Mom! I can't find any socks!

If you have kids, you know that matching socks are one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. For some reason socks come into our homes in pairs and then immediately separate and run to the far corners of our homes to hide, and never the two shall meet.  If you do somehow manage to find both halves of a pair, reunite them, and stuff them into your child's drawer, something else magical happens (and not the good kind of magic, but rather dark magic!).  Those nicely folded socks which are so lovingly folded and placed in your child's drawer somehow disappear again! Witchcraft I tell you! It's enough to make a person lose their mind (if you have any mind left to lose after years of unrelenting sleep deprivation).



At my sister last week I saw her do something brilliant. This is not unusual, she does brilliant stuff all the time. But this idea was so brilliant I just HAD to share.

This basket holds roughly 3% of the total socks hidden in the home at any given time. Where the other 97% are, no one will ever know.

My sister has five young children, so consequently she has 4.3 million socks in her home.  Don't we all?  

But instead of folding them and putting them in her kid's rooms, she keeps them all in one place RIGHT NEXT TO THE SHOES!

Shoes AND socks together! Who'd have thought?

Brilliant right? How have we not all been doing this before? So when her children go to the closet to pull out there shoes, they also grab a pair of socks. No more running through the house, digging through dressers, sorting through laundry piles. If there are matched socks to be had, they are sitting right next to the shoes where even the smallest of children can find them.

Just as many of us have a shoe bin near the front door, she also has a sock bin. Simply brilliant.

The glorious family sock bin.

Tip of the Day: Find the Leaks in Your Money Boat

I just found three leaks in my boat this week.
And one of them was really big.

Honestly it's kind of embarrassing.

My husband and I have a credit card that we rarely use. It's set up so that if there is ever a balance on it, it automatically gets paid every month from our checking account. I never look at our statement because it's on auto pay. Out of sight out of mind.

Well this month we are tightening our belts, and that means looking for any and all places to cut back on our spending. As I was combing through our bank statements I noticed that my credit card has a payoff balance of $29.99 every single month.  So what is this money going to? I had absolutely no idea. It took several phone calls to track down the original source, but eventually I discovered that fifteen months ago I signed up for a document subscription service (I don't even know what that means!) and it's been charging my credit card every month since. Every month!  Fifteen months times $29.99, that's an embarrassing amount of money for a service I certainly wasn't using.

Further searching yielded two more similar accounts, things that we had somehow signed up for but were no longer (or never even were) using.

Just three little leaks in our boat, slowly draining our money away.

These leaks could be anything. Memberships to places you don't go. Subscriptions to things you never read. Banking or credit card fees that could be easily avoided by changing your account settings. The list is endless. 

So if you feel like you're barely treading water, or even if things are smooth sailing, it never hurts to take a second look at your financial boat and check for leaks.


Marcia

Tip of the Day: Reset Your Thermostat. Again.

A good way to save on your energy bill is to have a timer on your thermostat.  That way you can set it to come on at the right time and cool down at the right time.  So you are using only the energy you want and keeping your house perfectly comfortable without having to remember to turn it down at night or fighting over how warm it is (or isn't) in the morning.

This probably isn't anything new to you.  You probably already know this.  Right?

I already know this.  I already DO this.  But last night I had a thought....

My heater is set on a timer to heat and cool throughout the day based on our comings and goings.  BUT IT"S SET ON LAST YEAR'S SCHEDULE.  I hadn't even thought to reset the schedule this fall.  I just turned it on and assumed it was good to go.  But my life is vastly different now than it was even just a few months ago.  Things have changed, schedules have changed, even who lives in my house has changed (my in-laws moved out).  So even though I thought I was already being careful with my energy usage, I really wasn't.

So if you already think you've got your thermostat set, take one more look.  Make sure it really matches your current lifestyle.  No use heating an empty house.  Now I am not Jimmy Carter here telling you to, "Put on a sweater."  You can have your house as warm as you want.  I'm just saying, why keep it warm if you aren't in it?


Marcia


P.S.   Wait, what?  You don't have a timer on your thermostat?  You gotta fix that.  They cost as little as $25 and will save you so much money in the long run (or even the short run, if you're heating an empty house all day).  Plus it just makes your house more comfortable.  I love that mine shuts off just after I go to bed, so the house is cooler while we sleep without me having to remember.  And I set it to come on super hot about 15 minutes before we all need to wake up in the morning, so we are all eager to get up and out of the covers to escape the heat instead of hiding in our beds against the cold.

Stop by your local hardware store and ask where the thermostat timers are.  It's definitely a smart purchase.  You might even pay for it in one month or less.

Tip of the Day: ROKU

So we've been a TV free family for quite some time.  AND I LOVE IT!  But there have been a few things that we have wished we had TV for (mostly church and sports).

So we recently got a ROKU.
Normally we don't endorse specific products or brands here, but this is one thing my family loves.

ROKU (if you've never heard of it) is a little device that sits next to your TV and uses your wifi to stream TV programs from the internet.  It costs about $60-$80 to buy, but is free to use forever.

What I love best is that you have to specifically choose a show to watch.  There is no channel surfing or flipping from one station to another.  You can't mindlessly turn on the tv and sit there for hours switching from one program to the next.  You open a station, you choose a show, you choose an episode, you wait for it to load, and you watch it.  It is so much more intentional and so much less mindless.

I also love that my kids can't stumble onto "bad" stations.  They know exactly which icon will open up PBS Kids.  They click on it, and every show available there is safe and kid friendly.  So far my kids have only even discovered three channels.  BYU-TV, PBS Kids, and Disney Channel.  I personally hate Disney sit-coms, so I will be locking-out that channel when the kids aren't looking.  But the other two channels are nothing but church and educational programming.  It's awesome!

My husband gets his sports and history channel when he needs it, but it's not a constant presence in our house.

So if you are looking for a cable alternative, I totally recommend ROKU.  It's TV (which I hate) with limits (which I love!).

Marcia

Tip of the Day: Be Your Own Convenience 2

Chips, crackers, cookies, popcorn.

If your kids are anything like mine, an open bag of chips becomes in empty bag of chips in a matter of seconds.  They just can't resist.  So rather than hovering over them and handing out snacks one at a time, I just bag them into snack size baggies ahead of time. All kinds of snack foods can be bagged for later consumption.  When the kids get home from school, they know they get one snack.  They can choose from the snack bucket what they want to eat, and I don't have to listen to fighting about who ate the last handful of crumbs from the bottom of the Doritos bag!

Yes, it costs money for the baggies.  But we reuse them again and again (they aren't dirty, it's just crumbs), and it's a whole lot cheaper than buying individual servings, or going through a bag a day.

Marcia

Tip of the Day: Freezing Vegetables

Don't leave your car unlocked at church or someone will likely get into it and fill it with zucchini!

It's a real problem. The gardening season is winding down, but you still have more tomatoes and squash than you know what to do with.  It's exciting during the summer when the first vegitables start growing, but when everything ripens at the same time you eventually get more fresh food than you can handle. So what are you going to do with it?

Give it away.  Sharing is always a good idea.
Can it.  A great idea, but can be difficult and time consuming.
Freeze it. That's what I'm doing this year. It takes almost no time or preparation to freeze your garden's surplus. Most things can just be tossed in a freezer bag, and into the freezer, and that's it! Let's look at a few examples.

Tomatoes
Frozen tomatoes are nearly the equivalent of canned tomatoes. When you freeze your tomateos, the cells break down giving them a mush texture. This texture just happens to be perfect for soups and sauces.  If you have more tomatoes than you can use fresh, wash them, pull off the stems, then store them (whole) in a freezer bag. When you are making spaghetti, just pull out a bag and toss it into the blender. It's like opening a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes (only it's free cause it came from your garden!).  All types of tomatoes work, and you can mix them up in the bag together.

Bell Peppers
I don't like peppers. I only grow them cause they look so cute! Occasionally though we do cook with them. Usually we put them on pizza or in fajitas.  So when my peppers get ripe, I slice them into the shape I know I will want to use them in. Then I toss them in a bag in the freezer. Months later, if I'm making a pizza, I can pull out just a few slices at a time and leave the rest for another day. It's better than buying a fresh one at the store (cause it's free!) and I only use what I need, so there is no waste.



Zuchini
There is only so much zucchini bread you can eat in one month. The good news is, you can store that zucchini in the freezer and have it all year long.  I peel it. Shred it. Then store it in two cup increments, so it's ready to take out at a moments notice for fresh backed zucchini bread.  Another bonus of having shredded zucchini on hand is you can toss a bag of it into any casserole as a way to sneak in a vegetable when the kids aren't looking!


Marcia


P.S.  I hope you are freezing like I am this fall!   ;)     

Tip of The Day: Sharing: It really works!

I have a friend who has a cute little one-year-old daughter, and who recently found out that the baby she is expecting... is twin boys!  Needless to say, she needs some baby "stuff".  Not a ton, since she still has everything from her darling daughter, but there are obviously a few things she would benefit from.

I asked her for specifics, and she gave me a list: boy clothes (check!), boppy pillow (check!), double stroller... oh wait, I don't have one of those to give her.

But never fear, just like is always the case, there is someone getting rid of the very thing she needs.  This time, it happens to be my neighbor.  Now, these two friends of mine don't know one another, and in all likelihood will never meet.  But when my neighbor mentioned wanting to find someone who needed a double jogger, because she's getting rid of hers... bam!  Free stroller for my friend!

Check out the haul I was able to pass along to my sweet friend.  All for free, all in great condition.  Some of it was mine, some of it was my neighbor's, all of it will be used by two sweet baby boys soon.

Stroller, bath seat, activity seat, tons of clothes...
Ok, not the violin.  I forgot to move it before taking the photo. :)

Share.  Pass it along.  Hand it down.  Someone needs it, even if you don't.

Kate

Tip of The Day: Windows and Hard Water

Do you have hard water?  Maybe not even inside your house, but do you have it in your sprinklers?  Maybe you call it "secondary water", or maybe it's "irrigation water" where you live.

At any rate, if you have hard water, and you have windows, then by the end of the summer, your windows look like this:

Can you see that "frosted glass" section right in the middle?

What to do?  It seems like no amount of scrubbing or scraping really does anything.  I used to sit in my family room and stare at my window thinking, "Well, I guess it could be useful if the sprinklers hit my bathroom windows - then it might look kind of like frosted glass, and I wouldn't have to have curtains!"  Alas, it never worked that way.  And it would still be gross mineral deposits that I'd have to clean off, even if it were the bathroom windows anyway.

We had really hard water both inside and out, so I had all manner of cleaners designed to get that stuff off my sinks, faucets, and showers.  Wait a minute...

One day it hit me: the hard water deposit on the outside of my windows was exactly the same hard water deposit on the inside of my shower door.

I'm not going to claim that this is the only shower cleaner that will work,
it's just the one that I know and love.

So I grabbed my trusty shower cleaner, sprayed down my windows, waited ten minutes and then hosed it off.  Voila!  Clean windows!  I'm not so sure that this is actually recommended for your lawn, but even though I wasn't at all careful about how or where I was aiming that hose, my grass never seemed to suffer for it.  And if you're as sick of the yucky-frosted-window look as I was, you won't mind if it does.

Katie

TOTD: Breast Feeding Your Baby While Riding in a Car (*gasp* sounds scandalous doesn't it?)

Summer is almost over, and you are making that last quick road trip before school starts.  Unfortunately your baby has figured things out.  He's learned by now that being put in their car seat never means a quick trip to the store anymore.  It means all day in the car on the way to Grandma's house.  All day in the car on the way to the beach.  All day, every day, day after day.  Now anytime you put your baby in their car-seat she is instantly angry and hysterical.  If your baby takes a bottle or is bigger and eating big people food, you may be able to pacify him with food.  But what about the breast fed baby?

If your baby is still nursing, that means pulling over every three hours, perching unceremoniously on a rest-stop bench, trying to feed a hungry baby, in the sweltering heat, while your other children run around digging cigarette butts out of community ash trays.  Wouldn't Grandma love to see that picture on a post card?

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just keep driving AND feed your baby at the same time?


NEITHER YOU NOR YOUR BABY SHOULD EVER RIDE IN A VEHICLE WITHOUT WEARING PROPER  SEAT BELTS OR CAR-SEAT RESTRAINTS.  EVER.


But.....


If your baby is in a rear facing car-seat, and you are buckled into the seat right beside them, you can easily lean forward and breast-feed your baby.  Seriously.  You can both remain safely buckled in the back seat (presumably while someone else is driving, otherwise what's the point?) and feed your baby without having to pull over and repeat the hideous rest-stop scene again and again.  On a super long drive, this can be a lifesaver!  And sometimes all your baby needs is a little bit of comfort, and they are back to sleep in no time without the risk of waking them up when you try to put them back in their seat.

Now go enjoy that last taste of summer before it's back to the daily grind of reading logs and math worksheets!  Good luck!

Tip of the Day: Playdough!

Is it too hot to spend all day outside?  Are your kids bored and driving you crazy?  Are you wishing there was something for them to do that wouldn't make a mess of your house, involve more screen hours, or cost money?

Me, too.

On days like this, I turn to playdough.  Yes, even though my oldest is 14, we just love this stuff.  I have a bin full of assorted cookie cutters, rolling pins, and Mr. Potato head pieces for them to use, although they also tend to ransack my kitchen drawers to find other fun "tools".

Here's my stand-by recipe.  It works, it makes a bunch at a time, and it lasts forever.

If you have this, you're halfway there!

Play Dough Recipe:
1 cup white flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoon cream of tartar (find it in the spice section)
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup water
food coloring

Mix the first 4 ingredients in a pan.  Add water and food coloring, and mix well.  Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly with a wood or metal spoon (you just need something stiff, that won't bend, like a rubber spatula would), for 3 – 5 minutes.  Dough will become difficult to stir and form a “clump”.

Most recipes will tell you to add the food coloring while you're kneading it, but that just turns my hands green or blue or whatever.  I've never had problems adding it with the water.  When you do knead it, it starts out super hot, so be careful.

This playdough will keep for a long time, like forever, if you keep it in a plastic container with a lid, or a Ziploc bag.

Make a couple of batches, and enjoy the happy, peaceful playing of your children.

I'm not kidding,

Kate

Tip of the Day: One Time = Everytime

Apparently Marcia's kids get soda. :)

There's a rule I try to live by when it comes to giving in to my kids: If I'm not willing to do it EVERY time, then I try not to do it even just ONE time.

This rule can apply to everything from getting out of bed at night to getting a treat at the grocery store.  Kids learn through experience, and once you set a precedent of giving in to their demands, they will continue making those demands.  If you stop for ice cream on the way home from swim lessons, they will ask to stop for ice cream every day on the way home from swim lessons.

Here's one small example:
Sometimes (but not often) we go to a fast food restaurant to eat.  We NEVER get drinks.  Everyone drinks water.  And guess what... my kids don't even ask for drinks.  I never buy them soda, so they know not to expect it.

And one more:
We also have a homework-before-friends rule.  You do your homework before you play with your friends.  It's simple.  However, every single spring, there comes along one magical, beautiful, warm afternoon when I actually send my kids outside to play because it's finally not freezing out.  And, you guessed it, every single afternoon for at least a month after that day, my kids are asking to play before doing their homework.  I bet you even know what they're saying: "Please?  Pleeeease?  But you let us that one time!"

If it's not a habit you want to get into or a behavior you plan to repeat, then don't even start.  Being firm and consistent the first time will help you avoid a lot of battles down the road.


Kate

Tip Of The Day: Avoid Temptation

I picked up my daughter from tennis practice yesterday, and we were headed straight to ballet class.  She was tired, hot, and dying of thirst.  She had left her water bottle at home that day, so she hadn't had anything to drink all afternoon.  As she got into the car, I apologized for not having thought to bring her a drink.  I suggested we stop and buy something on our way to dance class.  Then I checked my pockets and realized I had forgotten my wallet.  So I checked the coin tray in the car.  $0.47.  Not even enough for a half-priced slushee during happy-hour. 

Once we realized we were out of money options, my daughter started digging around underneath the car seats.  She pulled out an empty water bottle.  "The benefits of a messy car," she said.  I pulled up next to the school, and she jumped out and filled up her bottle in the drinking fountain.

We ended up arriving at dance class about 25 minutes early.  I said, "Too bad I forgot my wallet, we could go shopping or get a snack."  But since I had no money, we sat in the car and chatted for 20 minutes while my 15 year old taught my 5 year old how to tie his shoes.  Time well spent.

In less than an hour's time, I had been tempted to spend money (impulsively and unnecessarily) at least twice.  Thankfully I had left all my money at home.  Every day is filled with little moments like these.  Spending money is an easy cure for boredom.  Try removing money as an option (although you shouldn't really drive without your wallet!) and see what better ways you can find to spend your time.


Marcia

Tip Of The Day: Share

Share?  Share what?

Share FIREWORKS!!

If you buy $10 of fireworks, you'll be done with them in 15 minutes.  If I buy $10 of fireworks, I'll be out in the same 15 minutes.  If we put them together, you guessed it, we get a whole half an hour of sparklers and lights exploding into the sky.  And if we get our whole street in on this, we'll stay up all night.

So share.  Grab a few neighbors, pile your assorted stashes together, and have a crazy fun night, for a fraction of the cost.

*Also, be safe.  Kids + fireworks = burned fingers or worse, more often than you want to imagine.  So put out a blanket for the kids to stay on (easy boundary for small ones), and keep some cold water on hand for those fingers that just couldn't resist a sparkler, again.

Kate

Tip Of The Day: Why You Should Bury Your Money In Your Back Yard

If money never seems to stay in your savings account for long because you always seem to "need" it, here is a tip for you.

Set up a savings account that isn't connected to your regular bank account.  Have an amount of money automatically transferred each month from your main checking account into your "secret" account (note: if you're married, we definitely don't mean you should keep this "secret" from your spouse - that's bad news for any marriage!).  Now take that account number, write it down, put it in a ziploc bag, and drop it in the bottom of your deep freezer or bury it deep under a rock in your back yard.  Forget about it.

You don't actually have to bury the money, just bury the account number that keeps you from getting into your money!

You will start building an emergency fun that is really only for true emergencies.  You won't be temped to dip into it for just any reason.  It will have to be a reason good enough to go looking for the number.  Years later when you look into that account, you will be pleasantly surprised to find how much extra money you've hidden away.


Marcia

Tip of the Day: Tip

This is a follow-up to last week's tip of the day where we showed you how to find restaurants where your kids can eat for free.  Really!  Go check it out if you missed it, it's a good one!

shameless plug for my favorite (cheap and delicious!) restaurant Shang Hai

When you go to a restaurant and are served by a waiter, you must leave a tip.  Not just if the service is good. And not just a buck or two.  A full 15% or more.  If the service is lousy, tell a manager, but leave a full tip.  If the service is great, tell a manager and leave more than 15%.  But no matter what, you must leave a good tip.  You must.  If you can't afford to tip well, you can't afford to eat out. It is simply part of the cost of eating out.

If you have never had to live on tips, you probably don't understand how important they are to some.  Unless you've earned them yourself, you probably think of tips as just extra money you give to someone, like a gift.  It's not.

What you may not know, is that in many places people survive on tips alone.  In most states, the minimum wage for waiters is far below the minimum wage for regular employees.  Wait staff are expected to earn the bulk of their income through tips. 

During the first five years of our marriage, my husband and I survived on the tips he earned as a waiter.  As a waiter, he earned a wage of $2.13 an hour.  Yes, 2 bucks an hour.  And it's not like it was the fifties.  This was in the year 2000!  We often paid our bills in rolls of quarters accumulated from a month's worth of waiting tables.  Tips matter.  They are real money to real people.  So don't be a scrooge.  Tip.  Tip big.  And when it doubt, round up.

And tip on the whole amount if your meal was free.  Or your kids' meals.  Or you used a coupon to buy-one-get-one-free.  Or whatever.  There are many ways to save money while eating out, but shorting your waiter is just not one of them.


Marcia

Tip of the Day: Kids Eat Free!

It's a generally-accepted fact that if you're trying to save money, you shouldn't go out to eat, right?  I am a big believer in staying home, cooking from scratch, and saving money.  However, once in awhile, you just want to go out, have someone else do the cooking, and even the clean up, am I right?

So while I am in no way advocating going out tonight if you are trying to figure out how to pay your electric bill this month, if instead you have saved up a little, and found room in your budget for a nice little outing, may I suggest visiting this website?

It's a fun little site called "My Kids Eat Free".  It's as simple as can be: just choose your state from one pull-down menu, then your city and the day of the week you want to go out from another, and instantly you get a customized list of kids-eat-free possibilities!

And while you're there, look around.  They have several other great tools: "My Kids Go Free" and restaurant coupons are two I noticed right off the bat.

Now if I could just find someplace that lets teenagers eat free...

Kate

Tip of the Day: Helping Young Children Measure Time on a Long Trip.

During the ninth hour of a ten hour trip my three year old once asked, "How much longer?"  I told her we'd be there in  a few more minutes.  My five year old (who could tell time and liked to be precise) began to argue that we were in fact still more than 30 minutes away.  I explained to her that toddlers can't tell time, so an answer of 5 minutes is just as good as an answer of 30 minutes.  I told her that we could say anything, and it wouldn't matter.  My five year old then turned to her sister and said, "Don't worry, we'll be there in a circus."  It seemed as good an answer as any, and it has been our traveling motto ever since.  We'll be there in a circus!  That about sums up most of our trips.


The hardest part of travel for little kids can be their inability to measure time.  A trip seems like forever when you don't know how long it will take. And even if you've answered the, "How much longer?" question a million times, your answer will still be meaningless to a toddler who doesn't know the difference between a minute and an hour.  Here are two techniques I use to help my toddlers gauge the length of our trip. 

First is the Dora Method.  We pick two major landmarks and repeat them all through the trip.  "First we go through the tall forest, then we cross over the big dam, and then we get to Grandma's house!"  Then when we pass through the tall forest, the toddler recognizes that you are making progress on your trip.

The next method is using your body as a map.  When we leave our house we say we are at our toes, and the top our head is our destination.  When the kids ask how much farther we have to go or where we are, we give answers like "We are at your knees" or "We are almost to your eyebrows!"  Again this helps kids to see that we are progressing towards our destination and the trip won't last forever.

For more travel tips, check out our other post on traveling with kids.


Marcia

Tip Of The Day: Save Toilet Paper by Smashing the Roll

This little tip comes from Julie in Utah.


Here is another possible way to slow down your toddler when they are trying to unroll a roll of toilet  paper:

Step on the roll.

Yup.  Before for you put the paper on the spinner, smash the cardboard tube inside so that it won't spin freely.  It will only revolve one or two half turns before stopping.  This not only slows down the naughty baby who may be trying to unwind an entire roll down the toilet, but it also helps to slow down young children who are just learning to use the potty, and may not be too good at judging how much is too much paper.

Tip of the Day: Super Easy Super Capes

Super Cape emergencies.  We've all had them.  For one reason or another, we all find ourselves in immediate need of a super hero cape.  So here is the quickest easiest solution to a super cape emergency:

1. Take an old tee shirt.

2. Cut up the outside edges on the back of the shirt.

3. When you reach the collar, cut around the collar (but don't cut the collar!!!)

BAM!!! You've got a cape!

Go ahead and decorate it if you want. Draw a big super letter on it with a permanent marker. Or leave it blank, and enjoy!



This tip comes to us from Michelle in Washington.

Tip of The Day: Always Buy Your Ground Beef At This Store

So now that I've convinced you to always buy the cheapest ground beef you can find, let me tell you where to find it:  Costco!

But not in the meat case, in a tray, by the pound. 

In a 10 lb box of frozen, pre-formed patties, like this!

Sorry for the lousy photo - I remembered it at the last minute, and I had to pull it out of the recycle bin
and have one of my kids take a photo with my phone.

This ten-pound box of 78% ground beef is only $9.99 at Costco.  That's WAY cheaper than any grocery store.  Plus, it's super fast to cook, even in small batches, because it's in thin little patties.

It's a no-brainer.  If you don't have a Costco card, go with a friend who does, or ask them to pick you up a couple of boxes.  Because you're never going to find another store with a deal like this.

Kate