Maybe you’ve wondered if I’ve been doing a lot of this. Nope! But superheroes DO need rest! Christmas, the flu, birthday parties, church functions, and homeschooling have kept me extra busy as have two very destructive preschoolers!
But in my absence from blogging, I’ve been finding a lot of great things I wanted to share with you! Here are a couple of them.
The first is www.jott.com. Heard of it? I told one of my friends who always asks about my latest finds about it and she doesn’t have a cell phone. You have to have a cell phone to make use of this. Let’s say you’re in your car and you remember something you need to email someone or that you need to be reminded of. Just call Jott and the message is automatically typed for you in an email. Jott to yourself, your spouse, a group, even your blog! Best of all…it’s FREE!
Another free find I have for you is www.iwantsandy.com. This is a lot like Jott (and actually you can use both services together) only you email Sandy. She sends you reminders to your email or your phone as you request. What makes Sandy a big time-saver is you don’t have to take the time to enter items into your calendar. When I do that on Yahoo, I have to use several steps to also set up the reminder. With Sandy, it’s as simple as emailing r 2/5 10 am radio interview in the subject line. R stands for "remind me." Each day Sandy will email you what you have on your agenda. You can use her to keep track of your todo’s, too.
Thanks to my friend Barbie for her help with this LO. I’ve really enjoyed doing this class and I highly recommend it for people who know basic digital scrapbooking using Photoshop Elements.
Several years ago I became enamored with Simple Scrapbooks magazine and with its founding editor, Stacy Julian. The Simple philosophy saved me from the stress of thinking I had to scrapbook every decent picture. I always felt hopelessly behind!
Today I scrapbook what I want, when I want, and that includes doing some digital scrapbooking. I took an online class from Stacy Julian’s website, www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com and unfortunately I was disappointed. I wrote asking for a refund and got the nicest response back from Stacy Julian herself! I was so impressed that I gave them another try. This page is the result of my first lesson! I’m delighted. If you’d like to learn more about the delightful craft of scrapbooking (paper or digital), get the big picture and sign up today.
Using www.diyplanner.com allows you to create your own planner pages using your printer, a paper cutter and hole punch. If you’re a homeschooler, you’ll appreciate the flexibility of creating planning and record-keeping pages that fit with how YOU do school. Using this sytem, you can also create inexpensive planners for your kids!
In my next posts, I’ll give you more detailed information about how a paper planner can pump up your productivity (and your students’, too!).
People who hear my “Tummy Trouble” story and learn about my food allergies ask me why so many people have food allergies now. I’m sure I don’t know! But I’ve shared with them the over-exposure hypothesis I’ve read. People may become allergic to foods they over-indulge in. For example, few Americans are allergic to rice, but many Asian people are.
That explanation doesn’t satisfy me though. Are we really over doing it on the peanuts for example? I am usually not one to believe Chicken Little. But my reading about genetically modified (GM) crops has me concerned. When you look at the data about contamination of unmodified crops with GM crops by wind and bee spread of pollen, there appears to be even more cause for concern. Bees are also dying inexplicably. Could GM crops be the explanation? I have read of the dangers of canola and soy and perhaps you have, too. Could it be that there is nothing inherently wrong with these foods, but GM crops are giving our immune systems fits? We worry about bio-terrorism, but maybe we’re terrorizing ourselves?
If you have children, the best thing you can do for them and for your housework management, is to assign them chores. But if you’re short the six helpers I have, you can still benefit from the two approaches to chore management I use.
By far and away, my favorite chore management program is Managers of Their Chores at www.titus2.com. The Maxwells are homeschoolers, but designed a chore system that can be used by anyone, including a distracted single! The book is key because it provides the motivation we all need to create, implement, and oversee a chore system. The system itself uses clip-on badge holders that hold numbered cards listing one chore each. Their chore website allows one to create neatly printed cards and picture cards for preschoolers. If you or a child is easily distracted, wearing the chore list and moving chores back in the pack as they are completed is the solution! The only downfall to the system is the fee. But I believe the program is well worth it. I laminated the cards for my little ones. The unlaminated cards were quickly water damaged. Managers of Their Chores works best if you and the kids keep the same chores for six months to a year. If you don’t change your routine, you may find you no longer need the chore pack to keep you on track.
I recently found a free chore managing system on the excellent website www.organizedhome.com. Check it out for great no-nonsense tips. www.chorebusters.net is a FREE system for generating chore lists. Chorebusters can schedule chores for one person, but the real advantage of the program is it rotates less-desirable chores among family members. You can specify workload for each person. For example, I assigned my 3yo a 25% workload. You can also indicate which people can be assigned a particular chore. You can have lists emailed or you can print them directly. You can even print cleaning assignments by room! I spent the time inputting all my chores into the system and the kids are enjoying a little change of pace. The advantage again is it is FREE! The disadvantages are there are no pictures for preschoolers and I can’t seem to figure out how to print only a.m. chores or only p.m. chores. It may just be that I missed that option. One plus for us has been that I’ve put all my chores into the rotation, too, as a reminder to teach my kids how to do them. If I were to become seriously ill, it would be wonderful to know that all the housekeeping chores could be completed! They probably wouldn’t be, but I’m talking theoretically…
If neither of these approaches work for you and you have children, I’ve also enjoyed the peg board approach at www.familytools.com. Check it out! Chores don’t have to be so much of a chore.
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
