Small Bathroom Towel Rod Idea

Today I am thrilled to have my sister writing a post while I am busy moving my family. Ericka keeps her own family blog called "Life in General and Specific" where she waxes eloquently about life's happenings.  I even learned something from this post....never knew where my sister's fear of someone hiding in the shower came from!   (Also, forgive the strange formatting with the pictures, the new blogger layout is throwing some curve balls...won't let me move them!).  Enjoy!

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Recently, Rachel, her children, and our mother came out to visit my husband and myself (after much begging on my part). And the whole visit was wonderful (minus me being exhausted from pregnancy hormones and overwhelmed that my house may soon be just as active, loud, and busy as my sister's)! In the last few seconds before they left back to  Indiana, Rachel snapped the following pictures of my bathroom and asked me where this stroke of genius came from. She wanted to share with you, her readers. So, here goes.

We currently have three shower rods hanging in our bathroom. While I probably would have never gone out to purchase three shower rods for one shower, we recently moved from an apartment that had two showers to a house with only one. Our new rental also came with a shower rod. This left me with three shower rods. Overkill, I thought. But I also had a problem- our new bathroom had only one towel rack, and it was tiny. There had to be a solution somewhere here. The pictures are rather self explanatory. I wanted to use  one of my extra shower rods as a towel rack. But if you hang it outside the curtain, it's ugly in the bathroom. And if you hang it inside the shower curtain, the towels will get wet. Aha! I had TWO extra shower rods. Which meant I could hang the shower liner on one rack, the towels on the next (in the middle), and the pretty shower curtain on the very outside. Close the pretty shower curtain and the extra towel rack disappears! I find it rather difficult to explain clearly and succinctly, so I'm hoping the old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," to be true. 

To be honest, we rarely close the outside shower curtain. (But that is mostly from my childhood fear that someone is behind the shower curtain- likely due to seeing a clip from the movie Psycho in an IMAX theater when I was on an elementary field trip...). However, if you don't have scars from old thriller movies, have limited towel space and don't want to install a new rod, and like to keep a tidy looking bathroom, this a perfect solution. Either way, writing this post and sharing my childhood fears with you has indeed being fun and freeing. Also, I totally would have folded my towels more nicely if I had known my sister was going to take pictures and post it for all you avid readers. My bad. 


Good luck!

Project:Simplify Porch Cleanup

This week's hotspot was whatever you wanted to clean up.  I wasn't sure what I'd do, but as soon as I walked through my porch, the answer was obvious.  This is actually our back porch, but its the way everyone comes into our house, so it's the first thing everyone sees.  It's also become a storage room for those things we like to have nearby, but not in our living space (tools, bulk foods, shoes, winter gear, etc).
It took one morning of moving stuff out to the appropriate places and cleaning up.  Each "collage" below is before/after.   MUCH BETTER!

Now I just have to keep it this way.  Hmmmm.

Project:Simplify Pantry and Fridge

Confession: I didn't do last week's hotspot!  It was children's rooms, clothes, and toys.  It simply wasn't an area that I felt was necessary at this time, also because it is an area that I am regularly clearing out and updating.
I almost skipped this week too, but my fridge was in need of a wipe-down.  After only living in a place for six months (yes, we've lived here six months now!), you don't accumulate too much excess in the pantry department.  So I declared to Simon that he was going to help me clean out the fridge, and he was like "okay."  What, that's all he says?!?  Why don't I do stuff like this more often?!  :)
The before and after pics are pretty much the same, but that's because you can't tell that the shelves and walls were thoroughly wiped clean.  I also don't have before pictures of the pantry stuff, but it looks pretty much the same.   I used water+baking soda+vinegar to wipe it all down.
Here's to a cleaner kitchen.
                                                               Before:                             After:

Pantry:

There ya go.

You should clean your refrigerator too. :)

Project:Simplify Paper Clutter

This week's HOTSPOT was paper clutter.
I had three spots to clean up, my counter "mail" area, my desk, and some books that had been sitting on the floor for months.  BEFORE:

And AFTER:

It didn't even take very long, but it makes everything feel so much better.  I confess, I didn't do the in-depth purge the website was suggesting, but I did what was necessary to have a fresh start.  I even snagged a basket out of the girls' room to put unread magazines in.
Anyone else do some paper purging recently?  Visit Simple Mom to see their results.  It does feel so good to get extra papers out of the house!
Have a great weekend!

Project:Simplify Closet Complete

We have been quite blessed to have enormous closets in each of our 3 bedrooms, including two separate walk-ins in the master bedroom.  I have my very own closet that is bigger than most bathrooms.  Crazy!  For the first time ever, I don't have to swap out clothes for changing seasons.  

I took the challenge(from Simple Mom's Project Simplify) to declutter my closet, but realized that I do wear most of my clothes.  I guess that is what happens when you move three times in a year... you get rid of the unneeded items.  But I did find a few things to clear out.  

This also means that my before and after pictures aren't extremely different.  Before:

And after: shirts:

Pants, skirts, dresses, etc.

(see, not that different)

The biggest change is that I hung my belts and jewelry (along with a mirror so I can decide which one I want to wear):

I used Simon's old tie rack for my jewelry: wonderful---highly recommend!

And you can see the reflection in the mirror of my belts, hung on one of those kitchen utensil holders (at least I think thats what it is?)... 

There we go.  A nice little box of things to clear out:

I am looking forward to the next "hotspot!"  Anyone else clear out their closet?

Project: Simplify

See my new little "button" on the side of my blog?  

Simple Mom is hosting a five week decluttering "event" and I figured, what'll it hurt?
So I'm in on it too.
This week's goal is your closet.  Find full details at this week's HOTSPOT!

So what do you think?  Are you up for the challenge too?  Let me know if you decide to weed through your own closet!  I'll plan to post my own pictures this weekend. 

Until then, enjoy a picture of Christian's self-made drum set (I was so proud of him!)(and be glad you can look at it without hearing the accompanying racket ---thank you Michael Pattengale):

Oh the Dishes

I haven't used my dishwasher ever since I read this post about washing dishes by hand.  If you have been contemplating the "dishwasher vs. hand-washing" issue as I had been, then this is a must read. 

 {source unknown}

My game plan consists of washing the dishes each night as soon as the kids are in bed.  It isn't realistic for me to wash them after each meal since I have 3 little ones ready to move on to the next thing.  But once a day is a good place to start.  I had been spending so much time rinsing all the dishes, loading the washer, running the washer, unloading the washer, blah blah blah. 

The hardest part for me was keeping it unloaded.  I would have a whole new loads-worth sitting on my counter, but the washer had yet to be emptied.  I still have to put the dishes away now, but it is so much easier since they are already sitting in the drying rack (no, I do not towel-dry my dishes...I let air work for me on this one).  Sometimes I put a few away throughout the day, or all at once when I get a chance.

Another thing I am loving is that I get to wipe down my counters and table each night.  No more grimy food getting stuck overnight.  This also forces me to put away other clutter that may have gathered on my counters. 

I am not totally anti-dishwasher though... either when guests eat over, or if our family continues to grow, a dishwasher may cut down on the time (and hopefully there would be more people to help load/unload!). 

So for now, I'll be hand-washing our dishes.  But I have one dilemma... check out my next post.

Prep for the Holidays!

My parents arrive tomorrow from Indiana.  Got me thinking about cleaning up around the house... here is a helpful read from Simple Mom if you plan to have guests this holiday season!

Preparing for Guests

What about you?  Planning on visitors anytime soon?

Ordering Online

I just sent an email to someone about ordering items online, and thought I'd share it with you all too!  If you have young kids (or if you have internet), check these out!

These are websites where I've purchased household items and diapers.  I'll try to fill you in on what I've learned, and you can go from there!
But first, just a few general tips:
-I ALWAYS buy the biggest box of diapers available... and I use them all up, even if they start to get small.  You get a better price per diaper this way.  Also, the bigger the diaper, the more you pay per diaper.  So right now, my twins could probably fit in size 4, but I am going to keep buying size 3 as long as possible because I get about 20 more diapers in a box with the smaller size. 
-Always buy wipes in bulk, and use them to refill your plastic containers.
-I like buying big things online, like toilet paper, bulk paper towels, and detergent.  These things take up a lot of room in a cart at the store, so why not have it brought right to your door? :)
Anyway---

The first place I started ordering diapers is diapers.com.   The nice thing here is that if you use this code:  SIMX7667    ... you will save 15% on your first order (and I will get $10 off my next order! yay!).   With this site, you have to spend $49 to get free shipping.  So I'd usually buy 1 or 2 boxes of diapers, or a box of diapers and some wipes or a sippy cup, etc (something random that I might need).   Diapers.com now has a sister site called Soap.com!  I have only ordered from them once, but it works the same way but it has household items.  Nifty!--- you can get everything at one site!

Second, I have used Alice.com for a few things.  They have free shipping as long as you have 6 items in your cart.  Nothing extremely special about their prices, but they do have online coupons for certain items.  I haven't used alice as much recently.  When I do use it, it's usually for toilet paper, paper towels, or kitchen stuff (foil, seran wrap, etc).  Now that there is Soap.com, I don't know if I'll use alice.

Lastly, and most recently, I've been using Amazon.com/diapers.  I don't know if it is still going on, but they had a special deal that if I signed up to have diapers sent automatically (I choose 1 box every 2months), then I got like, 40% off every order of diapers!  Amazing!  So take a look at their site and see if you can find a similar deal.  It is called "Subscribe and Save".   So the box of diapers that normally costs me $37 has been costing me $29.  That's a good deal. :)  It also has free 2 day shipping on diapers.

Well I hope that helps you out!  I love getting these items dropped off at my house.  Especially when I realize I'm going to run out of diapers soon, but I cant' get to the store!--- order on a Wednesday, and you usually get diapers on Friday!

For the Homemaker...

When you get a moment of quiet, this is a cute read that may make the corners of your mouth turn up...

http://kasm.blogspot.com/2010/07/few-more-obvious-tips-for-not-very-good.html

Happy Homemaking!

Family Organization

In case you were wondering, the book I referred to previously about being the "CEO" of your family... is called:

The Family Manager Takes Charge
By: Kathy Peel

It's an easy (and interesting!) read... and is full of tips for cleaning, organizing, and managing your home.
Happy Reading. :)

January 15

I can't believe we're already 1/2 way through January.  Time has been flying, but it's been great!  After we got back from Maryland, Christian went to my parent's house for 3 days while Simon and I did a lot of work on our house.  We cleared the garage (and filled the house with boxes), put together our new IKEA furniture (I'll have to post pictures someday!), cleaned, refinished the floor, and painted.  Again, I WILL post before/afters once it's done.

I am in the process of reading a book that compares the job of a home-maker to being the CEO of a business.  And really, the comparison is very good.  Part of running my "company" is having what the author calls Command Central.  So I am currently setting up my own command post which will function as the base of operations for the Henry Homestead.  I need to get this little family organized before it can grow (and succeed).  It feels really good to get organized, and not only to get organized, but to invent a way that it can stay that way on a daily basis.  I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about this.  

Simon has gone back to work: and is officially the Assistant Director of Admissions! Hooray Hubby! He is thoroughly enjoying his new(to us at least) car (Saab 9-5), and he loves parking it in a garage.  He's the man!     

Christian has finally seemed to get back into a routine and is doing great with sleep, naps, and eating... still working on the listening thing.  He is saying so much!... he LOOOVES the "we-mote" (remote) and loves watching football or basketball on tv.  I never fail to smile when he wakes up from sleeping, and after babbling for a while, says "Mommy".... and he holds the first syllable out longer like he's calling to me.  Not that you really want to know EVERY word he can say, but a few are football, key-tar (guitar), yup/yesss/yah, dinner, bwush (brush), sues (shoes), baby, and a growing list of others... he'll pretty much try to repeat anything, and does so with surprising accuracy!  We are laughing a lot! (but probably scolding/correcting equally as much).  He's a handful!

The "girls" are growing, but treating me well.  I feel better than I did over Christmas, which I attribute to 2 things: #1--- I'm not eating as much.  #2--- I wear sweatpants whenever possible, and this makes a CONSIDERABLE difference in how comfortable I am around around my hips.  Even maternity pants are too snug to be truly comfy.  At our last ultrasound (one week ago), the doc said everything looks great, babies are same size (about 2.5 lbs), and I should keep on keepin' on.  I am 42" around my middle.  I have this freaky stretch-mark explosion right above my belly button... uck!  What else will happen in the next 2 months?  Oh, and to top it all off, my face is getting chubby.  Rats.
The babies are moving ALLL of the time, and they are getting stronger and more evident from the outside viewer.  When there is a sudden kick, it rocks my whole torso.  These are the things that every expectant mother adores, but which are so hard to share with others.  How can something that is so obvious to me be overlooked by everyone else?  But, this is the definition of being a mother, is it not?

Well ya'll, I wish you peace.