wonderful annual event. With the rebirth of nature all around us we yearn to have a fresh start ourselves. Out with the old and in with the new. Well…how about just out with the old? No point in cutting the clutter around the house only to replace it with more clutter. Here is a great and easy way to tackle the clutter in your house this spring.

1. Attack one room at a time. Edit out anything that doesn’t need to be in there. Have a trash bag in the room and four bins. Label the bins: “Sell”, “Donate”, “Re-gift”, and “Storage”. Be discriminating and unsentimental. If you haven’t used or worn something in years, what’s the point of keeping it?

2. Take the “Donate” bin(s) immediately to your local thrift store or charity.

3. Plan a yard sale or list items from the “Sell” bin(s) online within a few days of finishing your Spring Cleaning. If you wait longer, the items will just collect dust and probably never leave the confines of your house.

4. Store the “Re-gift” bin(s) in a clean, safe place in your home that is easily accessible. Write a list of the contents and tape to the outside of the bin(s) to refer to when a special occasion arises.

5. Put away the “Storage” bin(s) in a space such as the attic or unused closet as soon as possible and write a list of the contents to tape to the outside of the bin(s).

Even though the term is “Spring Cleaning”, if you really want to keep your house in tip top shape, follow this advice each season!

Stop Clutter with Baskets

My mother-in-law has always used this simple tip from Unclutterer.com - baskets on steps can help clean up clutter! You could use a stair basket just to collect items that belong upstairs, but my mother-in-law used it for my husbands two sisters. Things that came in the mail, notes, items found about the house were collected and put in a stair basket: one for each of them. When his sisters would come home from school, inevitably they would grab the items in their basket as they made their way upstairs to their rooms. It was a perfect solution!

Spring Cleaning Checklist

It’s almost that time! If you’re getting ready for some serious spring cleaning, we’ve found this great pdf checklist over at The Nest to help get all of the nooks and cranies. The bonus? This checklist comes with a point count based on how nasty the cleaning assignment is. Challenge family members to see who can make the most points - and then give that person a prize!

Here’s an example of the “Oh What a Pain” Tasks:

Clean oven.
Change batteries in smoke and carbon dioxide alarms.
Throw away rarely used or expired toiletries.
Clean gutters.
Clean upholstery.
Fertilize lawn.
Tune up lawn mower.

Ultimate Kitchen Cleaning Tips

Robbie’s Kitchen has come up with what I consider the Ultimate cleaning tip list for your kitchen. With over 100 different tips, you’ll be amazed at what you will find. I am particularly interested in asking my Chimney sweep if a handful of salt really will help keep the chimney clean! Here is a small sample of the many, many tips you can find at Robbie’s Kitchen.

Candle Wax: To remove wax from carpeting or other fabric, first scrape away any excess. Then, place a brown paper bag over the wax and run a warm iron over the bag. The wax will melt right into the bag! Continue moving the bag around as you pick up the wax so you are always using a clean section. If a little grease stain remains on carpet, sprinkle with baking soda and allow to sit overnight before vacuuming, which will remove the grease residue. If colored wax leaves a stain on carpet, blot with spot remover or carpet cleaner, following label directions.

Cast Iron Pans: To gently and effectively clean your cast iron skillets after most uses, wipe out excess food with a dry paper towel, then sprinkle salt inside the pan. Wipe clean with a clean, dry paper towel. The salt acts as an abrasive to scratch off any stuck-on particles of food without using soap and water, which can remove your seasoning. For stubborn stuck-on food, use a putty knife to scrape it off. You may, however, need to reseason the pan after doing this.

Don’t Pay For What You Can Do Yourself

A lot of people needlessly pay “professionals” to do things they could do themselves for free. In today’s shaky economy, wasting money in this way is foolish and impractical. When you come across a situation in life that you think you need to call someone to “fix” for you, do a little research to see if it’s something you would feel comfortable doing yourself. Examples of things you can do yourself at no cost are haircuts and color, housecleaning, oil changes, yard work and landscaping, pest extermination, minor home repairs and improvements, and home decorating. You can also commit to learn valuable skills that can help you cut costs like sewing, light carpentry, cooking, baking, auto care, and computer repair. If you don’t have these skills and have no desire or time to learn them, ask around to see if any of your friends or family members do possess them. Offer to do a favor for him or her in exchange for them helping you out. While it’s great to trust yourself to do some things on your own, there are certain situations where a professional should be contacted. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, medical problems, etc are all best left to the experts.

Refresh Your Decor

Are you bored with the way your house looks? Is everything just collecting dust and getting old? Are you finding excuses to get out of the house just so you don’t have to look at your dreary decor anymore? Fear not. You can refresh the interior of your house very easily and quickly. What’s even better is that you can do it for free! If you want to be extra ambitious, buy new paint, but you don’t have to pay a penny to give your house a whole new look. Start by editing your rooms by deciding what you’re really sick of looking at and store the items. Try configuring furniture into a new arrangement in the rooms you want to refresh. Once you find one that works for you, take decorative items from other areas of your house, or from storage, and accessorize your rooms. If you don’t mind spending a few bucks on this transformation, purchase new or used decorative pillows and throws to add pops of color around the room. If you’re crafty, you can make these items using some favorite fabric. Finish off your new look by taking a walk around your house and collecting beautiful items from nature such as autumn leaves, unique twigs, or fresh seasonal flowers to drop into a vase. Free, easy, and fun!

Exercise By Doing Chores

You have to clean your house anyway right? And the yard is covered with a blanket of rotting leaves? Why waste time and money walking nowhere on a treadmill at the gym for an hour when you can burn calories and be productive at the same time? Bust out that rake and lose some weight. It only takes 20 minutes of raking to burn 100 calories for a woman who weighs around 150 pounds! Running around after your children all day no longer has to be an exercise in frustration but rather it’s an exercise of calorie-busting! As great as this information is to have, you also have to adjust your diet if you’re serious about losing weight. Check in with your doctor to make sure you are healthy enough to embark on exercise and calorie reduction in your diet. Have your doctor give you a daily caloric intake target to aim for and learn the art of counting calories. Search online for calorie-counting and calorie-burning tools to help you to meet your goals.

Clean your Thermos

That wonderful coffee thermos is great for keeping your French Roast nice and toasty all the way to the office, but it can be a bit of a bear to clean. Follow this advice from HandyTipsAndHints.com to make sure you get a quality clean without damaging that vacuume seal:

Make sure to always hand wash and never immerse glass lined vacuum bottles in dish washing detergent. Use bottle brush and warm water. Invert to dry. Before filling up the bottle that has absorbed odors or it has been stored for a while, freshen it with a one teaspoon baking soda and warm water. Let it stand for twenty minutes, scrub out with the bottle brush, rinse and air-day.

Next Page »