Strollerderby

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• Weekly Check-Up: Messy House Making You Fat?

  Hmmm, is it just a coincidence that two of the first things to go when many people have kids are standards of house cleanliness and, well, the ass? Oh please. Apparently one of Oprah's special friends believes an untidy home can keep you fat. "Clutter expert" (do you need a Master's degree for that) Peter Walsh says he was stunned to discover that when people got organized, they also started making healthy food choices. I suppose a skeptical person could point out that our society's current fixation with obesity might make "it helps you lose weight!" a key selling point for all kinds of stuff, like, say, a book on home organization, but we can't find our skeptics under all these piles of papers and empty fast food containers.  So, how exactly does clutter keep you heavy? Well...   Read More... Posted Feb 28 2008, 08:31 AM by Kelly Mills with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: nutrition, Oprah, fat, organization, overweight, cleaning, weight, experts, housework, weekly check up, clutter, real you, obese, healthy food choices, clean house

• Strollerderby Playdate: Cutting The Crap

  t's a common realization, post-Christmas, post-Hannukkah, post-whatever-you-celebrate-that-involves-giving-your-kids-endless-amounts-of-useless-junk: TOO MUCH STUFF.  Shari MacDonald Strong has a great piece about this on her blog "Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance."  She resolves that 2008 will be her "Year of De-Junking." Well, I have some great advice for her:  rent a dumpster.   Read More... Posted Jan 10 2008, 07:48 AM by Amy S.F. Lutz with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: organization, Shari MacDonald Strong, dumpster

• Tutors Help Boys Get It Together

  Remember like ten years ago when people were all up in arms about how the educational system, particularly at middle school and above, fails girls? Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and parents and educators are worried about the way schools impact boys.  Girls, they say, are much better about staying organized, multitasking, sitting in their seats and listening, and generally being what your typical teacher considers good students. Several approaches are being looked at to alleviate this, such as setting up classrooms so that boys can get up and move around instead of being expected to sit still for hours on end. Read More... Posted Jan 03 2008, 02:47 PM by Amy Kuras with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: school, organization, tutoring, boys

• Forget the Husband. Mama Needs a Concierge.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, husbands are great. Well, your husband is probably great. Sweet, loving, complimentary, wildly passionate, fiscally responsible, absolutely gleeful to wash your underthings and scrub dried puke off of the couch. Oh, and content to do a late-night run to Costco for a few small items. Not all of us are so fortunate as to have a plucky partner like that and even if we do, I imagine we all have additional stuff to do on our plate that needs more steel wool and elbow grease than one (or two) competent but crazed parent(s) can handle. Enter a concierge service geared toward women and specifically, working moms. Read More... Posted Nov 28 2007, 06:03 PM by Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: organization, working mothers, concierge

• Working From Home Made Simple(r)

  Oh, you’re so lucky, I'd love to work at home." If you're a work-at-home parent, you've heard that plenty of times. But the vision doesn't always match up to the reality. My daughter's sudden and immediate need for something, anything, from me RIGHT THIS SECOND is in direct proportion to the importance of the call I am taking. When she was a baby, before we owned a laptop, her reluctance to take a damn nap already was also correlated to my desperate need for an uninterrupted hour or so to work –and she would unerringly wake up crying just as I got that crucial call to be able to meet a deadline on time. I'm lucky in that most of the people I deal with on a daily basis are fairly child-friendly, or at least not completely put off an impression of professionalism by hearing "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. I want milk. I need milk. Mommy!" too many times throughout a conversation. And of course, there are our friends Dora and Elmo. Yeah, I said it. Read More... Posted Nov 26 2007, 03:03 PM by Amy Kuras with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: organization, work and parenting, working at home

• The Perfect Place for All Your Muddy Stuff (and Organizational OCD Tendencies)

  You know you are a parent when your idea of dream living includes a mudroom stocked full of organizational baskets and a table to fold laundry. Or is that “you know you are in your mid-thirties when…”? Whatever it is, I am drooling about the form and function that mudrooms bring to houses filled with dirty kids, pets and parents. While some families are able to turn spare bedrooms into mudrooms for all that shoe-throwing, backpack-flinging and sports equipment-piling, others are constructing additions especially for these purposes. According to this article (and a whole Google search full of interior designers, I am sure), mudrooms have become the organizational center for many homes, with some even including a space for overnight guests, a crafting area and work desks. Most importantly, it is a great space to really put that label maker to use. Read More... Posted Jul 23 2007, 03:33 PM by Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) with | with no comments Filed under: organization, houses, messy kids, mudrooms

• Cheat Sheet: Teaching Kids to Tidy Up (Good Luck With That!)

  Most of our cleaning sprees include a special moment where someone sits in the middle of the mess and weeps "But it's sooooo haaaaard!". Sometimes, that someone is me. BadBadIvy's tips on teaching your children to clean up, and making it easy for them, are fabulous. Lots of great ideas about organization, setting limits on the amount of crap your kids accumulate, and setting basic ground rules for how tasks are completed. These guidelines are a great complement to other clever organizational hints, and there are probably about a zillion other ideas that everyone else has figured out but me (please, share yours). So far, the best I've come up with is to buy a house with enough bedrooms that one can be for the exclusive purpose of playing, while the sleeping room is used for pretty much nothing but shut-eye and clothing storage. It's all still an unholy disaster, but at least I have eliminated the step where I have to separate underpants from Polly Pocket shoes. (via Lifehacker, whose wonderful knowledge would probably change my life if I weren't so lazy about implementing it)   Posted Jul 07 2007, 11:18 AM by Patti with | with no comments Filed under: children, kids, tips, organization, cleaning, cheat sheet

• Decluttering: A Tutorial

  I have one blissful summer before school starts back up and I have two kids bringing countless glittery art projects home from school. I have a new house that isn't as cluttered as the old one, and I'd like to keep it that way. And I'm a total packrat. What to do? Well, if I want to go hardcore, and I kind of do, I'll take some advice from blogger Sprittibee, a homeschooler whose lifestyle pretty much demands that she take control of clutter lest she end up on a future "hoarders" episode of Oprah. She offers some good basic ideas for organizing the acres of art supplies, the menagerie of stuffed toys, and a few grownup hints as well (you're supposed to keep your bank statements? Huh). Best of all, most of the ideas are designed to involve the children in the process of taking care of their space, which is the reason we had kids in the first place, was it not? One idea that I especially like is what she calls the "silent butler" box, where everything that you find when you're tidying up goes and stays until it's earned back. I'd probably just call it "jail", myself, and it would end up being full of my husband's shoes. Sprittibee mentions a couple of books she's found useful for organizational help, and I'd like to throw in a suggestion of my own: Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. It's as full of new-age blah-de-blah as you might guess from the title, but I tell you what, it helped us get our garage cleaned out and it helped me figure out that the rocking chair in my living room was my evil chi-blocking nemesis. It has yet to solve my glitter-painting or man-shoes problems, but now I've got some more ammunition for those.   Posted Jun 07 2007, 09:57 AM by Patti with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: kids, organization, sprittibee, decluttering

• How Strollerderby Rolls: Weapons in the War Against Kid Filth

  Kids are disgustingly dirty and nothing puts that assertion to the test like having two sick kids at home with noses that ooze snot. Why? Why can't they just blow when I say, "blow"? Then their little faucets wouldn't be running. Ugh. Anyway, the kids are miserable, and because I've also been working on a big project, the house is a disaster of epic proportions. The battle against kid filth and clutter in my home is never ending, but armed with the following trusty weapons, at least I can hold the line. Clear plastic storage tubs in varying sizes ($2-$5). Smaller, shoe box-sized ones hold shells, leaves and beads. (Things my preschooler collects.) They also hold small toys and figurines, crayons, glue sticks, and craft supplies. Larger ones store big sisters' hand-me-downs awaiting little sister's wear, dress up paraphernalia, and serve as a catch-all for art I can't bear to throw away. Dyson Slim ($470). All the power of a big, beefy Dyson packed into a slim, svelte sucker that weighs less than 16 pounds. This is the vacuum that can handle spilled glitter, jettisoned cous cous, and what happens when shoes get emptied of their playground sand right in the middle of the entryway. It's light enough to haul up and down stairs, too. Read More... Posted Mar 25 2007, 07:01 AM by Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: organization, cleaning, dirty kids, how to, help for parents

• Find A Need And Fill it: Online Parenting Advisor Open For Business

  Hey, SAHMs and WAHMs and SAHDs and, oh well, you know who you are.  Parents.  Yes, you!!  Feeling unorganized these days?  Overwhelmed by those stacks of papers that need filing; are you sure you paid that bill?  (Wait.  I think that's my house)  Can't remember if today is the day for soccer practice, ballet lessons, or fencing?  Chess club?  Cello lesson?  Are you simply overwhelmed by LIFE AS A PARENT?  Before you chuck it all and head for the mountains to live off the grid in simplicity (And No.Broadband.  Think about that one.), maybe what you need is an online parenting advisor.  Oh yes, well I rolled my eyes at this one at first, I mean, really, what's so hard about being a parent??  It's like, natural, right?  It just....happens.  Right?  And then I began to think about those mounds of paper, the bathroom upstairs that hasn't seen a mop in awhile, the books unread, the time I'd like to spend with the children but instead spend wasting busy in front of the computer, and I think, YES! This could be my answer!  Organize me, baby! Posted Jan 14 2007, 02:06 PM by Karen Murphy with | with no comments Filed under: parenting, family, organization