Hanging Clothes To Dry

26 Apr By 4 Comments

When I first told the kids that I was going to hang the clothes to dry instead of using the electric dryer, they cried.  Can you imagine?  What kind of a monster do they imagine me to be?  It turns out that they thought I would be making them wear wet clothes to school.  And that we were going to look like the poor family of the neighborhood (which we probably are) with all of our embarassing laundry hanging in the yard for all to see.  This is the kind of stress I cause my children without meaning to.  I wish they had a normal mom, I really do.

So, being the happy-go-lucky monster mom that I am, I got over that pretty darn quick, tied some clothesline across the pipes in my basement and started hanging laundry.  After hanging the laundry in the basement for about a year now, I am here to tell you that it is not only really easy, but when I do it consistently, I see a big difference in my electric bill too.   This is a good thing!

I have learned that creating routines, associating drudgery with reward and removing barriers are the keys to doing the things you want to do, but don’t do.  Although I think it would be better, I know I would not be willing to consistently take a load of laundry outside and hang it, so I hang laundry in my basement.  I know I need this to be quick and easy or I will not take the time to do it, so I don’t even use clothespins.  (My basement may be drafty, but there is certainly no breeze strong enough to knock the clothes off of the line.)  I just sort of shake out the clothes and drape them neatly over the line.

My morning routine is this:  pop out of bed fresh as a daisy, feed dog, fold laundry which has dried overnight,  hang a load of laundry, put a load of laundry into the washing machine, let the chickens and dog out, do a few exercises and reward myself with a cup of caffeinated tea and writing time. 

My evening routine is this:  finish cleaning up from dinner, send kids up to do homework or get ready for bed, fold laundry which has dried during the day, hang a load of laundry, put a load of laundry into the washing machine, and reward myself with a cup of caffeine-free tea and a few minutes sitting with a magazine or writing time before bedtime routines begin.

Each person in the family is responsible for bringing his or her laundry up to their rooms and putting it away.  The socks go into one basket and are sorted when it gets full.   If I am out of my routine and need to keep the laudry moving ahead, I enlist the help of the kids.  Each one knows how to sort clothes into darks and whites and how to start a load of laundry.  (I find it astounding that these are the same children who claim to not know how to “stir” a pot.  Just when I think I might be doing a good job training them to survive in the wide world, they find ways to keep me humble. ) 

My routines take all of about 20 minutes each time.  Really – no big deal.  The best part if that it keeps the laundry moving and prevents an insurmountable pile of laundry from building up.  Hanging laundry makes your clothes last longer and keeps your dark jeans dark.  It seems like it would be more work to hang the laundry, but it actually solves more problems than it creates.  Seems like a plenty perfect solution to me!

 Do you hang your laundry?  What kinds of things do you do that drive your kids crazy?

 

 

 

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Filed Under: cheats, family, home, kids, motivation, organization Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sock Party

1 Apr By 6 Comments

I only have so much “oomph,” you know.  I try not to waste it.

I am not someone who freaks out if the dishwasher is loaded “wrong.”   I don’t iron clothing much anymore.   If the front of my hair looks okay, I can usually live with whatever the back of my head is doing.  If I spent “oomph” on those things, I wouldn’t have enough “oomph” left over to spend on more important, yet completely futile efforts like figuring out what my hormonal kids are upset about moment to moment.  Or trying to make a dinner everyone will eat.

One of the things I do not waste my ”oomph” on is socks.  (If you grew up in the Boston area, try to not read that last word with your Boston accent.  Because it would sound weird and like I was sharing a little too much.) 

I keep this basket in the laundry area and when it is eventually filled with socks from many loads of laundry, I bring it to the living room and we have a sock party.   I told you it was really fun at my house.

Yep, we dump the basket out on the floor, sit around in a circle, match ‘em up and sort ‘em into piles.   Sometimes we sing camp songs and sway back and forth as we work.  It used to be an exciting game when the kids were little – seeing how fast we could do it and trying to touch socks only once.  Fortunately, the kids are not so easily amused anymore.  I would worry if they still thought being “mommy’s big helper” was the best job in the world.  They now want to be “awesome gamers” and “Yu-Gi-Oh Masters.”  I’m so proud.

When we are done sorting, the orphan socks go back into the basket and the piles get put away in the drawers I have strategically positioned in my front hall closet.  (Which makes it sound really big and grand around here – when it is actually the only closet on the first floor.  Nevertheless, I do sometimes feel the need to wear my tiara when doing mundane tasks around the house.) 

It is an unconventional solution, but I learned this trick of keeping the socks downstairs, near where they would be needed from a very smart friend from way back named, Sara, who has a fabulous blog, called “GoGingham” .  It is filled with all of her wonderful ideas for living a stylishly frugal life.  I think Sara might have kept her kids’ socks in the dining room buffet – which I thought was brilliant!

We used to forego the matching part of sorting the socks, but I found that it saves more time to match them all at once.  Not that I would spend much “oomph” on worrying about my kids wearing mismatched socks – it just saves time in the morning if they can grab and go. 

My house is small and I have to use space as efficiently as possible.  Allotting closet space to socks might not seem to make sense at first, but the floor area in this closet would go to waste anyway.  Keeping the socks here works for us for many reasons.  Maybe it isn’t worthy of  ”House Beautiful,” but it makes life easier for us and that is truly a beautiful thing! 

Sometimes, thinking outside of the very restrictive “perfection” box is all it takes to make your home work better for you! 

 

 

 

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Hugging The Chickens

12 Mar By Leave a Comment

I know it is going to be Spring any day now, because my chickens have started laying again.  They stop laying during the shorter days during winter.  It is  a time for them to regroup and renew, and moult, and grow new feathers.    If you are interested in having your own flock of chickens, now is the time to order chicks so they will be ready for life in the great outdoors by winter.  This is the story of how I got interested in keeping chickens…  I have always wondered how I would do if I were put out in the middle of Montana one Spring and told to “get cracking setting up a homestead and growing food, cuz winter is a comin’ before you know it.”  I presume this would be told to me by a crusty old neighbor (who lives a day’s walk away) while he looked me up and down with a doubtful look on his face.

I also went to a very “well-integrated” high school and frequently wondered how I would do if I were ever in a real fight.  Unfortunately, I never inspired this level of ire from Lady Virgo or Daddy Crackerjack, so I still don’t know how I would do.  These are the sorts of things you can only know when you are in the real situation and I guess I am lucky I don’t know yet.  But still, I do wonder… In the meantime, I am feeding my interest in survival by dabbling in the art of preparedness.  (Which at this point means I have moved the bandaids and antibiotic ointment to the downstairs medicine cabinet, thought about getting rain barrels and have several extra boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios in the basement.)  The Mormons are a really great resource for information about food storage and I have even ordered some of their materials online.  I know these materials are meant to draw me into the fold and make me want to be a Mormon, but I have no intention of joining their church.  I have  struggled mightily thought about it a little and have decided that stealing free information from the Mormons is okay. One of the ways I am pretending to be a survivalist in my comfy little suburban town (it is sort of like Mayberry here) is that I have chickens.  I ordered them last June from www.mypetchicken.com andthey arrived in the mail!

They were so cute – and ALIVE – it was a miracle!!!  I ordered 4 because I thought some might not make the trip, but they all did.  This is when my son began hugging the chickens.

the dog wanted to EAT the chickens, not hug them

For a while, they lived in a big plastic box where they regularly pooped in their food and water.

So now, our chickens named Mr. Fluffypants, Iguana, Priscilla and Paco, have their very own place to call home and poop in their water and food - AND stay safe from the dog, who still stalks them.  It seems the dog has survival fantasies of her own.

my son sees nothing wrong with the name, Mr. Fluffypants, for a girl chicken

And just a few weeks ago, we had our first EGG!!!!!  There it was, just sitting on the ground.  Amazing!  The girls are really getting the hang of it now and we get 3-4 eggs a day.  At first it was a little weird thinking about eating their “young,” but we have gotten over that.  And I can pretend that if there is sudden shortage of food, I will be able to feed my kids (and neighbors of course!), just like a real survivalist!

hugging the chickens!
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A Bath Towel Fairy Tale

8 Feb By 3 Comments

Once upon a time, there was a Queendom.  In this Queendom, three children lived with their mother (the Queen) and a magical maid who cleaned up and kept the house running.  Everyday, the children would bathe and drop their towel on the floor, only to find it on their hook in the bathroom the next day.  If the maid slacked off, and a towel was not waiting for them on their hook in the bathroom, the children simply used a new, clean towel. 

Sometimes, when the maid had really slacked off and there were no clean towels to draw from, the children would scream for their Queen mother as if there were some dire, life-threatening emergency.  Of course, this made the Queen drop whatever she was doing and come dashing up the stairs – only to find that one of her darling children required a fresh towel.

Then the economy tanked, the magical maid had to take a higher-paying job elsewhere and the Queen suggested that the children put their own towels away.  This was a reasonable request, but brought on a slew of blame and unrest in the Queendom.  You see, no one could really say which towel on the floor was whose because all of the towels were white.  It had always been this way.  Towels were white because you could bleach them clean.  That was just the way it was.  It was a very difficult situation.

Until one day, when the Queen took mushrooms and went out into the wide world on a crazy shopping high and stumbled upon towels which were not white!  They were colored!  And patterned!  The towels mesmerized her with their undulating swirls and mocked her with their dots.  She had not known towels could be so fun!  The Queen brought the towels home to share with her children, (who were less impressed because they lacked the mushroom high) who promptly claimed their favorite.  Each child had a special towel and from that time on, there was peace in the Queendom.  Mostly.

 

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