RV tour, week 3

We have had a few requests for a home tour now that we are living in it.

You know, I remember reading once that a lot of full-timing families get requests for them to audition for a reality TV show.  The crew comes and films them for a day, and the ultimately decide not to follow through with it because living in an RV is surprisingly similar to living in a sticks and bricks, and rather boring on a day-to-day basis.  It's the field trips that make the lifestyle exciting, but they don't happen every day.

We are still fixing up the RV.  It rained this weekend and we haven't finished fixing the roof yet, but the tarp worked great.  We were warm and dry and hay a yummy chicken stew.

The motorhome is smogged and registered now, so we can drive it and stay at campgrounds now.  Yay!  Small steps.

My next post will be about homeschooling, and sharing what materials made the cut.

Co-sleeping a family of 6

Many people have asked me how we fit our family in a two-bedroom home, especially when one room is my husband's office, so here is a vlog tour of our bedroom:


Quickly I would like to address two questions I get that aren't addressed in the video:

First, how do you and your husband get, ahem, some privacy?

Well, my children, once asleep, sleep very, very soundly.  Also, we're big fans of starfall.com.  Even before we had kids, we rarely went to bed or got up at the same time anyway, so it's not a big deal to us.

Second, why would you even want to do that?

Why not?  We save a lot of money by living in a smaller home, and we're living in a nice town-home where the kids have a lot of room to play outside, we don't have to worry about yardwork, and our home feels modern and new, but is well within our price-range.  It's easier to clean a smaller home.  While I am attracted to the green small/tiny home movement, the truth is, this is just what works well for our family right now.  I'm not saying every family should do this by any means, nor am I a die-hard co-sleeper.  I simply love co-sleeping, so it works for our family.  My husband has a nice office to himself, as well as his "man-cave" out in the garage to do his projects, so he is happy.

The take-away lesson from this post is whatever you want it to be.  Maybe you like our triple bunk bed that my husband made with plans from bunkbedsunlimited.com.  Great.  Maybe you like the idea of storing clothing all in one place and cutting back the laundry beast.  Cool.  Maybe you're just entertained by our parenting style, and the chaos that comes with it.  I'm good with that.  Thank you for watching!

School Workboxes

A new home…

When my husband got a new desk for Christmas, he offered me the table that he had been using.  Of course I don't want it!  Where would we put it?!?  Well, fortunately I gave it a second thought and consequently produced the best organizing achievement of Tamsyn history.  There have been so many blessings that have come from our new system and I have been very excited to blog about it today.

Days of our lives

The crux of the system revolves around having a bin for every day of the week.  I borrowed this idea from heartofwisdom.com.  The basic concept is that at the beginning of the week you take a few minutes to put worksheets, manipulatives, and other school items in the daily bins and when the respective day comes you just take the box out and complete the work inside it.  We have been doing this for about two months and it has worked great for us.  My young children have noticed that school will be done when the box is empty.  This is easier for them to understand than a check-off list.  They are learning the days of the week too!

This tote came from Wal-Mart, and was made from two plastic dressers.  They came with four small drawers and three large drawers.  Michael and I each had one and I stole two little drawers from him.  He wasn't using them anyway.  :o)

 School supplies

The funnest part of this project for me was gathering the school supplies from the four corners of the house and bringing them all together in one place.  Now the pom-poms, craft sticks, crayons, glitter glue, play-dough, flashcards, and all the other random supplies have gathered into one space where I will ACTUALLY USE THEM!  As my family grows, I will probably need more of these drawers, but for now we are content to have labeled: Paper Supplies, Craft Supplies, Flash Cards, Manipulatives, Laminated Toys, Workbooks, and one left-over drawer which is begging me to finally buy tempera paints since it's out of the children's reach.

Puzzles

Before:  Puzzles were stacked on the bookshelf so the children would be drawn to them.  Result?  Mommy did the puzzles more than the kids and the puzzles were conveniently never unpacked when we moved here.

After:  The puzzles have a home in a tote with a lid.  This tote was previously filled with random school supplies, but when they found a new home in the drawers, this tote was repurposed.  Result?  The puzzles are getting used without destroying my sanity.  The other tote that is the same size as this one is our sand exploration center

 

School Toys

Any toys that were originally purchased for educational purposes were gathered into this tote, leaving less clutter in the playroom, and more focused use by the children in the clean environment of the kitchen table. 

Bits of Intelligence Cards

These are part of Glenn Doman's Encyclopedic Knowledge program.  Construction paper is stored in the back for easy access.

Conclusions

This is a wonderful addition to our kitchen.  Aside from the common advantages like "a place for everything and every thing in it's place" and "store it where you use it", there have been a few unforeseen advantages to having the school supplies in the kitchen.

·                    Housekeeping is not my forte, and if I have to choose between a school session and cleaning up after lunch, I always choose the first.  I tend to avoid the kitchen...  Having the supplies downstairs has been great for the kitchen table and the floor underneath.  I don't want sticky pancakes on our puzzles!

·                    Educational toys make great temporary entertainment while I finish making dinner.  When I'm in the kitchen, the children love to be there too, and I can help them with their puzzles and toys while I'm cleaning.

·                    Child-led school time.  Understandably, the table is a tempting place for the kids, but I have strictly enforced that it is MY table.  However, every night they have the opportunity look in the drawers and pick out activities for the next day.  I also tend to give in when they beg me to do school with them.

·                    Brief sessions during mealtime.  With the bit cards so handy, we have started pulling them out.  As the children watch the cards, they sometimes forget about being picky eaters.

As our family grows and their needs change, we will add more totes and perhaps a bookshelf, but this kitchen learning center is here to stay!

Organizing

Disclaimer: Organizing is not my profession

In fact, I am one of those people who annoy their husbands with pleas of "have you seen my keys?" "Where are my glasses", and other such questions. Whew! That feels good to get that off my chest! Having said that, I do wish to say that I am actively working be become professionally organized. I have recently excused myself from the "organized" chaos of our home to give myself a little education on this subject. I loved this article about organizing from about.com. One of the best books I’ve read on the subject I found at my local library, How to Start a Home-Based Professional Organizing Business by Dawn Noble. I have definitely learned from her book that I am a poor candidate for a career in this field, but I have also learned to look at my situation with fresh eyes. "What would a professional advise me to do in this case?" I ask.

True organizing promotes a lazier lifestyle

I recently laughed when I heard the statistic that the average American spends 1-2 hours a day looking for things. Then I kicked myself when I as I frantically searched 10 minutes for my keys and ultimately borrowed my husbands. In retrospect I have realized that that statistic is probably not far off for me. When I actually put my keys on the key-rack that is right next to our door, I simply grab them and leave. Traditionally I have thought of organizing as sorting my books to be in alphabetical order, arranging my clothes by color, or putting all of the toys in their own respective bins. Yes, this is organizing. But these are the fine details, and appropriately, they are not something I do regularly.True organizing means creating a system that supports your current lifestyle. Store things where you use them. Create as few steps as possible to complete a job. I love Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, for their father’s profession involved “motion studies”. He was constantly finding ways to make a job easier and more effective. Ultimately, that is what a professional organizer should do. It is not enough to simply clear a space and de-clutter. I have done that several times and in a short time the space fills up again. What I really need is to create a system that is easy to maintain. "A place for every thing and every thing in its place" is the adage my piano teacher taught me, and indeed she was a very organized person. But it goes further. If the thing’s "place" is downstairs on a shelf and I use it upstairs in the bedroom, it is not likely to ever truly be "away", and so it clutters the top of my dresser or the closet. It doesn’t matter if you store something in an untraditional place if that place works for you and makes your life easier. Store it where you use it. Clean-up at the end of the day should be easy and fast, giving me more time for bed-time stories and time with my children.
I am a beginner in this subject, but I am now an official student. I have gone through my house and taken some fabulous "before" pictures, and will shortly share them, once I have an "after" to go with it!

Bathroom Organization

While I admit that there is nothing shocking about the way my bathroom was, it was the consistency of the clutter that frustrated me the most. I often found it difficult to clear the cabinets when company came because there is nowhere to put the random things that would pile up on the cabinet. I have heard many times, “store it where you use it”. Allow me to state the obvious, which was for me the key to organizing my bathroom. “Don’t store it where you don’t use it.” I had a lot of things under here that are now more appropriately in storage. Things like

• ten lotion containers
• sitz bath that I only use right after childbirth
• unopened cleaning agents
• spa bath products that I almost never use
• extra toothpaste
• hotel extras like shampoo, lotion, and soap

We have a bathroom downstairs with a closet we have barely used the whole time we have lived here. Now these items are downstairs where I still have easy access to them when I need them, but they are no longer taking up valuable real estate in our primary bathroom. I have to wonder why I didn’t do this a long time ago.

"Before"

"After"

The cabinet is for items I use all the time. Next to the trash can in the #10 can are cloth wipes. This is a prime example of “store it where you use it.” When I use disposable diapers, I use disposable wipes, but I love cloth wipes for cloth. At first I made my own wet wipe solutions with tea tree oil and water, but I went through them so fast it was a chore I was always getting behind in. Finally I just got them wet when I needed them. I found it took too many steps to go to the changing table, take a wipe, go to the bathroom and wet it, and then go back again to the changing table to change a diaper. Now I simply come to the sink and wet them here, and take the baby and wipe to the changing table. When I put away diapers I bring the can with me. Perhaps my sense of home décor has something to be desired, but this is organizing at its finest! The rubbing alcohol also has a place of prominence because I use it for all of the misses doing elimination communication. Speaking of which, in the before picture you see Helen’s infant potty. She’s six months old and we don’t use it anymore, so it is in storage where we won’t miss it at all until our next baby comes!

The cupboard is a place for the things we use every day. Everything else had to leave. Well, everything but the bubbles that I blow when Peter takes a bath, since we lost the lid to it! Gone is the contact solution since I now prefer glasses. Gone are all of the hair accessories. The things that cluttered the cabinet now have a place here.

Here is my favorite thing I did to felicitate organization in our bathroom. The sliding drawers were in place before we bought the house and I’ve always loved them. Now they are put to even better use. On this side we put our first aid supplies in the back, and in front are two clear tubs from the dollar store, one for Michael, one for me. In mine you will find hair accessories, a hand mirror, contact solution, and make up. Michael has his razor case and re-charging stand, his mouth guard for Kung Fu, Listerine (I can’t stand the stuff!), and other miscellaneous bathroom things. Now when I want to mad-dash* the bathroom, I am actually supposed to just throw everything in a container. I love this.
*a term we used growing up in a family of 11 kids which means “QUICK!! Somebody’s coming, clean it up NOW!!

This side contains bathroom essentials that we use regularly, but not necessarily often. In the back is our travel bag with travel essentials already in it. Here are some other helpful articles for the bathroom;
Organize your Bathroom in Three Steps
iVilliage bathroom organization (chosen for the video).
Unique ways to organize your bathroom

Laundry Room Organization

As I have began tackling the beast of organizing the bedroom, I asked myself “What is causing the clutter, and what do I need to do to fix it?” When I realized that the problem is that our bedroom has become an extension of the laundry room, I knew I needed to do something about the laundry room first.
The story in our bedroom is that when I sort through the laundry, I would put the clothes in different baskets and then take them down to the laundry room as I washed them. After they were cleaned, I would bring them back upstairs. Sometimes I would wash the next laundry basket I had sorted. If not, I would then have two laundry baskets full of clothes in the bedroom. One with clean clothes, and one with dirty clothes yet to be washed. There they sit on the floor. Waiting. Waiting for the busy mom to find time to put them away. Or… Waiting for the two-year-old to discover Mommy and Daddy’s clothes and try them all on. Waiting for the clothes to get so mixed up it’s hard to tell which ones were clean and which ones were dirty, and sometimes would end up washing all of it again. So to save the bedroom from the insanity, the laundry room needed to become usable. When I don’t have time to finish folding clothes, the bedroom needs to be able to say “Not my problem.”

“Before”

I neglected to take a before picture of this room. The basic scene was this fantastic shelf you see below, filled with a trash bag for lint and dirty diaper bags, a few warranty papers for the washer, dryer, and water heater, and all of the detergent products. I make homemade laundry soap, so all of the ingredients were stored here. Prime real-estate completely wasted. I realized that the reason I ultimately fold the clothes upstairs is because I want to hang up the nicer clothes before they became wrinkled to save me from having to iron them.

The $15 make-over

My solution?

• Trash can, $7.
• Wooden dowel at Home Depot, $4.
• Scrap wood and tools we already had, Free.
• Husband with handy-man skills, Priceless.

“After”

I put the warranty papers in the filing cabinet, I have a trash can for the trash (imagine that!), and I found a new home for the laundry soap. Now I have a place to fold laundry and hang up the clothes. This is so much easier than how I hung them up before, because the bedroom closet was far away from the bed where I folded the clothes, they would be put on a hanger and draped over the bed before being hung up. It’s a great little station, and it works for me. I also take all the dirty laundry baskets downstairs all at once, and have them “wait in line” on the floor under this shelf. Clean clothes wait to be folded in laundry baskets on this shelf, or on the washer or dryer. I don’t mix them up anymore, and Peter has lost his dress-up opportunity with our dirty laundry. Note: Please forgive the smeared spider web on the wall. It’s behind the plastic, there’s not much I can do about it.

Peter helped Michael measure the wood and draw measurements on the wood. What a good Daddy! Michael had a large bit which he measured and drilled to fit the dowel we bought. Then he put a screw in the finished product to keep it from slipping out or from spinning.

Okay, I have to admit, I haven’t organized this shelf yet. I simply moved enough stuff to make room for the laundry soap. Well, you can guess how often I get into the painting supplies. The shelf will probably have to wait until I have organized the rest of the house before I get to it. It’s just not prime real estate, and it is safely hidden from company. But it is in the laundry room, and at least a small part of it gets used often now, contributing to the flow of a home that is beginning to have some order to it.

Other Resources

I think my favorite laundry room solution I have ever seen is that of the Duggar family. They have 18 (almost 19!) children, are homeschooled, and have one of the most organized homes I have ever seen (at least through the media). I really admire Michelle, the mother. They have a family clothing closet immediately adjacent to the laundry room, where all of the family’s clothing is stored. Every mother of a large family whom I have told this idea to says that it is a smart idea that makes sense. The clean clothes are often sought after in the laundry room anyway, why not make a system of it? In my dream home, I will do this, but our laundry room is in the basement, and our family is still small, so this fantastic solution will have to wait.
http://www.duggarfamily.com/photos.html This is a slide show, so if you want to see pictures of the laundry room, you will have to go through other family pictures. It’s worth it though, they have a beautiful home and a beautiful family. Their book “20 and Counting” shares their story. They built this home with cash, and although many of the beautiful things in the home were given to them by media, the home itself and the land it stands on came from years of provident living, wise investments, and working together as a family to achieve their goals. I am truly inspired by this family.
Here are a couple of other articles that you might find useful;
Mud and Laundry Room organization at about.com
Danny Lipford DIY video

School Boxes

By creating beautiful school boxes, a local homeschooling family shares how they have helped their children keep their school books together. They learned that their children needed portable storage to match the migrating habits of their children throughout the day. Perfect solution!

Step 1: Locate a cardboard box that will fit the needs of the child. For the youngest, a cereal box was just right, but the older children had to do a bit more searching. These were made from shipping boxes.

Step 2: Trim off the top of the box to fit your needs. These boxes are just short enough to allow the children to see which 11" book they need. If desired, you can also trim one side of the box a bit lower than the other sides to increase visibility when the kids are digging for their books. If they plan on moving it around a lot, this could make the books fall out easier, so assess how the box will be used during this step.

Step 3: Design and paint! What are the children interested in? What is the function of the box? What colors would be appropriate? The boxes showcased here were painted with spray paint and tempera paints.

Step 4: Decorate! (optional). There are countless ways to do this. The children who made these boxes drew simple cartoons (some of them traced), cut them out and glued them to the box. They cut out paper and created mosaics, using different textures of paper to create interest. The sky is the limit! I am thinking I should make a couple of toy boxes and decorate it with pictures cut out of magazines reflecting the kind of toys that we will place in them. It will be fantastic if I get around to it…
I found another idea for making school boxes, which is more geared towards organizing paper work, but using similar ideas.