I love Christmas break. Time off from spelling tests, chauffeur duties, graded papers, packing lunches, and best of all I’m not desperately rushing everyone to not be late…..oh how I love time off.

We always spend a few days at my parent’s house and a few days at Alan’s parents’ house, and it’s such a blessing to spend time with them and soak up the rest and good conversation.

With people you see on a daily basis, it can be easy to fall prey to simply talking about your shared problems and the annoying people you have to deal with. Ha! We all have them.

But when we get together with family at Christmas, we can re-focus on what matters and gain wisdom from others. We can always do that during the everyday too, of course, but I get the best ideas when I have some time and space to read and think!

Daniel and his favorite cousin at Christmas. They were born only a month apart.

I am reading 2 books and taking 1 online course that I’m gaining immensely from. One is on grocery budgeting and the other is on marriage. The course is about planning.

Alan even found an app for us to use for grocery shopping that has also been hugely helpful. I wanted to pass those along to y’all.

The Books

1.) How to Win the Grocery Game

I’m including an eBay link above for that one, which I do not make any money from. I just found the eBay price to be slightly better than Amazon.

This is an extremely practical book about saving money on grocery shopping. However, it was written in the 1970s and is extremely outdated. I’ve had to look for more modern ways to implement some of the strategies in this book, but it’s the strategies and the meal planning tips that make the book worth while…..if you can look past the insane price amounts on everything. You have to ignore those since this book is from the 70s!!

I’ll share with you a modern app I’ve used to help me do one thing from the book later in this post.

2.) Created to Be His Helpmeet

The above link is to the Amazon Kindle edition, but it is available in paperback on Amazon and other sellers as well. I do earn a small percentage when you buy through this link.

This book doesn’t even attempt political correctness with words like “hillbilly ugly” and “submit”. Ha! You have been warned.

But I’ve found it to be practical and helpful, a solid reminder. It has also helped me understand my husband better, as she divides men up into three groups: command types, visionaries, and steady men.

The book is about becoming a kinder, more helpful wife, and by doing that, you can’t help but improve your marriage, even if you’re married to the Grinch himself. I’m only 1/3 the way through it, but so far it has helped me to straight up be a nicer person at home with my husband.

I also love that it’s written by an older woman. She has walked through all the phases of life, and she’s sharing what she has learned.

Us with Alan’s side of the fam. Greg was MIA this year due to food poisoning. You were missed, Greg!

The App

As I mentioned above, I’ve found a more modern way to implement the grocery strategy, but it isn’t foolproof. I’m not sure if the database is leaving out all the goods from stores like Aldi and the Pig because they came up less frequently than I expected. Some work may still need to be done there.

But if you want an easy way to compare everyday prices at one store with sale prices from the circulars, this is an awesome app.

It’s called Basket.

You type in your grocery list. It gives you options for brands and lines them up by price. Try it out. You may end up spending hours on it like Alan and I have.

We put in our entire grocery list, and then we hit “compare prices”. It showed us that the cheapest way to get all our groceries at one store was to go to Walmart. However, the real issue was that Walmart was the only store that carried every item on our list.

To get the best savings, you can tell it to break it up into 2 stores. That gave us Walmart and Food Depot. In the list, it breaks down which items we should buy at Food Depot and which ones we should purchase at Walmart.

Wow, huh?

It was funny how it would switch stores as we put more groceries in!

However, Alan found that not all of the prices and sizes were available at Walmart, so checking your weekly circulars is still important.

I think this is a good tool, but it doesn’t truly replace searching through the weekly grocery ads.

Christmas morning

Chore Looping

Another exciting tip I got this Christmas is “chore looping,” which my sister-in-law, Amy, told me about.

For those of us who have trouble with other methods of keeping up with house cleaning schedules, chore looping is the way to go.

You make a list of tasks, like this:

• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Sweep and mop the floors.
• Scrub master bath.

etc., etc. Add whatever rooms you have.

Then you work through it until you reach the end and start over, and it doesn’t have to be all in one day, all in one week, or even all in one month. You just work through the list as you are able.

Some tasks you have to write on your list more than once, like scrubbing that bathroom that all 4 boys use…bleh…

For Example:

• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Sweep and mop the floors.
• Scrub master bath.
• Vacuum.
• Scrub hall bathroom.
• Tidy up dining room.
• Clean the kitchen.
• Tidy up living room.
• Dust the house.
• Scrub hall bathroom….lol…again and again and again…

…And the list goes on until you’ve covered all the tasks you can think of.

Some days you do 3 or 4 of them. Other days you do 1 or none at all. It just depends on when you have the time!

If you do marathon clean, then you skip the repeats. I almost never marathon clean. Why? Because it’s exhausting, and I was always hoping I’d be affording a maid by now….lol

Daniel helping with the Men’s Pancake Breakfast at church

I’ll save my excitement of my new Brilliant Life Planner and accompanying online planning course for another day. I can’t wait to show it to you. In fact, I’m definitely going to do a Facebook Live all about this planner this week, on my Stories of Our Boys Facebook page.

I hope you all had an absolutely fabulous Christmas and are as excited about the new year as I am! Actually, I’m pretty nervous about 2018. Moving…deep breaths…deep breaths…I’m going to need all the organization I can accomplish!

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”    Jeremiah 29:11

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Hello, friends! April is resting a powerful case of tendonitis, so Edna Thompson, of the United Kingdom, is sharing tips with us on age appropriate chores for kids today.

Everybody knows that it is not an easy task to maintain a clean and organized home with kids around. But not necessarily! Try including your kids in the cleaning and organizing process. Let them help you clean the mess they make. Of course, depending on how old your child is, there are different chores they can do. But even the younger ones can be put to work. Give them easy to do tasks turned into a game. This way they will be engaged, and instead of making a mess, they will be fixing it.

Here are some simple tasks, categorised by age groups and rooms that you can give to your children. But keep in mind that; of course, this can be adjusted any way you want because every child matures differently.

And another very important thing to remember is to give them one task to do at a time, especially the younger ones. Give them one chore to do, wait for it to be finished, and then give the next one. The younger the child, the more supervision of course, so never leave them alone and always go and check their work.

But also keep in mind that you should not be fixing their work in front of them.

And the most important thing is to make it like a fun exercise and enjoy the time spend with your child.

photo credithttp://www.saluteokay.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ALLERGIE.LAV1_.jpg

Here are a few chores you could give them to do by age:

2-4

• Tell them to clean in their room, give them different coloured bins and tell them to sort scattered toys in the bins by colour
• Put dirty clothes in the laundry hamper
• Put other things like books, glasses, clothes back in their places

4-5

• Make their bed
• Water easy to reach house plants (with supervision of course)
• Feed and give water to pets, if you have any
• Wipe the table
• Sort clean silverware
• Help set the table

6-7

• Dust the furniture
• Use hand-held vacuum
• Sweep the floor
• Empty dishwasher
• Put away clean dishes
• Fold their washed clothes

8-9

• Rake leaves
• Load dishwasher
• Clean after a meal
• Vacuum
• Collect and fold clean laundry
• Collect and take out trash

10-11

• Mow the lawn
• Prepare easy snacks
• Saw
• Clean counter tops
• Rearrange pantry

12 and up

• Wash windows
• Mop floors
• Paint walls
• Shop for groceries with a list
• Iron clothes
• Even watch younger kids

Of course you know what your child can and cannot do, so you can adjust this in a way that is better for your child. This is just for orientation, but mama knows best. 

Pick a cleaning song and sing and dance while you clean. Make a competition between your children, like who can organize and clean their room faster.

The goal of having your kids helping you to clean the house is with the idea that they learn how things should be done by helping you at first. When they get older they can do them by themselves. Plus you will be spending some time together and doing something useful while having fun with them.

The article is written by Edna Thomson. She runs a small company called Notting Hill TenancyCleaners

The post Cleaning Chores For Kids, By Age appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This post comes from Anna Aamone, who runs a small cleaning company in London. She loves writing about cleaning and decorating. I hope you find this article as helpful as I did.

How to Spend Less Time Cleaning and Still Have a Sparkling House

Everybody dreams about having a spotless home, but they rarely feel the urge to spend hours cleaning. Considering there are thousands of better things to do than brushing the toilet and removing limescale build-up from faucets, it is understandable why so many people want to spend so little time housekeeping. The good news is, your home could still be sparkling even if you dedicate a very small amount of time to keeping it so darn neat. Here are a few tips to make house-cleaning more time-effective.

Focus on key areas

There are some telltale signs of why your home doesn’t look clean. The first one is your television. It needs dusting on the daily. No matter how much time you dedicate to cleaning, if dust still hangs on your DVD stacks and your television, it’s like you didn’t accomplish anything. It may sound a little “wait, what?”, but it’s not really important to have a clean home but rather a home that looks clean. So it’s wise to focus on those areas that show dirt and stains.

Some other key spots to focus on are your book shelves (dust), knick-knacks (dust), toothbrush holder (lots of residue), bathroom floor (soap scum, limescale, stains), kitchen countertops (food stains, crumbs), sinks (soap scum, limescale), space under tables (crumbs, stains), entryway (mud stains, dirt, soil), stove top (grease, burned food).

Wash the dishes right away

Do wash the dishes after your family is done with their meal. Dirty dishes look nothing but disgusting, making your home look like a sty. Because what kind of a housewife doesn’t have time to wash the dishes?

Get rid of pet hair on the daily

Pet hair can be difficult to remove, especially if you haven’t bothered to deal with it for a whole month. The easy way to cut down on hair and spend less time getting rid of it is to clean it on the daily. Put on rubber gloves and wet them. Run your hands over furniture or your pet’s favorite spot to hang around. Hair will get caught on the gloves and off your domestic surfaces.

Do one chore at a time

Because you want to do as many things as possible in the shortest time possible, you often fall into the trap of doing many chores at a time. But this is not okay. Staying focused on one task will make you more effective. So keep it simple.

Do small tasks every day

Cut down on clutter by doing small tasks every day. At first it may seem like you have to clean and tidy all the time, but soon you will find out that your domestic chores have been reduced to a manageable level. Because you will tackle small jobs on the daily, you won’t ever have to take a whole Saturday and spend it cleaning the house. Sweeping the floor takes about five minutes, washing the dishes is ten minutes, dusting is ten to fifteen minutes. Combine this rule with the next one to get better results.

Focus on a different chore every day

Monday could be vacuuming, Tuesday is organizing the shelves, Wednesday is for dusting, Thursday is doing the laundry, etc. etc. Even better, make a list of all the chores that have to be done throughout the week and distribute them evenly. You will find this to be a very good rule. Waking up knowing there is only one chore to do today makes it seem less burdensome and tiring.

This is the best way to spend less time cleaning and still have that spotless home you are willing to have. SW7 TenancyCleaning wishes you good luck!

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Did the first week of school hit any of you as hard as it did us? Phew!

I do want to say thank you for your prayers. By Friday morning, I felt like I was myself again. That battle is finished, and I can’t tell you how much your prayers and letters of encouragement meant to me.

Now it’s on to the next thing, right?

My mom has arrived, and she is downstairs taking care of JD and Daniel for me. When I left to come up here, Daniel was begging Nana for “suyup toast.” That’s french toast, for those of you who do not speak Daniel.

With three boys going into fall ball this year, what better time for a Giveaway of cleaning products?

We do love to get dirty.

But actually, they are all playing soccer this fall instead of baseball. Either way, I will be doing TONS of laundry.

Ha! It’s funny what things excite me at my age. Offers for baby products? Eh… Offers for breastfeeding products?  Well….

Offers for stain remover, HOLD THE PHONE!!  Did someone just offer me cleaning products!? YES! Send them right away. I will be happy to write you a review!

Supplies ready!

First, I tried it out on chocolate:

Chocolate Before

As you can see, it worked extremely well on chocolate, 100%:

Chocolate stains after the Espro

I also had great success using it as a carpet cleaner. The carpet in my dining room is my #1 nemesis. Who puts carpet in a dining room??? It’s not like we have an eat-in kitchen, either. This is where we eat.

Such is the life of a renter…

After, at a glance

My carpet has a blotchy color anyway, so it was hard to get a good photo. I was able to get up 98% of the stains with the Espro.  I just sprayed, scrubbed, and vacuumed.

You can easily tell, in this photo, where I used the cleaner and where I didn’t.

With the dirt yard that my boys are constantly tracking through, my carpet takes an insane beating. I make them take their shoes off in the house, but it still gets extremely dirty.

I was very pleased with Espro’s ability to clean the bad spots out of the carpet. I regret that I didn’t get a “before” picture…Well, I mean, sort of. That would actually be kind of embarrassing…

I was also impressed with Espro as a stain remover. It got 90% of the dirt that ‘Dirt Boy’ embedded into his t-shirt, and it was especially effective at little unidentified spots on the boys’ clothing.

Now here are the quick facts you may want to know about stain removal. I have found these tips to be highly beneficial over the years. 

Cold Water is best for:

blood,

dairy products, and

body fluids

HOT Water is best for:

mega dirty anything (except blood),

cloth diapers,

grease or oil stains

And a few fast facts for the ESPRO Sports Cleaner:

• Environmentally friendly: no bleach, butyl, phosphates, chlorinated, petroleum. or other ozone depleting solvents
• Can also be used as just an odor eliminator
• Safe for use on all fabrics, even silk
• Safe to use around pets and children
• Will not harm colors
• Used by over 100 Collegiate sports teams

Also, this company is based in Alabama and Georgia, and the products are  manufactured right here in the USA. 

I hope you will find the Espro Sports cleaner as helpful as I have! You can buy it at many Walmarts. However, just in case yours doesn’t carry it, here’s a link to where you can order online:   esproclean.com/shop/

Now it’s time for the Giveaway!!! Here’s what you could win:

The Deluxe Package: 

The Deluxe Package is an upgrade of the $10 TV Special. The Deluxe Package includes: One 64oz Refill Bottle, One 32oz Spray Bottle, One Stain Wipes Pack (12), Two Microfiber Towels. A $35 value.

The Giveaway winner will receive all of this, but the 2nd bottle of Espro will be MUCH bigger.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you’d like to enter, but you have trouble, send me an email, and I will enter you manually. Thanks!!!

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