Ask The Helpful Housewife

The Glass Is Half Full!

OK, first the glass jar has to be empty!  What do you do with your empty jam/jelly jars when you make that last sandwich for the kids?  Way to go if the answer is recycle them!  Or what about the jar of spaghetti sauce you used last night?  Or the glass soda bottles that are so in vogue right now that come filled with all those natural, organic fizzy fun flavors?  Recycle them?  Throw them away? 

First of all, don't throw them in the trash.  Obviously, you need to be recycling them.  That's a no brainer.  Mother earth would be scolding you, wagging her finger in your face the whole time.  But what if I could give you some ideas to prolong their life?  I do this all the time!  I love to re-use my glass jars.  So much so, that I often buy a different brand at the store just because I think the jar is pretty!  (My husband just shakes his head and goes back to whatever he's doing.  He's learned to ignore my quirks in this department!)  Glass jars and bottles can be stunning accents to your decor, and they can also be very utilitarian in other ways.  Some of these examples are going to be so obvious and repeated from so many other sources you will be bored silly, I know.  But some others might be ideas you hadn't thought of.  Humor me!  You just might think twice before tossing that next jar!  It could have a second or third "repurposed life" before being recycled into another gem of glassware, keeping mother earth even happier!  Just remember to thoroughly wash and dry before doing any of the following...

1.  An especially decorative jar makes a great vase for smaller flowers from your garden.
2.  Use it to hold buttons and sewing notions.
3.  Create a sewing kit:  a spool of white, black, and cream thread; small scissors; several needles; and a threader.  Be sure to keep the lid for this one!
4.  Keep a large jar by the washing machine to throw change from pockets in!
5.  Use one for storing the miscellaneous Barbie shoes, doll accessories, lego pieces and such that you find as time goes on.  You never know when the matching one will turn up!
6.  Fill one 1/2 full with baking soda, and 1/4 full with salt. Add 20-30 drops of your favorite essential oil.  Stir it well.  Pop some holes in the lid and replace the lid on the top.  Put it in a concealed area, and you have an instant air freshener for any small room.  Works great near a diaper channging area!  Just keep it out of baby's reach.
7.  Use it to hold diaper pins, with the lid securely fastened, away from baby.
8.  I use a really pretty one to hold my honey dipper and my tea bag "squeezer" in my kitchen.
9.  If you have some especially decoratively cut jars, or some pretty blue ones that really sparkle, set them out on a tray as a decorative accent.  In sunlight, it can be spectacuar!
10.  We use a super large blue Ball Canning jar to hold pop can tabs.  We save them and when the jar is full, we transfer it to a zip-loc bag (it fills one!) and take them down to the local VFW and turn them in for their charity drive.
11.  Handymen/women can use them to hold screws, nails, nuts, bolts, anything that needs containing in the workshop.
12.  Crafters can use them for glue sticks, trims, tools, marking pens, rotary cutters, scissors, just about anything!
13.  I store dried beans, peas, etc in them, rather than in the bags they come in.  They store better on the pantry shelves and I don't have to go buy all new storage containers!
14.  I also use one to hold cupcake tin liners.  Perfect purpose!
15.  The best use of all?  I keep my dish washing wand in one on the kitchen sink!

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to you!  It keeps a little more glass out of the landfills, and helps extend the lifecycle of those items already produced.  Let's all do our part to keep trying to find new uses for items around the house!

Happy Dusting,
The Helpful Housewife

Roman Family CIA

What is the Roman Family CIA?  It stands for the Calendar Information Area!  Every family is busy these days, and every family needs their own method for keeping everyone on track for appointments, practices, events, and other scheduled activities.  There are unlimited ways to organize your own family to keep everyone up to date, but I wanted to show you what works for us.  It isn't the end all and be all answer for everyone.  If you already have a working system, that's wonderful!  Heck, I'd love for you to share it with me!  I'm always looking for new ideas to fine tune my own systems or to refresh our lives to find a new and better way of doing things.  And I would love to pass along new ideas to readers.  If you don't have a system in place, perhaps mine could be a jumping off point for you to create your own.  The idea is to just get motivated to get your family coordinated so that you don't double-book appointments, miss events, or just plain get overwhelmed with it all.  When you can see at a glance what's going on when some one calls to plan a playdate, it makes it all so much easier.

Here's the overall view of our system, and I'll describe each component and how to put it in place:

 

This is our main information center of the home.  (Sorry for the fuzzy photo!) It's in the laundry room.  Our back door coming in from the garage is here, and the room is the entry into the kitchen.  It's where we come and go every time we leave or come home.  It's the most logical choice for us for location.  To construct it was very inexpensive.  The background is made up of 12" x 12" cork tiles that you can buy in any store in the office supply aisle.  I simply tacked them to the wall with tiny little nails.  The bottom 2 rows are 3 across, and the top row only has 2 tiles.  In the upper right corner, I hung a very inexpensive mail organizer/key rack purchased at Target years ago.  I think it was $14?  The big calendar is a blank desk calendar, again purchased for a couple bucks in the same aisle as the cork tiles.  I fill in my own month and dates with a marker.  I just tacked it up with thumbtacks to the cork tiles!  Easy as pie!

In this next photo we have the family calendar.  This is the most important item in this area.  I have used different colored markers to keep it easier to read.  I make sure to immediately put any items on the calendar so that we always know what we have coming up for each member of the family.  I also make sure to illustrate the holidays for the kids, so that they can "read" the calendar, too!  They like to be able to count down and have reference points.  Having the calendar located here also keeps us in check as we walk out the door.  We can see one last time before we leave what we have going on so that we don't miss anything or make plans when we're out that might conflict. 

 

The section above the family calendar is also helpful.  We hang our keys here so they don't get lost.  I store my return address labels here; the markers for the calendar are always within reach.  The school calendar and monthly cafeteria menu are posted.  And any miscellaneous small papers that I might need are either clipped to a pinch clip here or tucked into the mail slot.  I also have a laundry chart card tacked to the board for reference.  It does come in handy!

 

In this last section we keep some other miscellaneous but pertinent information for the family.  I do have a second calendar.  It was a freebie from my alma mater, Carthage College, and it is handy for looking ahead in the year rather than trying to manueuver the big family calendar.  We also have specific classroom information, bus schedules, and our family rules posted here for all the kids to see.  That's a big one in our house -- if the rules are there for them to look at, they can't say they didn't know them! 

 

As you can see, it's not high tech.  It isn't a huge server with touch screen monitors installed in each room of the house, and fingerprint identification encryption blah blah blah... it's good old fashioned marker and paper.  Sometimes simple can work!  It's what works for us.  And I carry a planner system in my purse.  Yes, my cell phone has calendar capabilities, but I love the pen and paper system.  It's just me!  But then again, I still write letters and postcards, and I love to put little notes in lunch boxes.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't save paper.  I don't hoard junk mail and old bills and stuff.  I just still am an afficiando of the handwritten form of communication.  I don't have a blackberry, because my Franklin Planner still serves it's purpose! 

So, do what works for you.  But do something!  Organization is key in this day and age to keep our homes running smoothly and happily!  It will keep the stress levels lower, too.  Trust me!

Make This the Year For Control of the Outdoor Play Clutter!

Every year moms struggle with keeping kids occupied outside in order to keep the inside, well, ordered!  And that usually involves lots of outdoor activities.  Yay for playing outside!  I won't go into a speech about childhood obesity, the evils of video games, and the lack of fresh air and activity that today's youth suffers from as a collective group.  I'm only going to focus on the fact that moms are pushing kids out the door in order to get some peace in the house!  My own mother sent us out the door after breakfast not to return until dinner.  But then again, that was a different time, and where I grew up you could roam anywhere and play with no worries!  But I digress....

Those outdoor activities to keep the kids busy can come with lots of stuff:  sidewalk chalk, jump ropes, bikes, bats, balls, gloves, soccer gear, you name it!  The garage, the yard, and the house can get over run with it all!  And every mom (and dad) can get overwhelmed trying to deal with the mess it can create.  At times, it's impossible to get a vehicle into the garage.  We have a 3 car garage, and we can only put one in it.  But then again, my dad keeps bringing us things like a rototiller, a chain saw, etc. and we keep running out of space.  And with four kids, we have bikes for all of them plus our own.  And Andy's work bench and tools.  Plus gardening and lawn care stuff.  Blah blah blah... and in our neighborhood, you can't have any out buildings, so that means we can't put up a gardening shed or storage shed. Even the really nice kind, to store all that stuff and clear out our garage. 

So how do we deal with all the summer toys?  Here are a couple solutions for you!

• Rubbermaid makes an attractive storage bench.  It's great for pool toys, buckets, shovels, and bulkier items.  Put it on the deck or along the side of the house.  It's instant, weatherproof outside storage!
• Pop up mesh laundry baskets can easily be hung from the garage wall or set next to the garage door for soccer balls, kick balls, and other types of balls.
• Wash out an empty ice cream bucket and use it for baseballs, wiffle balls, tennis balls.
• Those same plastic ice cream buckets are great for sidewalk chalk - they can tote it all over the sidewalk and driveway with the handle and never lose it or leave it out.  Simply put the bucket back in the garage!
• Silverware caddies that are used for picnics can be purchased cheaply at Walmart or even at the dollar store and are great for holding bottles of bubbles. 
• A five gallon bucket is great for storing bats.  Just stand them up with the handles in the bottom!  A second one next to it can hold the gloves! 
• As for bike helmets, train the kids to simply snap the strap and loop it over the handle bars or over their seat.  Then they never have to search for it, it's always with their bike.
• Hang a multi-hook coat rack on the wall, the kind that are a bar with the coat hooks in a row across them, and use it to hang jump ropes from.  You can also hang cleats from it with the laces tied together, ball caps, wet rain gear, dog leashes, etc... Heck, hang a couple and use them for a million uses anyway!

Those are just a few ideas to get you started.  There are a lot more organizational concepts to share, but I'm time limited for posting today.  As we get into the warmer season, remind me to post some more!  For now, enjoy your day!  And don't forget, tomorrow is TAX DAY!  Get those taxes filed if you haven't yet.  E-filing is free for everyone this year, so you still have time!

Colorful Muffins

  I saw a segment on the Today show about recession proof toys.  They mentioned melting down broken crayons in muffin tins to make "muffin crayons" - a free way to make a new toy!  Of course I had to try it out!  I love this idea, but in the process, I did discover a few tips to pass along that they didn't specify in the segment.  They have time restraints, so they can't get too technical in instruction.  Here is the wisdom I gained in my go round. 

As you know, I suffer from mild obsessive compulsive disorder, so I couldn't bring myself to mix the colors together.  Maybe next time I'll get brave!  So of course each of my little "muffins" is one color.  Go ahead and make them multi-color if you want.  They would be lots of fun for your kids.  I used mini-tins, but you can use full size muffin cups.  Set your oven to 325 to 350 degrees.  Line your muffin tins with liners.  Here's something I learned.  I used paper liners.  The wax leached right through and puddled up in my pan.  Use the metal coated papers, the nice shiny ones that are heavier weight.  They didn't mention this on the show, but it would greatly help.  They said to let them go for about 8 minutes.  This left clumps in my muffin cups, so I left them in longer.  Bad idea!  It separated out the wax from the coloring too much, and they began to smoke a little in the oven.  What I should have done was pull them out and stir them with a toothpick a little bit.  If you use the larger cups, then you could leave them in about 9 - 10 minutes I suppose.  But for the mini-tins, 8 minutes is about right. 

Pull the tin out of the oven and let sit for a couple minutes.  Then carefully pull the cups out of the tin and set them on wax paper or parchment paper to cool. An old paper grocery bag works well, also.  When completely cool, simply peel the paper cup off the wax crayon and you have a muffin crayon ready to use for artistic masterpieces!  The best part?  They are great for little hands to hold on to!  If you have a toddler in the house, this is a great way to recycle your older child's crayons into art supplies for your younger one's use!  We are loving our new crayons, and I didn't have spend a single penny on them!

A Happy, Cozy Kitchen Table

Most of you know I am a quilter.  Last summer I had some time to kill in my quilt/yarn shop, and had some fabrics lying around that just called out to me to be made into something.  I had an alphabet panel, a checkerboard print, and a feedsack floral print from the American Jane Peas & Carrots collection by MODA.  I decided to try to design a crossword baby quilt from them and this is what I came up with.  It ended up being perfectly square, and just right for a play quilt for a lucky baby.  But I just couldn't seem to part with it!  After I closed the shop, it came home with me.  I've had it in our family room and in our living room draped over the ottoman and over the back of the couch for everyone to get inspiration from.  And then this morning, I realized it made the perfect table topper for our kitchen table!  I often have a quilted table runner or small square/rectangular quilt on our kitchen table for a bit of color and cheer when I don't feel like pressing a table cloth.  It's a great way to add some whimsy to the room, and you can change it out at a moment's notice when you want a different look.  You can have one for each holiday, season, day of the week!  And if you are a quilter with a big stash who loves quick projects, you can whip these out in no time at all with small amounts of fabric, without having to shop for more.   And this particular one really is bringing a smile to my face as I get ready to sit down for my afternoon cup of tea and checkbook balancing session.  Usually I don't get all happy for that chore, but today I think I'll be a little more chipper than usual. 

If you don't quilt or sew, but you would like a quilted table topper, ask on of your quilting friends to make one for you.  Or shop the local thrift stores for old quilts and cut and hem one down to size.  Sometimes quilt shops have sample sales as well, so keep your eyes open and you'll be able to find one of your very own!

"Club House"

Here's what has been floating through my mind the last couple of days...   A Housekeeping Club.  This wouldn't be related to the Housekeeping College at all, this is something different that I'm picturing in my head. 

If you participate in Amy Karol's "Mail Order" then you have some idea of where I'm going with this.  I love what she has done for a crafting club and it's absolutely amazing to get a package in the mail with the club-like goodies in it.  It has inspired me.  I don't want to copy her, or anyone else that has a similar thing, but I like the idea of a club.  For housekeepers.  Not a chat room club or a forum style club where we all post and talk and yada yada yada....  No, I want a CLUB where you get a membership card and other goodies and you have to know a secret pledge and all that good stuff!  Think back to when you were in second grade...that type of club!  But for housekeeping, not selling cookies and earning campfire badges.  I have more thoughts on this in my head.  And I want to have every little detail figured out before I would start one, but if I DID start one, would anyone be interested in joining?  I'm thinking membership cards, a member's only apron, a handbook and a few other things could be in the initiation packet?   Yeah, I'm going to do it.  It's just too fun not to!  Drop me a line and let me know if you would be interested.  I'm going to get to work on the details.  As soon as I have it all figured out, I'll send out the info!

New Address

The new official email address for this site is:  thehelpfulhousewife@hotmail.com

All future emails and questions should be sent to this address.  Since typepad won't allow me to change the previous email link to this address, I simply removed that link from the sidebar and will be sure to include this email link in the closing portion of each post.  That way it is always accessible to click on it!  Be sure to add it to your address book!

A New Corner Post

It's been a while since I posted the kitchen as a corner entry, so I thought I throw another one out here.  Since this is the cleanest room in the house at the moment, and also the prettiest, I'll give you a glimpse into Attie's room...

All of the bedrooms in our house are odd because there is this little built in desk area in each of them (except the master bedroom).  When we bought the house, it was one thing I already knew I wanted to change, but we haven't yet.  They came in handy as built in changing tables for babies!!!

Originally I had planned to decorate her room in a Dick Jane & Sally theme, and even framed some prints to hang in her room.  They ended up in this little alcove, athough, because I fell in love with something else for a decor. 

   

The Dick and Jane idea was really cute, but then I spotted this set one day when out shopping and knew that I was going to end up going with the pretty, floral, feminine look she could grow up with:

   

You gotta love Rachel Ashwell!  (Especially when it's affordable for a change!)  I had an old book case that was falling apart and rebuilt it/updated it to give the room a little girl's feel.  That way the floral wouldn't feel too much  like an old lady's room!

I lined the back inner panel with a dainty floral fabric and then gave the whole thing a coat of fresh white paint. 

   

Then I took craft paints and put little designs on the top and a tree swing scene on the side.  It took all of a half hour when I did it.  (Minus the time for the coats of paint to dry!)

 

Now, I just have to do something with our bedroom!  The girls' rooms are all done for the most part -- Annika's and Aelin's room needs some wall decor, and the nursery is done until Andrew is big enough to be out of the John Lennon stage.  Our bedroom is the only one we haven't done anything with.  We don't even have matching furniture, so I may never ever ever put it out here!

Cookies for School, Among Other Things...

It's almost 3 am, and I just finished packaging up cookies for Attie to bring to school tomorrow.  (Aren't I the dedicated Mommy?  June would be so proud!)  She wanted to bring a treat to celebrate her birthday with her class, even if it is two days later.  Of course, we couldn't say no! 

I haven't posted in two days because we were busy celebrating that birthday on Sunday, and also because I've been busy busy busy, working away at my sewing machine.  Here's what I've been up to:

I just have to say that I have the cutest model ever for my kid size creations!  Attie was a pretty good sport to pose for me.

Not bad for 2 days in my work area?  Plus, I spent some time boxing up my very first sale!  The first knitting bag and needle nanny set sold on Saturday!!!  Yay!!!  I just had a hard time getting it packaged, and that took up some of my morning.  But it's in the mail on it's way to San Francisco.  I feel pretty good about all this sewing now.  It's actually "paying off".  (Ha Ha!)

The March Apron for Tie-One-On

Here it is, Attie's "American Girl" apron!  Do you think we conveyed the folksy retro kitsch look we were going for?  I'm going to have to start doing these monthly apron themes more often.  This was fun!