The Toy Library

For years I spent an average of three hours per day cleaning. That's just cleaning not my cooking as well. Recently (the last few years) I clean much more - the frequent minimum is four hours. I'm understandably exhausted from all of this cooking, cleaning, blogging, crafting, mommying, etc.

My he daughter had a play date last week which left me unimpressed with her behavior towards her toys. When she was still very young she had a completely reasonable amount of toys. I was able to set them up around a blanket she would play on for the day with no problem.

My father sweetly offered to make one for her in his at home wood shop but I knew he didn't currently have the time to take on such an endeavor and found myself accepting a plastic Fisher-Price toy box.

The toy situation is bordering on the absurd for me. Over the last year we have found my daughter climbing into her toy box and just about swimming in her toys!

What does any of this have to do with her play date the other week?

Despite what I feel was far, far more than the two girls would need to play with barely anything was played with.

I allowed the television to stay on during the entire visit, which the girls ignored until strangely deciding that the near ending of the movie Paranorman was fascinating (my daughter then asked to watch the movie again the next three days in a row.)

I felt that aside from the pitfall of the girls being aged 2 and 3 - both in the mind set of, "I-have-no-desire-to-share-anything-ever" that they were grossly overstimulated by a room overflowing with toys and a television that added to the goings on for hours.

Children that have way too many toys, it seems, have frequently been found to have feelings of entitlement that continue on throughout the rest of their lives.

First, I tried shuffling through her toys to find some that I could just get rid of. This was easier said than done. After two or three passes I had pulled out very little or what I considered, next to nothing.

If you're looking to get rid of any of your childrens toys - do it while they are asleep or someplace else, otherwise they see everything you're grabbing and suddenly want it.

Second, I looked through her toys to see what was "too much". Were any of these items so complete that there was no room for imagination left? Did I feel the kids would learn anything from owning these toys?

Third, I decided to start a toy library.

With the toy library toys your children have forgotten they even own are now more visible and may once again become items they enjoy playing with. Toys are not to be removed from your library unless they are exchanged for toys that are currently out and about in your home. I'm planning on seeing how this goes and probably making my first toy rotation in 1 - 3 months.

Also, by putting away as many toys as I could I hoped to decrease the amount of work I would have to put in several times a day putting away toys. No longer stepping on so many of them would be a welcome bonus.

I waited until my daughter was asleep and pulled out toy after toy. Some were no longer age appropriate - the baby toys went into a drawer in the nursery.

Some I no longer wanted in our home for one reason or another. I put them in a bag to deal with later.

There were toys I thought she was at a good age to play with now. Things that taught colors, numbers,  or shapes - anything that functioned as a puzzle of some sort; these are things that I left out for now.

I stuffed as many toys as I could into a foot locker that I would store in the floor of the closet in the nursery.

Once I had finished the living room toy area looked noticabley cleaner.

When I got my little lamb up from her nap I sat down and waited to see what, if any, her reaction would be to  this change.

Her first chosen stop was to the drawer in my night stand where I keep toys for her to play with in the bedroom. We hadn't seen her playing with those very much so that seemed like a good start. Over the last couple of days I have seen a definite increase in her focus with one toy for a longer period of time.

The other day she spent nearly the entire day playing mommy to a dolly I hadn't seen her touch in months.

The dolly took quite a few naps.

Pooped in her diaper and required immediate changing.

Relaxed in brothers swing.

Had tummy time with brother.

And my little sweetheart even decided what her dolly needed was some babywearing time.

Pintesting - Citrus and Vinegar Cleanser

It's been approximately ten days from when I set up my lemon & vinegar cleaner. An idea I got from this pin and information I got here.

I strained out the lemon peels.

Put the peels in a bag for composting.

And then put the resulting liquid in a spray bottles to use in my cleaning around the house.

About 2 days after I put together my lemon mix I also did the same with some oranges. My family wasn't eating them unless I peeled them for them so I peeled the last 4 or 5 oranges and put the edible portion in a container.

And the peelings in a mason jar.

Which I again filled with vinegar.

Once again I waited the ten days.

Strained out the orange peels. Put the peels into my compost bag.

Put the resulting liquid into a spray bottles.

Then I got to cleaning with my new cleansers.

My stove top before.

And after. Still needs a little extra elbow grease but you see how well this went.

The vinegar smell doesn't last very long and you are left with a very lovely, very light citrus smell.

Two Pintests In One! Chemical-Free Cleaning

The other day I saw a lemon bar recipe I really wanted to try. After spending an entire day feeling awful I decided I would make some lemon bars for my husband and myself. My lemons were about ready to be thrown away but the zest still looked viable - or viable enough.

After standing in the kitchen for an indeterminate amount of time zesting lemons my husband told me he didn't like lemon bars. He'd eat a few - but isn't a lemon bar fan. Completely uninterested in wasting lemons, possibly overloading the worms I'm planning to use in composting with citrus, or being left to eat all of the lemon bars myself - I remembered a couple of pins I felt would be useful.

The first pin provides some info on how to whiten your whites that have become dingy.

The second felt like a good plan about what to do about my lemon rinds.

I cut off all of my lemon rinds and placed them in a Mason jar for later.

Meanwhile I cut up my lemons. Placed them in a large pot.

Filled it with water and dropped in about half of the lemons I now had.

Once the water began to boil I put some of my husbands dingy shirts into the water. It appeared I'd been too cautious about water displacement and ended up needing to add more very hot water to the mix.

I let the water come back up to a boil. Turned off the heat. Put a lid on my pot and let it sit for an hour.

After that first "load" I decided to do another containing minky inserts for my little lamb's cloth diapers.

I didn't have any clean Mason lids so I had to clean some. Once they were ready to go I filled the Mason jar containing the lemon rinds with vinegar.

If you  noticed in my first photo I have the lemons on one of my UnPaper towels. I chose to cut them on that because I didn't feel like doing any dishes or getting out my cutting board. Cutting the lemons this way left me with a nice lemon cloth that I used to scrub my kitchen sink!

When I finally finished boiling whites I strained the lemons to be composted later.

The instructions for your new vinegar cleaner is to let your jar sit for 10 days. So . . . . I guess I'll be concluding this in around 10 days?

Pintesting - Chemical Free Cleaning Let's Kill Some Mold!!

Mold is a problem I have run into more often than I would care to over the last few years. We ran into it the last place we lived and we've run into it a few times in the current place we are.

The places that we have these issues are in our bathroom over the shower area,

 and in the laundry room in a few spots.

Typically if you call your landlord or leasing office and complain about mold they send someone out to spray or wipe the area with bleach. In the past we have done this as well because using bleach really does work, but we now no longer keep bleach in our home.

Today's pintest comes from the information you can read right on this pin.

I purchased my spray bottle at my nearest Jo-Ann Fabrics (and I of course made sure to use a coupon.)

The tea tree oil I purchased  via Amazon.

For each cup of water you use, add one teaspoon of tea tree oil. This bottle held nearly 3 cups of water so I used 3 teaspoons of tea tree oil.

Instead of trying my very hardest to neatly pour the water into my spray bottle I used one of the funnels that come with a flask.

I noticed an immediate difference when I sprayed the wall but didn't get the full effect until I wiped the surface as well.

I wasn't going to be able to get back behind our makeshift pantry so it looked as if this would have to be a job for my husband.

I didn't notice a lot of change in the bathroom but I felt maybe that area would need to be wiped as well so once again I was going to have to wait for my tall husband to come home to give it a try.Wiping did indeed help.

This is definitely a pin worth trying. Especially for those who are either to live chemical free lives or even pregnant women who shouldn't be cleaning with harsh chemicals.

Do You Ever Sleep?

"When do you sleep!?", is a questions I'm asked more and more often these days. With my sewing, knitting, cooking, watching my child, growing a new person inside of me, and cleaning the house for a minimum of three hours a day; you may find yourself calling shenanigans on my ability to do all that I do, and still sleep. And you'd be right.

I barely sleep and usually find myself going to bed somewhere in the ballpark of 2 AM every morning. Then my little girl wakes up sometime around 8 or 9 AM on days where I don't have anything planned. Generally I use her nap times to do whatever is most complicated or cannot be done while my little person is awake and running around the house.