12 Tips to Keep a Clean House with Kids (from a mom of 4)

Cleaning / Home / Organization
how to clean your house with a baby

Inside: Keeping your house clean with kids might feel impossible (let’s be real – some days, it is!). But these proven tips will make keeping the house tidy with kids so much easier.

When you first start having kids, you realize how hard it is to actually do anything with children. Seriously, how much effort does it take to go anywhere! You used to just grab your purse and hop in your car. Now? An hour later, and five trips back inside (make that six), you’re off!

Cleaning the house is another one of those things that gets exponentially harder with kids.

In the beginning, when you only have a baby, the two main problems are finding the energy to clean the house and having your hands free to clean anything (this baby carrier has been a personal life-saver for that – but mastering doing the dishes while wearing it takes practice).

Overcoming those two obstacles to cleaning can feel like climbing Mt. Everest, but oh my goodness, are your problems just beginning! As that baby grows, and maybe you add one or two (or three, like me) kids to the mix, keeping your house tidy feels darn near impossible.

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How to Declutter Books and Still Raise Readers

Declutter / Minimalism
how to declutter books for families

Inside: Decluttering books when you have kids gets complicated fast, mostly due to six common concerns parents have about how fewer books will impact their kids. I’ll show you how to declutter books without fear or guilt.

Oh, books. How hard it is to get rid of thee! Next to decluttering sentimental items, I think decluttering books is the most difficult decluttering category ever. Because it is so difficult to declutter books, many people put it off to the very end of their decluttering process.

Not only is it hard to decide what books to keep and what books to give away, the sheer amount of time it takes to go through every single book in your library can be quite extensive! (Most people who struggle with decluttering books are book lovers and have A LOT of books.)

That difficulty multiplies about a hundred times when you have kids. But it’s not impossible!

If I can do it as a homeschooling mom of four (homeschoolers are notorious book hoarders), so can you. I’ll put all your [very normal] parenting fears to rest and give you the questions you need to declutter books with confidence.

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Blog Income and Traffic Report {March 2018}

Blog Income Reports / Blogging
blog income report from a small blogger

Inside: Get encouragement, tips and ideas from a small blogger income and traffic report. Follow along as I work towards my goal of $1,000 a month income from this blog.

Last month was a huge success for my little blog, but it ended on a very sour note. I’ve heard about Pinterest glitches before, and bloggers being put in “Pinterest jail”, but I have never been on the receiving end of one of these glitches.

There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.

During the last week of March, I was riding a huge increase in Pinterest traffic, receiving over 4,000 pageviews a day almost every day. Thursday, that wave crashed down as Pinterest started blocking my pins. Every time you tried to click through, you received a, “This link has been blocked due to possible inappropriate content” message.

I e-mailed Pinterest every day to attempt to get this fixed, but they seemed to be experiencing multiple issues site-wide and were unresponsive. My pageviews dropped like a rock.

Those were low days for me: as I’m sure you can imagine, it felt like all my hard work was being thrown away.

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Moms: Your Free Time is Yours. Do What You Love. (you’ll be a better mom – promise)

Family / Motherhood
moms free time

Inside: Do you ever feel pressured to use your free time as a mom doing things you don’t love? Then, you need to read this.

“Make cookies, please, mama?” pleaded my two year old for the second time that week.

The horrible scraping sound of kids pushing stools across the kitchen floor.  The awful anticipation of kids surrounding me on all sides.

The stress of keeping three kids from dumping ingredients into the bowl unbidden, trying to remember whose turn was last so each kid got a chance to help.

I started hyperventilating just thinking about it.

So I pacified my son with a few chocolate chips and a murmured promise of making cookies at some later (unspecified) date.

And I tried to stop feeling guilty.

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24 Benefits of Homeschooling Your Kids (when you really need the reminder)

Encouragement / Homeschool / Relaxed Homeschooling

Inside: Save these 24 benefits of homeschooling your kids, for the days when you wonder is homeschooling is really the best choice.

I put up this sign the other day, words from an Etsy sign I love, and hope to be able to buy one day. For now, my letter board will have to do.

“You were born to blaze new trails, pioneer great adventures…”

My husband noticed the sign and chuckled. Defensively, I asked him why he was laughing. I loved those inspirational words!

He remarked, “Well, you’re not really a trailblazer. You prefer the beaten path. You love the beaten path, actually. Do you know how hard it is to blaze a new trail? To make a trail where there has never been one before?”

He’s right you know, about the beaten path, which is probably why I wonder so frequently whether homeschooling is really the bestchoice.

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How to Survive the Stomach Bug with Kids (+ Cleaning Checklist)

Family / Parenting

Inside: The stomach bug with kids can be a nightmare! Follow these 7 tips to make surviving the stomach bug a little less painful.

The Stomach Bug. I’m pretty sure there are few things parents dread more than dealing with the stomach bug. It’s right up there with potty training!

We just survived another round of the stomach flu with kids last week. It made its way through all four kids, age 8 down to age 2.

Thankfully, having been through it before, I’ve learned a few tips that made this time a hundred times easier than before.  The stomach bug with kids is messy and unpleasant, but you can get through it with these tips from a mom who survived the stomach flu just last week!

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Can You REALLY Make Money Selling Your Clutter?

Declutter / Minimalism
can you earn money selling clutter

Inside: Can you really make money selling your clutter? Perhaps, but probably not the people who could use that extra money the most.

“How to Turn Your Clutter into Cash.”

“7 Surefire Ways to Sell Your Clutter.”

“Easy Ways to Sell Clutter that actually Make Money.”

Each headline is better than the last. Decluttering is now not just stress-relieving and soul-freeing, but it’s profitable.

And maybe it is, if you start from a place of financial independence and excess…or a whole lot of credit cards.

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