Mission: Be a Better Mommy series {part 1} TOY JAIL

Here's something you don't always here a mother say (but I'm sure most think from one time or another): My kids can be such a$$holes.  Seriously!  I mean, I love them to death, but honestly, they can be such little shits some times.  Their teacher's would say I was crazy since they are perfect little angels all day with them, but at home with me it's a different story.  They used to be so much nicer a few years ago: they listened more, almost always cleaned up after themselves, ate most of their food.  Now, they argue with me about everything, barely eat their dinner, demand dessert after every meal, and I have to practically scream at them to get them to pick up their crap. 

Don't get me wrong, I know kids who are WAAAAYYYYY worse than my kids, so I'm not complaining too much, but their behaviors have been less than desirable lately and it's time for me to fix it.  And by fit IT, I mean fix MYSELF.  Any parent that is having behavioral issues with their kids, whether it be major or minor, needs to look in the mirror because it is NOT the kid's fault; it's OURS.  Our kids are born ready to learn and soak up the world like a little sponge and how we parent directly correlates to their behavior and attitudes towards society.  There are a million types of discipline methods and I am not here to say what is best for your family.  I do know that I am not happy with how my kids have been acting so I am on a mission to try and fix it!

I have been trying to think about why my kid's behavior has changed and I have discovered two changes: one (and the more major one) is my lack of patience.  Blame it on being stuck at home with three kids day in and day out with very little time away, or just the daunting repetitiveness of all their demands.  Maybe it's the lack of adult time or all the driving and rusing around we have been doing.  Perhaps it's a combo of it all.  I love being a stay at home mama but it certainly isn't easy, but that's not a good reason for me to be slacking on my job.  I need to find more patience and find it NOW.  The second thing is my oldest daughter has been more trying than usual, and I know that comes with her getting older.  She is an amazingly smart and wonderful girl.  She is an awesome big sister and so helpful to me. She can also be a whiny brat and major pain in the you-know-what when she wants.  That's another issue for another time though.

Back to the mission at hand: being a better mommy.  Being a better mommy means not raising little shits that are going to be assholes when they grow up: not demand things from society, not understand that hard work pays off, not be spoiled brats and not just to "expect" things to be done for them.  This concept (and Pinterest, of course) is what sparked my first step on my mission.

I decided to finally make that awesome "toy ransom" box that I pinned AGES ago.  The concept behind the box is to stop all the asking, pleading, and in my house, yelling that comes along with trying to get your kids to pick up their things and put them away. 

The rules are simple:
- Mom sees a mess, gives the kids a warning to please pick them up and put them away.
- After a period of time, one that mom sees fit, if said toy(s) are still out, mom places toy in Toy Jail.
- In order for child to get their toy back, mom will chose a chore from the list for child to do.
- There are no re-picks, you get what you get.
- If it is a cleaning job with "spray" (like cleaning the front of the fridge) MOM sprays, because it's fun to spray and this chore isn't suppose to be fun!
- Once the chore is complete, child gets toy back.
- If there are unclaimed toys in the box after a week, they get donated.

Here is my box.  I found this cute little poem at Just Another Day in Paradise

 

My list of chores are:

Clean the tub

Pick up the dog poop

Rub Dad's feet for 5 minutes

Clean the potty

Clean the kitchen floor with a cloth

Wipe down the front of the fridge

Wipe down the garage door in the kitchen

Pick weeds in the backyard

Pay mom a quarter from your piggy bank

Brush Biscuit for 5 minutes

Clean the kitchen chairs

Do 25 jumping jacks

Clean your sibling’s room

Shake out the kitchen rugs

Shake out the kid’s bathroom rugs

Clean all the doorknobs

Wipe baseboards in kitchen

Wipe baseboards in living room

Wipe baseboards in hallway

The genius of this box is it's simplicity.  One warning, no yelling, begging, nagging. They don't clean it up? Into the box it goes!  Sure they may throw a temper tantrum but that doesn't bother me.  I am hoping that this box helps to bring back some of my patience because my blood wont boil so much when no one listens to me. Also, they were learn the all-important lessons of RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY.

 

To go along with this "responsibility" lesson is the chore charts I made for my kids. I'll share those in my Mommy Mission, part 2 on Monday.

 

I don't know about you, but I cannot WAIT for the first kid to leave a toy out and I hope the chore is "pick up dog poop": that'll show them I mean business!

Life organized...binder-style!

During my adventures on Pinterest, I have come across these "home management binders" many times.  I have wanted to make for quite a while, but haven't {like a lot of my projects}.  I consider myself a organized person, but am always looking for ways to organize further.  One can never be too organized!
This binder is a way to keep your important papers in one place, for easy access.  One of the first blog posts I did was of my "command central" where I keep all the things I need on a daily basis to keep the household running. Here I have my planner and two cork boards with my meal menus, important schedules and school papers.  I also keep pens, my address book, stamps and papers to be filed in our file boxes where we keep our important-adult papers (which going through those is one my next projects!).  I wanted my binder to be an extension of this center, but I also wanted it to include my bills, some cleaning info and important contact numbers.  I had a bill binder and blogging binder and it was just too many binders!!  This binder would become the end all, be all of binders; combining all of this into one.
I started off getting a one-inch binder at good-old Target and some dividers. I have pinned MANY home management binder links so after going through all of these, I found some excellent printables for you!  All of these are free, which is great.  There are some ADORABLE ones on Etsy, but I just don't want to pay $$ for them.

My binder includes seven sections.  This is what I have in them:

1. Bills-
* My monthly bill recording sheet, which I have all our bills listed with due dates, what I paid and when. (this sheet I made myself)
* An annual bill schedule, where I keep track of any bills that are paid quarterly or weekly.
* A list of all our bill-related user names and passwords
* Utility/services contact sheet

2. Budgeting-
* currently empty, haha, BUT I plan on trying to stick to a better budget, so I want to make/find a nice monthly expense tracking sheet SOON!
* Lined paper, for jotting down info

3. Contacts-
* A list of couponing/store user names/passwords
* A list of all other miscellaneous user names and passwords
* A master list of all birthdays
* Insurance policies contact list
* Medical and Health insurance contact sheet
* A list of the most important friends and family contacts.  I keep all in an address book, but these are more for emergency purposes.

4. Cleaning-
* Daily, weekly and deep cleaning monthly cleaning lists

5. Blogging-
* Calendar printout
* Blogging recording so I can jot any ideas down of what I wanted to blog about!

6. School-
* A copy of the school schedule
* Important teacher/school info sheet (with phone numbers, emails, and bus info)

7. Ways to play-
* I found this cute monthly "way to play" printable a ways back on pinterest (where else??) and thought it would be a cute addition to my binder, for when I run out of ideas of crap to do with the peas.

Other sections that you may want to include would be:
- A printable calendar where you can record important appts and things, if you don't already have a planner.
- A meal planning schedule.  I print out a calendar every month and write out what we are having for supper and tack it on my board, but it could go in here as well.
- More in-depth medical records.  After having three kids with lots of appts, I made a huge binder solely devoted to medical information.  This is where I keep track of our Flex Spending transactions, keep receipts and all copies of papers we get.  This info gets filed at the end of the year when we do our taxes and I start fresh again the next year.  I wanted to keep this separate, since mine is just so dense as it is.
- A section for your pets info, if you take your animals to vet more often than I do ;)

I am toying with the idea of making a couponing section where I can track my savings and also a section for planning freezer meals, which is something I would like to work on more.  I haven't gotten that far yet, though.

So there you have it.  My Thomas Family Home Management Binder- Yippee!  I love being organized...it makes my heart happy <3

Enjoy!


Here is where I got the majority of my printables from:

The cleaning printables: http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/search/label/Cleaning

Basically everything else, except the ones I have made: http://www.organizinghomelife.com/archives/4275

Some of the blogging organizing papers I like:
 http://www.babble.com/crafts-activities/10-free-blog-planners-to-download/

http://www.homeschoolinmama.com/2012/05/blog-post-organizer-lets-get-started.html

http://www.infarrantlycreative.net/2012/02/free-printable-blogplanner.html

Ways to play: http://lets-explore.net/blog/ways-to-play-monthly-downloads/

Freebie Friday! (part one)

I have decided that my blog needs a "theme" day.  I shall start with Freebie Friday.  Each Friday (or almost each Friday, hopefully...) I shall share a project I did that cost me zero dollars or if I scored some freebies with my coupons, I will share the deal with you! 
Today, I am avoiding what I need to be doing (cleaning my bathrooms) and instead decided to tackle a small project that I have been wanting to do for a while now which was figure out a better way to organize my earrings and jewelry.  I don't wear or own too much jewelry, but what I did have was sitting in a tupperware container on my dresser.

Ugg, embarrassing!!  I can't believe I'm even sharing this!  Well, obviously THIS system doesn't work.  I've seen several different ideas on DIY jewelry organizers on Pinterest but haven't really had the time to do any.  Also, I have a few projects I'm getting ready to work on about the kids, so I really just wanted to find a simple way to fix this hot mess. 
I have several of these metal, white build-a-cubby shelf things in my house.  I have one in my hall closet and have used it to transform it into a linen closet, since this house didn't have one (DUR!) and another one in Jacob's closet to organize blankets on the top shelf and toys on the bottom.  Well, I had one square left.  I came across this while aimlessly strolling the house, not cleaning the bathrooms, and AWWWWWW....the craft gods spoke to me, calling my name!!  I could make this into a very easy jewelry organizer!!! 

So with this square and a piece of thick yellow yarn, I thee wed you to be a better way to see my earrings....

Voila!  Free, easy and neat.  I may make something different some day, but this will be good for now.  It cleaned up all those boxes on my dresser and made that look neater.  I just connected my necklaces on the square, but will probably buy some of those "s" hooks to hang on there so I don't have to unhook one if I want to wear it.
One thing this Freebie Friday project has taught me is that I need some more earring!  Time to go shopping, but I really should get to those bathrooms first...

Stay tuned for Freebie Friday part two a bit later today...

Girl's room re-do

So, our girls share a room.  I knew I always wanted to get them bunk beds when Hannah was out of the crib.  They would not only look cute but save some massive space! So over the fall break I decided to get it done and do a re-do of their bedroom. 
Here's what their room looked like before:

 

 

Cute, but busy and FULL.  They didn't have much space so play in there and lots of their toys were still in the living room, which i am slowly trying to weed out.  I painted this room 8 months pregnant with Jacob for Abby's "big girl" room. We upgraded her to a twin bed when she was 20 months to get the crib ready for new baby Jake.  So, although I liked the purple, I was tired of it.  We were ready for a change! 

I knew I wanted white bunk beds, to match their dresser and book shelf.  After much searching online and in some stores I found a nice and inexpensive set at walmart.com (I know, I know...walmart?!?! It had great reviews and was a known brand) After I found the set, next came the bedding search.  I ended up finding a beautiful quilt set at target.com on clearance and ordered two. It was more pink so I knew I wanted to go bold with the wall color.  After some deliberation I decided on a "tiffany blue", which was technically called Sweet Rhapsody by Behr at The Home Depot.  So I got to work!  Painting, trimming, decal applying, new art work...and **drum roll please** here are the final results!!

 

Here is their pretty new animal prints.  They look so cute on the blue walls!!

 

Here is the "baby corner". All this crap was in my living room so I'm glad to have it in their room!

And their beds!!!  SO cute, eh??  I think so.  They are the perfect size for them, not too high.  They LOVE them.  I also LOVE the bedding. It looks awesome with the walls!  It's a great color combo :)

 

Everything stands out more against this color, I am SERIOUSLY in love with it.  The owls are adorable too.  I wasn't sure where I wanted to put them because I originally thought they'd look cute in the tree but then Abby decided on this more "mod" tree so they didn't quite go together.  I finally thought they'd look cute above the doors and boy, was I right!  They look smashing up there!!

 

Under the bed, I'm using these baskets as stuffed animal storage. Neat and tidy, just how I like it. Also, Hannah has some wicked cute new owl sheets to boot :)

 

Baskets organized by toy type.  Two for babies, two for dolls and one for ponies.

Abby's "A" looks great up here.  Hannah's "H" is on the dresser.  Tutorial on these to follow tomorrow!

 

Overall, I am very happy with their room.  I think it looks just the right combo of "big and little" girl.  They love it too and are really enjoying their bunks.  Or "bonk beds", as Abby keeps calling them.  The only thing I still need is a new throw rug for them. I may just make one if I can't find one I like.  Yes, I said "make" :)

Thanks for taking the tour with me!  I hope you enjoyed looking at it! :)

 

 

 

A place for everything...

There's no secret I love to organize.  I even think my organized house could be MORE organized.  I am constantly trying to re-organize my laundry room, but it's hard because there is a lot of crap shoved in a small space.  It looks neat, though.  We have clearly out grown this house but are not in any position to try and sell and upgrade to a bigger one, so keeping organized is the key to my sanity! One place that I am satisfied with, is my "command central".  This is an area in the kitchen where I keep all of our day-to-day things organized and ready to go. Here is also where we keep all the kids shoes and accessories so we can get out of the house as smoothly (ha!) as possible.

On one corner, I have my newest addition to this area: the shoe bench!  I love this thing!  Each kid has their own shoe basket labeled with their names so they know where to put their shoes.  The small cubby above holds the older two's library books from school so they stay separate from our regular books.

On the other corner, I have my nine-cubby holder.  The top three baskets, one for each pea, hold the kids "accessories": sunglasses, hats, mittens...This keeps it neat and is easy for each of them to grab what they need.  The middle three hold my stuff: coupon binder and my "kid-free" purse, my tutoring and ptsa/preschool folder, and then my diaper bag.  The bottom three are carry over, the girls boots, slippers and I, so kindly, gave David a basket for his hats :) On the floor next to it is the shoe basket where everyone can take their shoes off and throw them in there.  There is another one by the front door, but we primarily use the garage to come in and out of.

This rack and the smaller on below is where I hang Abby's backpack and the kids coats, when its cooler out.

Here's is my command central.  I use the two cork boards to hang up important school papers: lunch schedule, spelling words, homework and the school calendar.  I also hang up David's schedule, since it is ever changing, my monthly meal plan and my laminated daily to-do list.  Next to the cork boards is my weekly white board so I can write down what's happening that week so I don't forget anything!  On the top of the bookcase is my file holder that I put important papers that need to be filed away in the file boxes in the closet.  This also holds things like pens, pencils, stamps, post its, etc...  Next to it is my yearly planner.  I do use a digital planner (cozi) but I just can seem to NOT use this one too.  This way, I can keep track of up-coming appts, school events, date-nights, and other things I can't forget!  Lastly is the two-sided brown basket where David and I each have a side to thrown our crap into: keys, ipod holder for running and all the nonsense David brings home from work daily.  This system works for us and it quite easy for the kids so access their things.  They know to put their stuff in its correct place so they can find it later.  I use a similar system for their toys in their bedrooms and in the living room.  Unfortunately we don't have a playroom...booooo :(...so keeping things organized in there is even more important!  Someday, we'll have a playroom and I already have 1000 ideas pinned and ready to go!
Good luck organizing your command central!!

Creating a stockpile...

Finally!  My last couponing post on the basics: creating a stockpile.  In order to really start seeing savings on your weekly grocery/target trips, you need to have a stockpile of cheaply purchased (or free) items that you use on a daily basis.  By purchasing these items in larger quantities you won't have to "quick" run to the store to buy toothpaste that will set you back $3.00 because you know you have x amount of them in your stock.  This will overall lower your weekly spending because these items won't need to be purchased. 
What's a stock up price??
Well that will depend on you.  For example, I won't buy cereal unless it's under $1 but a couponer just starting out that is used to spending almost $4.00 a box may think under $2.00 is a stock up price.  The better you get, the more you will notice what's a good price to get lots of an item of.  This is a good time to order coupons if you know of a snazzy deal coming up and you currently only have 4 coupons, for example.  Times I have done this were to get basically free items we use a lot of: toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, hand soap, pasta, dry pasta sauce and certain other items.  I usually order in a lot of 10 or 20 so I can help build my stock.  We go through LOTS of these types of items with three kids, so 20 doesn't seem excessive to me!  The Krazy Coupon ladies once put up their stock up price list, if you are interested, you ca search and try to find that to get an idea.  I don't use theirs because I know whats a good deal and what to pass on. 
How much to stockpile??
Well, again, that depends on you and your family.  I was once told that you should order enough coupon inserts or papers for each member of your family.  I order 4 papers, but also print lots and occasionally order some if needed.  My kids are also small and don't eat too much so four works for us.  I have other ways of getting q's too, so normally I have more than four of each coupon.  If you had teenagers who ate tons, you may want to stock more!  Stores run their sale cycles in 12 week cycles.  So, normally, you'll see a sale now, and most likely it will be on sale again for a similar price in 12 weeks.  That doesn't necessarily mean you'll have the same coupons to score a great deal, but it's a good judge of how much you should have on hand.  One rule I also have if I really won't have more on hand of an item that I can store in its designated space.  So if my razor drawer is completely full, I won't grab anymore, unless its completely free, of course, because not all items come up free :)  I will, however, donate my excess at times.
How should I store my stockpile??
I don't have a super awesome walk-in pantry so I had to get creative in where I store my extra stuff. The bulk of my stock is in my laundry room on the shelf that is above my washer and dryer.  When I first started to get a stock, my mom and I went to target and bought two 3-ft wire shelves and installed them above the existing so my one shelf became two.  This is where my extra food, paper towels and toilet paper go.  I also have a free shelf in the garage that I've occasionally used to store extra paper goods as well.

As you can see, I don't have a humongous stock, but I have a fair amount.  I have about 15 boxes of cereal, 12 cans of green beans (the only veg david will eat), about 15 dry pastas, 8 sauces and lots of bbq sauce, mustard, salad dressings and canned tomatoes.  I also have some kids snacks and other odds and ends.  In addition, I have a fully stocked pantry in the kitchen. This is also not as much tp and pt's as I would like, but I'm hoping for a nice p & g sale coming up at frys to build my stock :).

In the laundry room, I also have a LARGE stock of cleaning supplies (three shelves worth) and that includes about 20 dish soaps and 10 laundry soaps.  I have enough cleaning supplies for at least a year.  I store some personal products as well in here in a shoe rack hanging behind the door.





Here I have about 20 body washes (and more in the bedroom), 20 bar soaps (also more in the bedroom), 10 shave creams and some face washes.  This storage takes up NO space and is very convenient :) In the bedroom on the floor under david's clothes, I have two three drawer plastic storage things full of more stuff.

These drawers are clearly labeled and are LOADED with stuff.  I have AT LEAST a years worth of toothpaste, floss, tooth brushes, deodorant, and razors.  I also have more bar soap and body washes on top.  But if you notice, it barely takes up any space and it is neatly tucked away.  I also have a stock of kids body products and some kids medicines in a basket under their sink in their bathroom, lots and lots of baby wipes and diapers in the girls closet on the top shelf, and some feminine products, adult medicines, cotton balls, q-tips and hair dye under our sink.  All is stored in a basket and is also very neat.  Just because you have a stock pile, doesn't mean you have to be messy!!!  The final place I have items are on a few shelves in the garage, which hold about 50 hand soaps, 20 bottles of vinegar and lots of baggies.  Don't forget to check expiration dates and the "first in, first out" rule. 
So know you are armed with all my knowledge about couponing!!  Remember, no one taught me, I got my crap together and got out there and practiced.  It doesn't come over night and don't expect to save 60% on your first order.  If you keep at it though, it will come.  New coupons come every Sunday (except on a holiday week) and new ones are always appearing online.  Every week, there are new chances to grab great deals, it's very exciting!!! I hope you all give it a try because, honestly, there are so many places in life that it's almost impossible to save, like your mortgage or those dang medical bills, so why would you want to spend more on food when with some planning, you don't have to??  You know I am right!! Good luck and happy couponing!!