Housekeeping Printables

Time-Warp Wife has some adorable housekeeping printables available here. Choose from her June or July housekeeping calendar and her weekly meal planner. So cute!

Save Money Monday

I'm going to *try* to do a series on saving money. I can't promise I will have a new Save Money Monday post every week, but I'll try. :)

One of the ways we save A LOT of money is by using coupons. Some people think if you use coupons on groceries you are eating hamburger helper and frozen dinners, but you can eat a healthy food and use coupons. Did you hear that? You can use coupons and eat healthy! One way to do this is to use coupons for your personal care items. I bought 9 toothbrushes, 6 packs of floss, and two sticks of deodarent at Kroger (pictured below) and they were FREE after coupons. This frees up money for you to spend on items where coupons are not available, usually fresh produce. Occasionally there are coupons available for natural food items. See the chips in the picture? They are all natural, from the healthy food section at Kroger and they were FREE after coupons. I used this opportunity to stock up on chips. I bought 6 bags. I'm not saying chips are healthy, but these are a better choice than Doritos. The whole wheat and veggie pasta was also FREE after coupons. I only bought 6 because I still have a good stock in my pantry from the last sale. I paid $2.25 total for the 3 almond milks and 1 coconut milk after coupons. The Mom's Best Cereal was $.24 each after coupons. If you stock up on items when they are well below retail price you will rarely have to pay full price again. If you'd like to start using coupons, go to moneysavingmom.com and click on 'store deals' to find out the best deals at your local grocery store each week.

My total for these groceries was just over $19 and about $6 of that was sales tax!

This post is link to:

How Does your garden grow? Week 3 update

It has been 3 weeks since we started our little garden. Last week-end the only thing not making an appearance were the cantaloupe plants. Not a single little cantaloupe plant was coming up! I wasn't sure if the seeds were all bad or if I some how forgot to plant them. I replanted them last week-end and about half of them are showing now. Looks like I must have forgot to plant them.

We bought tomato plants. They've been in the ground 2 weeks.

The squash plants and grass are looking good.

The cilantro is coming up. 

We planted 8 blueberry bushes. After a couple of weeks we noticed the leaves were disappearing off a few of the plants so we bought wildlife netting and covered them. This has stopped the deer, but didn't go over well with the snake.

Poor guy, he must have tried to go through at least 20 holes in the netting and was stuck for good. 

This post is linked to Smockity Frocks Frugal Gardening 101.

FREE Gardening Planner Printables

5 Dollar Dinners has some great garden planner printables available. I can never remember when I planted certain things or when they were ready for harvest. The Garden Harvest printable will solve this for me! I just have to remember to fill in it. She also has a garden planner, square foot gardening, and container gardening printable.

Weekly House Cleaning Schedules

 Back in the days of one small child I was able to keep my house clean, laundry clean and put away, and dinner cooked without a schedule. I didn't wake up and wonder what needed to be done that day. I just got up and did it. Fast forward to now~four kids later~ it takes a lot of planning for me to stay on top of things. Without a schedule I will wander around in circles not knowing what to do. Well, maybe I know what needs to be done. It's just overwhelming to think about or maybe when I do think of a task to do I get distracted and then forgot what I was doing. One of my new year's goals is to get back on schedule! I find a weekly cleaning schedule works best for me. Mine looks like this:


Daily~
Make bed.
Start a load of laundry
Empty dishwasher
Spend 30-60 min on one specific cleaning task


Monday~ Bathrooms  (I only clean my own bathroom, the kids are responsible for theirs.)
Wipe down sinks and counters. Clean mirrors. Scrub toilet and bathtubs. Empty trash. Clean floors.
It's a good idea to keep some cleaning supplies under the sink so you can do a quick touch up if needed during the week. Spend 10 min. working on a deeper cleaning job~ under sink, baseboards, etc.


Tuesday~ Bedrooms (kids are responsible for their own rooms)
Wash sheets. Clean clutter off dressers. Dust. Look over closet and straighten up clothes. Spend 10 min. de-cluttering.


Wednesday~ Kitchen
Empty and wipe out refrigerator. Clean all clutter off counters and wipe down counters. Wipe out microwave. Sweep and mop floor. Wipe off the fronts of appliances and cabinets. Empty trash. Pick one cabinet or drawer that needs organizing and spend 10 min. working on it.


Thursday~ Vacuum
Vacuum or sweep all floors. Dust family rooms and any other rooms that need it. Spend 10 min. de-cluttering and organizing these spaces.


Friday~ Extra Rooms and Meal Planning
Write out next weeks meal plan. Catch up on any missed cleaning. Work on laundry room, pantry, guest room, and/or playroom. These rooms should have been dusted and vacuumed on Thursday, but might need a little more attention.

A clean house just seems to make for a more peaceful home. Maybe I'm just a nicer mom and wife when everything seems clean and under control. :) If you are behind on your cleaning you might need to spend a couple hours each day for a few weeks focusing on each specific area to get it under control.

Check out this website for a more detailed weekly plan.