3 Tips for Parents When It Comes to Chores

As I near the end of January’s focus on cleaning, I want to address chores.  It’s important that housework isn’t put on the shoulders of just one person. My thinking is if you live in this house and help make it dirty, then you need to help keep it clean.  This should start at an early age. Before I get into the whole concept of chores and charts, there are some tips I would like to offer parents.  The first is, don’t look at chores as something for older kids. The younger you start a habit with a child, the … Continue reading

Time Saving Tips to Keep You on Track

With the holidays fast approaching, things might be getting a little busy around your house. Some people are able to back off a little bit from their home based businesses during the holiday season and focus on holiday activities. People with seasonal home based businesses are likely to be putting in as much time and effort as they can right now. Either way, you are likely to be feeling a little bit crunched for time. Of course, there are only so many hours in a day. While we can not create additional hours, we can employ a few strategies to … Continue reading

Tips for Visiting the Cemetery

It isn’t unheard of for genealogists to go and visit cemeteries at any time of the year, not just when it is close to Halloween. Here are a few tips to follow that will make your visit to the graveyard result in good genealogy research, and keep you safe, at the same time. Before you visit the cemetery, you should take the time to gather up some very useful items. Bring your smartphone. Use it to call for help if you fall and get injured or become lost. Use it to take a photo of the graves of your ancestors, … Continue reading

Cleaning Your Medicine Cabinet

My family has been packing for a trip to Texas. So it has required me to take more notice of things that need to be organized. We were trying to decide which medications to take, such as something for car sickness, ibuprofen, migraine and allergy medicine. But finding what I needed proved to be a challenge. That’s because I realized how completely disorganized my medicine cabinet was. And I ended up having to throw out items that were past their expiration date. So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to clean it out. That required emptying it first. … Continue reading

Cleaning Your Microwave

I don’t like cleaning my stove or refrigerator. But there is another appliance in my home that I dislike cleaning even more…the microwave. I guess that’s because I don’t have to clean the stove or fridge on a regular basis. However, the microwave gets a lot of use out of it so cleaning is much more frequent. What I especially don’t like is the awful smell of popcorn inside (even though I love popcorn). But what’s worse is when my children have warmed up cans of Spaghetti O’s. Not only do I want to gag at the smell but the … Continue reading

Cleaning Up at the Bake Sale

Even if you are on a tight budget, you can often help out a charity by participating in a bake sale to raise funds. If you want to make the most impact, while still being frugal, try the following tips. Don’t Forget the Donation Jar Sometimes people’s diets don’t allow them to buy something, although they would like to contribute. Set out a donation jar for just this purpose. Sometimes customers will purchase something and make a donation, a plus for your charity. Accommodate Different Diets If you have a variety of different goods for different lifestyles and diets, you … Continue reading

More Laundry Tips

In my quest to simplify most household tasks I’ve gotten the laundry room organized and running smoothly. My last post was about sorting laundry and doing a load every day to cut down on the enormity of the task. Today I have some tips and tricks I’ve collected that help make laundry even easier. *Instead of sorting and mating socks, trying to figure out if those white socks are your husbands or your teenagers, give each person a mess delicates laundry bag. Collect the bags once a week, zip closed, toss in the washer and dryer and then return to … Continue reading

Deep Cleaning Your Home

There is a big difference between cleaning and “deep” cleaning. While regular cleaning can cut down on how often you need to deep clean and make the work easier, it is still necessary every-so-often. Deep cleaning means getting into areas you don’t normally touch. It is those unseen, oftentimes overlooked areas of the home. How often you need to deep clean will depend not only on your maintenance of that area but what it is used for. Some rooms or areas of the home may need a deep cleaning every few weeks. But some can wait a few months. It … Continue reading

Cleaning Out the Car

You know that things are bad in your car when a ten-year-old complains that it is gross. We have had a couple of strange weeks, so my normal policy of having everyone grab at least three things that don’t belong each time they leave the car just wasn’t working. I hit the last straw yesterday when two things occurred: my daughter pulled out an old and yellowed cheese stick from behind a seat, and the carpooling kids didn’t want to put on their seat belts because they were afraid of all of the crumbs. “They are huge crumbs. It isn’t … Continue reading

Insurance Blog Week in Review – July 8 – 14, 2012

Every week, the Insurance Blog Week in Review brings you a quick and easy way to “ketchup” on the blogs that have been posted here in the past seven days. There could be anywhere between twelve and fourteen blogs that appear. Which ones did you miss? Jan Brewer Wants to Take Away Health Insurance Benefits Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wants the Supreme Court to allow her to terminate health insurance coverage for the same-sex partners of state workers. An appeals court would not allow her to do that. The Insurance Podcast Roundup went up on July 9, 2012. This time, … Continue reading