Over the years, I’ve been frustrated at the difficulty we have in keeping our toothbrushes straight (who has light purple stripes this month?!) and keeping them clean.  The standard store-bought holder rarely holds more than 4, and never 12.  A coffee mug or pint jar is big enough to hold them all, but it quickly collects slime in the bottom.  It also seems to collect extra anonymous toothbrushes, and nobody is ever quite sure which toothbrushes belongs to no one in particular, so it’s hard to thin them.

After poking around the internet a bit, I found the perfect solution for our family, the Hang Away Universal Toothbrush Holder.  Each holds 4 toothbrushes, so I installed 3 on the side of the bathroom cabinet.

Why is it perfect?  Let me count the ways.

1. It’s cheap: less than $4.
2. It’s durable.  After more than a year of daily use by kids, only one plastic prong on one holder has broken.
3. It’s easy to install.  One piece of strong double-sided tape (included) does the job.
4. It’s not made by me.  No procrastination necessary.
5. It’s out of reach of the toddler, so we never have to wonder why our toothbrushes are out of the countertop holder and where else they have been.
6. Everyone has an assigned spot, so there’s no place for anonymous toothbrushes to hang out.
7. Since everyone has an assigned spot, trying to find toothbrushes in 12 different colors is optional.
8. I have an assigned spot, so I don’t have to try to remember what my own toothbrush looks like and spot it in a bristling mass.
9. If someone’s toothbrush is mysteriously missing, I don’t have to rely on their personal hygiene habits to let me know.  Haven’t you ever said, “What do you mean you don’t know where your toothbrush is? How long has it been gone?  YOU DON’T KNOW?!“

And if you happen to have 4 or 5 teenage daughters who are always stealing your razor because they can’t remember which one belongs to whom and yours works the best, it also holds those.

Um…it holds the razors.  Not the teenagers.

I’m working hard at finding new uses for the tools I have in my hand – a concept I’m learning from the Headmistress – and the current object of my attention is my new phone.  I’m not often a victim of SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome), so I’ve chosen to let this case run its course as I learn all I can about my new phone.

One way I have been able to see an immediate change is by using the alarm for more than just waking up in the morning.  I didn’t come up with this idea myself.  My real-life friend Mother Hen has been doing it for years, and all of my past cellphones had alarms too.  The difference is I’m finally using them.

Right now, I have the following alarms set for every weekday:

6:30 AM – Rise: Plays classical music, which starts very quiet and gets louder, but not too loud.

9:00 – Bible: This is not our private Bible reading, but family Proverbs time.  We drop what we’re doing and gather at the table to read a daily chapter aloud together.

12:00 – Psalm practice: Our church learns about one song/month in 4 part harmony, and the girls in our family make up almost the entire alto section.  We are finally practicing daily!

2:00 – Reading lessons/naps: Tuck Bethany in for a nap and start Perry’s reading lesson, immediately followed by his nap.  I move on to Rachael’s reading lesson followed by quiet time for her.

9:00 PM – Dinner/lunch: Do I know what’s for dinner the following day?  Did I pack Perry’s lunch yet?

I plan to add another alarm for exercise, one for read-alouds, and one for bedtime.  I have a tendency to stay up much too late.

One thing I have learned about myself is not to turn off the alarm until I am actually doing what I’m supposed to do. I’ll hit the snooze if necessary, but I have let the alarm keep bugging me.  If I turn it off because I’m just about to do it, I’ll get sidetracked and forget in 5 seconds flat.  Think I’m exaggerating?  Ask any member of my household.

How do you use alarms?

Here’s yet another area where I don’t usually practice what I preach but when I do, things happen. Note to self: follow my own advice and do what I’m about to tell others to try.

PROBLEM: BEDROOMS

Our kids’ rooms are usually a mess.  Big mess. B.I.G.  Like, can-hardly-make-a-path-to-the-bed on a bad day.  Because the rooms are small and crowded, a small mess looks big and a big one…well, you get the point, right?  And they can clean up the whole room, then have a whole new mess within a couple of hours.  But I’ve beaten this dead horse enough.  Problem: messy rooms.  Let’s move on toward a solution.

There are several ways to address the mess.  Hey, it rhymes.  Let’s say it again just for fun because that’s the only fun thing about getting kids to clean their bedrooms:  Address the mess.  It’s a mess address.  If the girls’ clothes are all over the floor, it’s a dress mess, or a mess of dresses, or messy dresses.  ess, ess, ess. Oops.  Sorry.  Hello.  Ahem.  Cleaning bedrooms.

Generally, I just say, “Go clean your room…nope, not done yet…still a mess…try again…hey, you’re back?  Listen: don’t come out til it’s done, OK?”

This works, but not well.  It’s slow, frustrating, and instead of a clean room I usually just get a rearranged mess.  I hope I’m not alone here.

SOLUTION: THE BOX

So here’s what I like to do every now and then.  Be forewarned, it’s a lot more work for mom, but it’s worth the results.

I grab a trash bag or two, and a box.  I may or may not issue a warning that I will do the cleaning this time.  Then I sort as  I clean.

If it’s important (like their only pair of shoes) I put it away for them – or I put it in the You Put This Away Pile.  If it’s not important, it goes away, never to return: trash or Goodwill.  So far, so good.  But here’s my favorite part: If I think it might be precious to them but it’s not important to me, it goes into a box.  The Box.

The Box gets inventoried if I’m being organized (hah!  I made a joke!  Are you laughing?), and it gets put away for a while.  Then when one of the children remembers to ask where her favorite ____ has been because she hasn’t seen it for weeks, I smile.  “Remember when I cleaned your room?  It’s in The Box.  Would you like it back?”

When you hold The Box, the ransom is up to you.  You can make them do a chore to get an item back, or charge cold hard cash.  Consider it your pay for cleaning the bedroom.  You can put a limit on how many items they get back, or how often.  But the key is to make them request the item specifically.  Don’t bend on this one.  They don’t get to look in the box and see what’s hidden away.  If they don’t miss their old ____, it doesn’t come back to contribute to future messes.

Can you see how this works?

1. The room stays cleaner, longer, every time you do this because there is less unwanted junk to clutter the room.
2. The room stays cleaner, longer, every time you do this because your kids learn to put away anything they care about lest it become a hostage of The Box.

Now, just do it.  And tell me to do it, too, because I need the nudge.  And because their bedrooms…well…you know…

Want more ideas?  Got ideas of your own?  Visit Help For Growing Families every Tuesday at Ship Full O’ Pirates.

With Christmas looming ever closer, Shannon wants our toy recommendations.  We don’t have many toys, but I can think of a few that stood the test of time and I never regretted purchasing:

• Music Maker Lap Harp – we’ve had ours for many years and it still gets plenty of use.  Kids can make real music with no lessons at all, but they are becoming familiar with written music as they play.
• Legos/duplos – another toy that I never regret buying and my kids never tire of.  They’re the greatest thing on earth and you can never have too many, unless you just stepped on one.  We need more of these.  Well, we want more of these.  Maybe because every time I step on one I toss it in the trash?
• Gears! Gears! Gears! – These eventually left the house because they were just too noisy, but we all have fond memories.  Maybe someday soon, when I have another temporary lapse of sanity, I’ll buy another set.  They can be fun.  (what can be fun? lapses of sanity or gears?  you decide!)
• Super Marbleworks – a marble maze by Discovery Toys.  We enjoyed this for many years.  We once tried a cheaper version but it simply didn’t hold up.  The Discovery Toys version is well worth the cost.

What can you add to the list?

You may have figured out that most or all of these are good toys for a pack herd group of children to share, ideal for large families.  They are also toys that rely heavily on the creativity of the user, and none require batteries.

These are all members of that sneaky class of toys which exercise the mind without ever feeling educational.  Unfortunately they are all a bit on the noisy side, but some things are just worth putting up with increased noise levels.  Kids, for example.

It’s Wednesday, and I’m wondering what Works For Me.  I can’t think of anything except what you probably already know…

• Chocolate works for me, in any form.  The kids giggle every time stress runs high and I reach for chocolate.
• Drying laundry outside works for me.  I don’t miss my dead dryer one bit!
• Decaf works for me.  I drink coffee because it’s nice to sip something warm in the morning, not because I need a caffeine kick in the pants.  My shower wakes me up; my coffee smooths me out.

Oh, here’s one.  You might not believe me, but when a child has a splinter that is buried beneath the skin, I usually leave it there.  That’s right: If we can’t get it out easily, we just leave it.  Digging it out seems to cause more trauma, both emotional and physical.  We just douse it with the nearest antibiotic and forget about it.  I keep an eye on it, but after 15 years of parenting 9 children, we have yet to see a single infection from doing this.

In most cases, it will cause very little discomfort and will soften and dissolve over the course of a few days.  Occasionally, it will work its way out; this is fine too.  Either way, I don’t have to call for reinforcements to hold down a kicking screaming child while I use a sterilized needle to dig a bigger hole in her skin right where it already hurts.

See?  My way makes everyone happier.

My kids occasionally get their hands on some cold hard cash and they have also been known to lose it.  Being a good mom (except when I’m busy being a Bad Mom) I offer to hold it for them if it’s a significant amount, and they usually take me up on the offer.  I keep it in my purse so they will have it with them if they decide to spend it.  So far, so good.

PROBLEM:

But I have a terrible memory, and I’m liable to accidentally spend their money.  Then when they ask for it 10 minutes or 10 days or 10 months later, I deny that I was holding any for them.  Now it’s their memory against mine, and ovarian guilt requires me to take their word for it even though I strongly suspect that they really used their money to buy a piece of plastic trash that hit the landfill months ago.  Here’s my solution:

SOLUTION:

I just roll the greenbacks up tightly (I don’t hold coins for them) and wrap with a scrap of paper that has the child’s name written on it.  I secure this with a rubber band and drop it in my purse.  At any given time I probably have 3 of these little rolls in my purse.  Six months later, when Kiddo wants her money, we just check to see if she has any.  “Yes, here it is,” or “No, you must have spent it.”  Easy peasy, sweet and simple.  It’s never failed me yet.  At least, not that I recall.

My memory is toast.  That’s why I blog; because I’ll forget my children’s names and faces if I don’t.  It’s much easier to remember one url than all the details of the past 2 years of my life.  My friend laughed at me today for looking up my own recipe on my blog, but this is my life.  If I didn’t blog it, I would forget.  I store my brain online, so I can access it whereever I go.  Now I don’t have to remember to bring it with me.

Case in point.  I nearly just forgot what I was going to blog about and got lost on that little rabbit trail of blogging rationalization.

I recently took 2 courses of prescription meds.  Don’t ask why; just understand that I can’t remember to take vitamins more than once a week and be astonished that I agreed to take a pill every 12 hours for 10 days.  Due to my memory – or more accurately, my lack thereof – I completely bungled the first course, which explains the necessity for the second course.

I managed without missing a single dose by using a trick I learned from a friend (yes, the same friend who mocked me for storing my brain in my blog).  I set the alarm in my cell phone to go off every 12 hours with the loudest, most obnoxious ringer I could find.  Alarms are pretty standard on cell phones now and they are quick and easy to set.  As long as I can remember why my phone is screaming at me and I have the discipline to get up right now and put the pill in my mouth, I am home free.  Now I can remember to take vitamins.

Unfortunately, vitamins still make me puke.  Which just might be better than what the prescription meds did to me, but that’s another story.

And that’s my little Works For Me Wednesday story.  Read more or share your own in the comments.

I use re-use those little plastic grocery sacks a lot. I can always tell when it’s time to go shopping, because we run out of grocery sacks.
We use them for wrapping dirty diapers before they go in the trash (really bad ones get double-bagged. Atomic ones get triple-bagged and buried in the backyard. Relax – I’m kidding.) We use them to line the bathroom trash can. We use them for hubby’s lunch, since he never remembers to bring home a lunch box. We use them to hold the catbox scoopin’s.
And we use them in the van: they make good trash bags, dangling from the front dash. They’re good for gathering up the socks and shoes from the dim recesses of the southern end of the van. If you open a fresh diaper in the bottom of a bag, it can even act as a barf bag in a pinch. I’m not kidding.
So here’s my great idea:
Have you seen those plastic bag holder/dispensers where you cram wadded-up bags in the top so you can pull them out of the bottom one at a time? I used industrial strength semi-permanent velcro to attach one of these to the side of the van, just behind the driver seat. It is utterly unobtrusive, but within easy reach even while I’m driving.
The velcro was less than $3 in the craft department at WalMart, and I have enough left for several other applications.
I now have 30 grocery sacks at the tip of my fingers everywhere I go. Combined with my secret diaper stash, that’ll hold a lot of barf.

Check out more Works For Me Wednesday tips at Shannon’s place today.