House Keeping Tips for My Son

(My oldest son is talking about buying his first home. At this point all my children still live at home, though 5/9 are adults. I am sure I will have some adjustments to make when he moves out (especially since he has offered to rent a room to at least one brother), but, though I have taught all my children individual skills for housekeeping, it will be a bigger adjustment for him to put all those skills together to keep a nice home.)

"Housekeeping" has three main departments (before children are added, anyway)

1) Calendar and meal Management
2) Clutter Control
3) Regular Routines

(I draw largly from Flylady.com . You can go to her site to get her whole program, which would be a good idea. I have also added in some from the Messie's Manual, and Don Aslott's writings, as will as a bit of my own ideas)

1) Buy a good calendar and write EVERYTHING on it (birthday's, anniversaries, major purchases, household maintanance, etc.) Flylady's calendar is big and made of non-glossy paper, so you can write on it with any writing implament. It's the one I have hanging on the linen cabinet (in the middle of the house). You can use it for menu planning too.

2) "You can't organize (or clean) clutter. You can only get ride of it." -Flylady. Keep an eye on how much stuff you have The more stuff, the more work. You, dear son, won't likely be starting out with all that much clutter, but it can get out of hand way fast!

3) Routines are divided up into daily, weekly, and monthly-or-less categories. The more frequently a chore is done the more important it is to do it.

Daily: 

• Wash, dry, and put up all the dishes (actually, I would advise you only own enough dishes for yourself for- at most- two meals. If you have company, use paper.) Actually, this should be your most frequent chore, washing, drying, and putting up all the dishes everytime you eat. If you have a dishwasher, turn it on every night and empty it every morning. Hide your dirty dishes in it the rest of the time.
• Take all the trash out of the house. It encourages mice and bad smells to have it linger in the house.
• If you own a washer and dryer, do a load each day (wash, dry, fold, put up). This reduces the sheer number of clothes you need to own, thus clutter, you need to have in the house. If you don't own your own machines, schedule in one day a week to do your laundry, and daily sort your clothes so they are readiy to go at all times.
• "Swish and Swipe" your bathroom(s). This is a Flylady thing. It means to wipe down the mirror, faucet, counter, sink, and outside of the toilet (and floor around it) daily. Then swish the toilet brush around inside the bowl and flush. The brush can be stored in a container with cheapy dish soap. This will keep it from making a mess on the floor, as well as always having soap to clean the bowl. 
• Make your bed. It is the biggest pice of furniture in your house and if it looks neat, so does your house. Besides, it keeps bugs and dust out of your sheets. 
• "Reboot" each room. Go through the house putting things back where they belong. No more than 5 minutes per room. 
• Wipe the kitchen counters down and clean the sink.
• Do anything you can to make tomorrow go nicer and easier. Can you put supper in a crockpot? Do you need to take something out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrow? Put anything you need to take away from the house with you by the front door (library books, papers for work, etc.)

Weekly

• Spend 10 minutes with a feather duster dusting lightly. This will prolong how long you can go between serious dusting without affecting your allergies. 
• Spend 10 minutes either washing windows or wiping fingerprints off of doors, knobs and handles.
• Vacuum all carpets (just the middles is fine. The edges only need to be done occasionally)
• Mop all hard floors.
• Change your sheets. Makes them last longer and feels oh-so-nice to have fresh sheets. 
• Make a menu, checking what you have on hand and what is on sale at the store. If you use Smiths, make your own account and add coupons to your rewards card electronically. Make a shopping list.
• Schedule one consist ant day a week to do your grocery shopping and take a list with you.
• Clean your car and check it's fluids.
• Toss old leftovers from the fridge.
• Include your yard as a room to check out weekly. I know I have not done a good job at keeping up on these weekly and less often things, but the house would be better if I did.

Monthly

Flylady divides the house into 5 zones, tackling what needs to be done in each one one week a month. Week:

1. (From the 1st to Friday) Clean your entry, porch, and dining room. What ever needs doing such as washing walls, decluttering, deep vacuuming.
2. (First full week of the month) Clean your kitchen. Do your cupboard doors need washing? Do they need straightening out/organizing? Does the fridge need washing? How about the silverware drawer?
3. (Second full week of the month) Clean the family bath and one other room (store room, office, guest room, laundry room) Deep vacuum, declutter, organize, detail dust, whatever most needs doing.
4. (Third full week of the month) Master Suit. Under your bed, closet, drawers, cupboards, shower curtains, rugs, etc. 
5. (Last week of the month, usually partial, until the first of the next month) Living room. Whatever needs cleaning. 

In each of these don't ever pull out more than you can put back in an hour or less. Do baby steps. Most of the time, just 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week.Flylady and https://homecalendar.com/dashboard will both send you things to do in the house. Flylady has daily missions for monthly or less cleaning, while the home calendar has the odd ball chores like cleaning under your fridge or shutting all the shutoff valves off and back on. I'm sure you can find other sites that will also help you know when and what to do  for the less frequent chores.  

Keep one day for play and one for worship. 

If you consistently do this your house will stay clean, especially if there are only 1 or 2 people living there. 

The Thanksgiving Dance

You know the house is a mess. You know you need to do something about it, but you simply can’t figure out where to start.

You might start by cleaning your bedroom, but wait a minute! You could get the laundry going while you work in here!

So you run to start your machines. Of course you need to gather up some dirties before you can do that, but while getting your girls’ clothes you notice they are mixed in with their toys, so you start picking those up and putting them away to get them out of your way of gathering up clothes.

But they have all their stuff mixed up so you begin sorting the blocks from the dolls.

Woops! Now you need some more boxes to put their stuff in, but you have to move the cans of food you bought on sale last week in order to get to the spare boxes.

With the floor partly clear, you might as well sweep. It will only take a minute.

But while getting the broom you notice all the extra stuff in your broom closet that doesn’t belong there. Better put that all up…

You get the idea.

You start cleaning every room in your house, but never finish a one. You might could finish one if you just knew which was the most important to finish first.

Or you have the other end of the problem; today you will scrub the kitchen floor. Of course the only way to do it is to do it right! You get out your bucket and brushes and toxic chemicals and begin scrubbing that floor! It takes you three hours, but by golly! No floor has ever been cleaner!

Meanwhile you children have gone hungry, Hubby has no underwear for tomorrow, and you haven’t even thought about supper yet. And now you are out of energy and can’t do anything else today.

This is called Hyper Focus (another ADD thing) and is the other side of the same coin as the Jack Rabbit who moves from project to project without making a dent in any of them.

Either way, something is wrong and you are likely just losing ground.

Quickly.

You know it’s possible to have a clean, comfortable house because you know others who do. How exactly do they do it?

The truth is, they don’t know.

They just do it without giving it a lot of thought. It comes naturally to them.

It sure doesn’t to me!

Everything I do is deliberately thought out and planned. But it isn’t as much work as you might think to do this planning.

You see, I hate making decisions (turns out that’s an ADD thing too. Who’d ‘ave thunk it? I always thought I was the only one who hated decisions so much). So I discovered a long time ago that I do best if I make a one-time decision that takes care of all the future decisions.

For example, I decided years ago that the first thing I would do every morning would be to read one chapter out of my Bible.

Except I kept falling asleep.

So I decided the first thing I would do would be to get a shower (to wake up!) then read one chapter out of my Bible.

This has been my “norm” for years now. I no longer have to get up and think “What will I do first?” or “I hope I get to my Bible sometime today.” Or even “I hope I remember to shower BEFORE Hubby gets home.” I just get up, stumble into the bathroom. Shower, dress, then get my Bible and settle in my rocker to read. I don’t even have to think about it.

That’s the power of habits.

Habits control our actions, and because they are so hard to break, they can be a powerful tool in our attempts to improve our homes.

This is what the Thanksgiving Dance is: a cleaning habit formed that includes the habit of a thankful attitude while cleaning. We begin one step at a time.

The normal way to "get the house under control" is to do a cleaning marathon, totally exhausting ourselves so we don't have the energy to clean for a week afterwards.

Even if we did have the energy to clean after this marathon, we don't know how to keep the house clean (who would have taught us? School? Our moms? I don't know about you but my school didn't bother with such things and between school, homework, extra curricular activities, and my social life my mom never had the chance to teach me. Not that she actually knew how mind you. Same problem I had. As did her mom.)

So within days of working so hard to get the house nice, it has deteriorated back to where it started from.

Why bother?

This is why we need...

The Thanksgiving Dance

When I was in high school I took a dance class. When we walked in the first day of class, the teacher did NOT spell out the entire 50 step dance to us we were to learn. We would have all walked out of the room in fear and discouragement.

No, she showed us ONE step. Then she had us practice it. Over and over and over again, until our muscles were in the habit of moving that way.

Then she showed us a second step and we practiced the two together until they felt natural and we didn’t have to think about them. And so on.

By the end of the semester, we all knew all 50 steps perfectly. If you began playing the music used in class we would all begin the routine without even thinking about it.

This is how a ballerina does what she does. Someone carefully thinks out each step, then she learns the steps, and then practices until her muscles remember what to do without her having to think about it. She can then concentrate on putting her emotions into the movements.

This is what you are going to do with the Thanksgiving Dance. This will be your own, personal ballet. You will choreograph it. Then you will practice it until it is second nature.

You pick 1-3 “steps” to begin with. You will do them every day, no matter what.

Only after a minimum of a week are you allowed to add another step. 2-4 weeks is better.

Write your own steps. The ones I need may not be needed in your home, and you may have steps you want to do that I never thought of or need in my home. That’s ok. Each of us creates our own dance to God. It will be a unique as we are.

God blessed us with our homes, our children, our Hubbies, our health. When we dance to Him in thanksgiving, it tells Him we are grateful.

Take Sunday off of all but the most essential steps.

Rules

You will NOT clean ANYTHING perfectly. Getting things perfectly clean is not the point or your focus. 

Your focus is to do the Thanksgiving Dance perfectly as a demonstration to God of how thankful you are for what He has blessed you with. You have to trust the Dance to eventually clean the house for you.

If you are perfect in forming the habit of the Dance, you can trust that it will all get done eventually.

Now let’s go dance.

The Ministry of Mom

We all want a ministry. We want to be working for God. We want to be valuable to His kingdom.

All my growing up and for many years after marriage I felt so guilty; though I was saved I was not bringing people to church. I tried, but they just wouldn’t come. And every sermon on being fruitful just made it worse. Though I’m an introvert by nature, I often stepped out of my comfort zone and did the best I could to talk to people about God.

It just didn’t seem to do any good.

Then the day came when it dawned on me that in nature fruit is not new plants. No, “fruit” is the seed bearing organ that under the right conditions plants the seed that produces new plants. The Bible teaches that we are to produce fruit, not plants! And Paul tells us the Fruit (singular, by the way) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace patience, goodness, kindness, faith, self-control, and gentleness.

I realized if I am growing in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faith, self-control, and gentleness I am pleasing God, and these character traits demonstrated in my life will often lead to “New Plants” in Christ because of my example. 

Wow!

It is not my responsibility to save people, but to draw closer to God and obey Him (which does often mean talking about Him to others, which actually got easier when I realized the above. It’s like the pressure to perform, to sell God, was off and I could just simply share my heart.)

Then there are the sermons commanding us to “tell everyone you meet this week about Jesus! Go out and bring them in!”

Well, you know what? As a HomeMaker, it is not unusual for me to not see anyone but my immediate family for an entire week except those at church. When my children were all little, Hubby even did the grocery shopping since it was easier for him to do on the way home from work than me with all the little ones tagging along. So I literally could not obey the minister’s instructions. I was so frustrated- to tears even!

I know how important it is to witness to others. I now everyone who doesn’t have Jesus is on the way to hell and needs to be told about the way out. 

But how can I witness to anyone when I never see anyone? 

And I felt very strongly God wanted me home to raise my little ones myself instead of handing them off to hirelings (babysitters). He even clearly lead me into homeschooling, so we aren’t talking a couple of years of babyhood here but a career that will have a natural lifespan of some 38 or more years (9 children twenty years apart from the oldest to the youngest.) And wouldn’t it be hypocritical to give my children to a daycare worker so I can go out and minister? 

What about her ministry?

Then I read an article about our ministry at home.

In this particular article (who’s address I lost a long time ago. Sorry) the author (a Stay At Home Mom) was at a leadership conference with her Hubby. On the way to one of the sessions an grandmotherly type patted her hand and said “It’s ok dear. You will have a ministry someday too.”

At that moment it dawned on her (and me in reading about it) that she ALREADY HAD A MINISTRY! She was responsible for evangelizing those precious souls God had assigned to her through birth!

We in the Christian world have bought into the world’s view of motherhood as a nothing, unimportant job; something you do if you can’t find anything important to pursue. It’s grunt work, like ditch digging before backhoes were invented; someone has to do it but it is distasteful, wasteful of energy, and anyone can do it.

Oddly, though, many with this view would object to my statement above about keeping a daycare worker from ministering by hiring her to care for my children.

”Being a daycare worker IS a ministry to those children!”

Yep, it is.

And so is being a Mommy to my children.

Mommy is, in fact, the most important ministry there is.

It is the job of Drill Sergeant training the next generation of Warriors to worship at the feet of our King.

It is the job of college professor teaching the leaders of tomorrow.

It is the job, above all, of missionary to (small) people who need Jesus just as much as my neighbor, the store clerk, and the president of the United States.

I no longer feel guilty at the calls to evangelize those I meet every day. I already do by:

• Reading my Bible and praying to them every night before I tuck them into bed,
• By studying the Bible as our first subject in our homeschool day, including memorization, songs, and reading the Word itself.
• By praying a quick “God make it better” at every skinned knee.
• By stopping our housework to pray for a need just texted to me by a church member or friend.
• By living and growing in the Fruit of the Spirit before their eyes in a day to day basis where they can see everything. You can’t hide flaws from toddlers living in your house!
• By making my own morning devotions a priority every morning (which I will admit gets much easier as they get older). This lays an example to them as well as strengthening me.

My babies ARE my mission field. They are the work God has called me to. He called me to the Ministry Of Mother-

I am a MOM.

Journals, Day Runners, etc

We all need a way to keep track of our lives. If we don't have someway to know what's going on we just kind of function in a constant state of emergency- putting out fires.

Now, if you are blessed with the kind of mind my husband has, that is all you need. He seldom forgets anything. Ever.

But most of us aren't that way, so we need to find what works for us. Nothing works for everyone. We each need to find our own thing.

I've done a great deal of experimenting over the years. I used to use a Franklin Covey organizer that also functioned as my purse. This worked real well as long as I actually looked at it. Unfortunately I would go days without opening it and find myself behind, but most of the time it worked. It contained my calendar, recipes, random notes and ideas, addresses, etc. I called it my Memory Chip and basically my life was in it.

I woke up one night with a horrifying thought; "What if the house burned down and I didn't grab my purse on the way out? or what if it were stolen? or I left it behind in a restaurant?" I immediately got up and began looking for ways to do the same things as the organizer but electronically and backed up on the cloud.

After several electronic years, I have partially gone back to print, but not entirely.

My Calendar

I use Google Calendar as my main calendar. It's free, I can have as many calendars as I want, turning them on and off as needed. I have:

• My main family calendar with birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, the days we bought appliances, etc all filled in. It also contains basic reminders for annual chores.
• My menu calendar where I plan out a rough idea of what we are going to eat each month. Hint: I set each meal on a monthly repeat, so other than tweaking around holidays and events like camping trips, I do very little actual monthly planning.
• My garden calendar where I keep track of what needs to be done when and what I did when. 
• My church's calendar. This one is even linked to the church's website.
• Calendars to plan out what I need to do with each blog I write, and what needs to be done with my direct sales business.

But we also have a print Flylady's calendar. No one else in my family will use the online calendars (though I have shared them and asked them all to do so. They simply don't always go on electronics, and when they do, don't think to go to that page/app). Flylady's nice big calendar hanging in the middle of the house's major walkway works great to keep everyone up on what's going on (they can't not look at it), not that there is a lot at this point. We're a pretty quiet, boring family. 

Address Book

Google Contacts. And since I bought an Android phone when my old iPhone decided to take a drink of ice tea without permission (:-P) I already had all my numbers right there after I signed into my google account.

You can add labels (doctors, business, repairmen, family, etc) to each contact so they function like separate address books. Or just use Google's search bar in the app and whoever you want pops up.

School Records.

Old school here. I use a spreadsheet I created in Excel. I tried just using it on the computer (Google Sheets) but it just didn't work. Pen and paper are much more convenient in the middle of the school day when computers are all doing math lessons and writing assignments.

Daily Journals and "stuff." 

It's simply easier to brainstorm with old fashioned pen and paper. And I don't always want to open up an electronic for the daily or weekly planning and notes. So I have gone to a paper bullet journal (the one shown above). It feels so rich and comforting I love opening it, which means I open it much more often.

I use a basic bullet journal format; weekly, not monthly or daily. I don't generally do any page decorating, though I have been using it to take notes during the sermon on Sundays and sometimes draw pictures with that.

It's just a plain place to write what I need to remember and plan to do each week.

Sections:

• House- a list of chores that need to be done this week. It always starts with the ones that repeat each week. Then I add those assignments for the week from Flylady that apply to my house (for example, I don't have an office, so when she says to dust the office, I kind of can't. So I'll look over the rest of the house and see what needs to be done the most and do that instead).
• Phone- a list of calls I need to make this week.
• Computer- things I need to do on the computer not related to my businesses (print math drills, look up x, order y, add z to the calendar, etc)
• Church- first the weekly church chores I need to do like update the bulletin for next Sunday or pick the music for worship. Then all the extra stuff that needs doing. 
• Events- just a reminder that I have a doctor appointment or that the handyman is replacing my bathroom floor Friday.
• Business- everything I need to do for blogs and my Lilla Rose businesses. 

The format is simple and easy to understand at a glance. A . means "to do." an X means I finished it. I circle things that are priority, and cross off things that are canceled. That's it. Nothing fancy or complicated. 

Now if you wanted to you could do all sorts of art work, and if you look up Bullet Journals on Google and Youtube that's what you will see. But all that business is too distracting for me ( a bit of ADD here). Just 6 simple lists is enough.

I put a number at the bottom of each page and list its purpose in the blank pages I left at the front for a Table of Contents. this way, when I devote a page to brainstorming, random notes, or lists, I can find them again! 

So I do have pages devoted to my daily routines, blog ideas, garden plans, and so on. I just use the next blank page when I need one.

The only exception is that my prayer lists are in the back working towards the front.

Recipes

I have used Plan to Eat for several years now. All my family's recipes are stored there and when my kids move out I can buy them a year's subscription and then "friend" them. They will have access to all those recipes. (After the first year they can download the recipes they want, or re subscribe, whichever they want to do).

These recipes are fully searchable, so it's easy to find what I want at any time.

The Menu tab lets you plan each week by simply dragging and dropping recipes from the sidebar into the proper place on the calendar. Each meal is automatically color coded, and prep notes are added to the "notes" section.

And when you drop a recipe into a spot on the calendar, it automatically adds all its ingredients to the third tab, "Shop," where it is sorted into your prefered store for that ingredient. (Now, I do most of my shopping at one store, so I don't need that, but since my kiddos help with the shopping, I named my "stores" after them. Each item is put into the list of the child responsible for that section.

You could use the app on your smartphone and then the "shop" tab would be your shopping list. This doesn't work with so many of us in the store, but if you were shopping alone, it would be quite handy.

PTE also has a "freezer section" to keep track of your freezer meals, as well as a place to add your staples and non grocery items to a shopping list.

It's just $40 a year, though if you watch for emails at Black Friday time, you can get it half off (which just adds 12 months to your subscription. So if you were to sign up in the summer of 2019, but take advantage for the sale in November, you would not owe anything more until the summer of 2021.) Oh, and the first month's trial is free.




All in all, I find this hybrid of electronic and paper works best for me. What about you? What do you use to keep track of your life?

Get Rid of Pollution in Your House

For several months I have been suffering from a stiff, tingling face with occasional pain in the ear, teeth, and by the eye. This has been concerning, to say the least.

A root canal (since a tooth was obviously infected), crown, doctor, and Ears Nose Throat specialist later and the conclusion is I have allergies.

Duh.

My brother has had severe allergies with asthma all his life. My mom and grandma had mild asthma. And I have had asthma in the past when exposed to dust (especially in mouse infested storage rooms), certain cleaning supplies, and onions, though I haven't had an episode in years.

(Hubby has many contact allergies, as do many of my kids, meaning I'm already on high alert for allergens, so should have caught this.)

Allergies is not a real surprising diagnosis. 

Three courses of antibiotics and some steroids, and my face is doing much better, but I don't want it to come back.

Sadly, for various reasons that aren't our fault, I lost my insurance just as the diagnosis was made, so there won't likely be any testing to see specifically what is triggering this particular problem.

However, I can use some logic and figure it out;

• We have mold (not the black, dangerous stuff) in our main bathroom and laundry room (and occasionally spotted starting in other places.) When I find it, I wash it with bleach or vinegar and it quits growing, just becoming a stain on the wall.
• We live in the country, so we have mice. I seal everything up the best I can, but they need surprisingly little room to get into a house. 
• We have inside dogs and a cat. 
• We live in a cheaper home, built with pressboard and composite (manmade, not God made) materials. These are known to "breathe" out gases such as formaldehyde as they age.
• We live in a mining community, so our water may have...interesting....things in it. Frankly, I don't want to know.
• We are down wind from many of those mines that not only stir up things in the dust they move, but who knows what they add to the mines that gets blown our way.

So, let's just assume I'm allergic to molds (including desert molds that grow in our dirt), animal dander, pollens from the fruit trees in every other yard, and off-gassing of our own house and the mines. 

"According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the top five air quality problems in the U.S. are all indoor air problems. Common residential indoor pollutants include excessive moisture, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), combustion products, radon, pesticides, dust particles, viruses, and bacteria. All of these are known to affect human health, and the resulting odors, dampness, stale air, and stuffiness also make a house less comfortable."

https://smarterhouse.org/ventilation-and-air-distribution/indoor-air-pollutants

How do you know if your house's air is bad?

If you have anything that burns in your house (gas stove, furnace, gas dryer, etc) there is a possibility of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide being leaked into your house, both highly dangerous.

You can certainly hire a professional to check this out for you. You can also buy some electronic detectors for your house, such as radon and carbon monoxide detectors. Amazon carries them.

Or you if you have these symptoms in your family you can be pretty sure somethings wrong:

• Coughing
• Sneezing
• Watery eyes
• Nasal congestion

Or if you and your family frequently gets:

• Headaches
• Bloody noses
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Rashes
• Fever
• Chills
• Fatigue

they may actually have allergies, not "bugs."

VOC's are compounds in paint, varnish, glues, dry-cleaning chemicals, markers, fire-proofing chemicals on carpets, drapes, and pajamas. Gasses dissipate into the air from any and all of these.

Let's add in that we all have electronics in our homes in some form (or you couldn't be reading this, now, could you?) Electronics, pollen, dust, dirt, pollutants, and any other junk in the air carry a positive ion charge, meaning they have more protons than electrons. (If you have the same number of protons and electrons, the element is "balanced" and called an atom. If you have more electrons, we call it a negative ion.)

Since our own cells are mostly negative ions, too much exposure to the positive ones make us depressed, anxious, and fatigued. (Thunder storms, rainfall, plants, and beaches generate negative ions, explaining why we feel so much better when we go near these things. They balance us.) 

It doesn't help that pesticides, household cleaners, and air fresheners all have toxic chemicals in them, also, that do damage to our bodies, especially lungs. So, you can start improving your house's air by simply not using these products any more than you have to.

The all purpose cleaner I use is:

• 1 Tablespoon of borax
• 1 Tablespoon washing soda
• 1-5 drops of dish soap (I use hypoallergenic Palmolive.)
• 1 quart of warm water
• 1 spray bottle that costs $2 or more (works better than cheap ones). 

Just mix everything in the spray bottle (add the soap last so it doesn't produce too many suds). It's actually the best cleaner I've used, and it doesn't give me an asthma attack or make anyone itch. You can add a few drops of your favorite essential oil if you want. I like to use lemon, myself. Stupid cheap as well as affective and non-allergenic.

Air fresheners don't actually freshen the air. They cover up bad odors by adding "good" oders on top, while putting positive ions into the air and pollutants into your lungs.

I'm not alone. 

Even if you live in a big city, odds are good the air outside is better than the air in your house..

The number one method to clean the air in your house is to open up your windows and at least get as good of quality as is outside into your house. Even as little as 5 minutes a day will make a big difference. 

Now, we leave our windows open as much as possible around here, which means mid-April to somewhere in September, unless it's raining, which is seldom here since its the desert (we get about 10 inches a year).this does make a difference.

It is the high desert (4500 feet elevation), though, so for half the year it's too cold to leave the windows open very many days.This is the time of year the mold grows. Yes, its the desert, with around 20% humidity, but with all the showers, laundry, dishes, etc going on with our family of 11, we stay around 60% in the house when the windows stay closed. Much too high.

So we need to go further than opening windows.

#2 Best Way to Improve Indoor Air 

Plants "breathe" in carbon dioxide and "breathe" out oxygen which makes the air feel fresher to us. They also produce negative ions for us to absorb, so we need plants around us no matter what. But it seems they also remove mold spores, pollen, dust, dander, mites, and many chemical pollutants from the air. They are living filters.  

The best plants are:

• Spider plant (one of the best)
• Pothos
• Orchids (which, addition to cleaning the air, add extra oxygen into the air at night, making them great for bedrooms)
• Bamboo palm, 
• Chinese evergreen,
• English ivy, 
• Gerbera daisy, 
• Janet Craig, Dracaena “Janet Craig”
• Marginata, Dracaena marginata
• Mass cane/Corn plant, 
• Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, 
• Pot mum,
• Peace lily, 
• Warneckii, Dracaena “Warneckii”

But, really, any plant is good.

According to NASA you need about 1 plant for every 120 square feet for optimum cleaning. So if you have the average 1200' home you need around 10 plants (with a 6-8 inch diameter pot. Bigger plants can count as more than one plant). 

Do be careful not to overwater them since that will increase algae, and remove any dead leaves or stems so decaying plant matter doesn't add to the pollution in your house.

Salt Lamps

It is  a known fact that people suffering with asthma get better if they go into salt mines. Breathing the salt- laden air really helps the lungs. 

You can buy large lumps of salt (or baskets of small lumps) from those mines that have a light bulb in them. This is generally called "Himalayan Salt." The light gently warms the salt, causing it to absorb pollution- laden water from the air. The water then evaporates back into the air, leaving the pollutants behind. The rocks should be wiped clean a couple times a week.

The light from these "lamps" is a soft, warm orange, which mimics the sunset, encouraging sleep, so we will use ours for our night-time reading lamps.

Air filters

Charcoal will filter out many, many pollutants, and is in fact, used in most air and water filters. The most natural air filter is to just hang some activated charcoal in a breathable pouch (cheesecloth, nylon stockings) or just put some in a bowl in the rooms you want to clean. I plan to buy some soon and put some under seats in our cars, as well as throughout the house.

You could use barbeque briquettes, but they often have unhealthy additives, so read the label.

Also, activated charcoal has been treated to make it more porous, increasing the surface area to absorb pollutants, so it would be better to use than BBQ briquettes.

All charcoal would need to be replaced every couple of years.

Mechanical Air filters

I already use HEPA filter bags in my vacuum cleaner to help reduce dust and yucky stuff. I try to vacuum most weekdays, which reduces our allergens in the house. My brother has removed all carpet of any kid from his house and was able to get rid of his asthma medicines! Carpets are fuzzy dirt traps, it seems.

We will be replacing ours with hard floors of some type as they wear out. Advantage: I can install laminate flooring (helped do it in my church) so I can save installation costs by making this choice! Laminate has the problem that is is artificial and gasses out toxins into the air, but on the other hand, you only need plain water and a microfiber mophead to clean it, so no toxic cleaners. And mops are cheaper and last longer than vacuums do.

I was also given an air cleaner some years ago and have bought new filters for it. It is only big enough to do one room- not the whole house like I need- but it will help when we must keep the windows shut. 

We'll add that our house is cooled with a swamp cooler. This means all summer the air is pulled into our house through a wall of watered down pads and pushed out the open windows, filtering out many pollutants before they even come into the house. 

Beeswax Candles

I have not tried these yet, but might. They release negative ions as they burn as well as cleaning pollutants.

Other Things that Will Help Allergies

Regular dusting, especially on the hard to see places like door tops, also helps. Flylady.com suggests you use a high quality feather duster that holds the dust instead of scattering it, and set a timer for 10 minutes once a week and just dust what you can in that 10 minutes. This will keep most homes pretty dust free, with the addition of just a deep dusting with a cloth once or twice a year. (and its kind of fun waving the feather duster around like a magic wand while trying to beat the timer).

Washing curtains and other "soft" surfaces, and vacuuming those you can't wash, can also drastically reduce dust and their bugaboos. 

Dust-mite proof covers on all pillows and mattresses on the bed will help, also, as will washing your sheets weekly and blankets frequently. Now, I have a hard getting to this much washing, honestly. I'm not perfect. But I can do better, so I will. 

Groom your pets regularly to help reduce their contributions to the atmosphere.(My 11yo has taken this over).

Keeping shoes out of the house helps too, if you can do it. I keep a large box by the door for everyone to put their shoes in. It reduces the cleaning as well as the allergens. And, at least when I had a bunch of little kids, I always had an idea where the shoes were.

Natural ways to have good smelling air

If you want more scent to your air than "clean" you can bake a loaf of bread :-) or put a small pot on to simmer on the back of your stove with some cloves, vanilla beans, or any spices you enjoy the scent of. And an essential oil infuser will do a similar job.It is believed the infused essential oil will also help clean the air.

I'm not perfect. I can't do all these things. But I can do more than I do now, and will. The things that require spending money will have to be spread out, but most of this list I can do without a financial investment.

How about you? How is the air quality in your house? What do you do to reduce allergens in your life?

Time to Fly

I want to tell you all about Flying.

Several years ago I came across "Flylady" in several blogs I followed. I did sign up for the emails at Flylady.com, but her zones didn't match what I thought was best for my house, and there were too many emails, and ....whatever. I kept parts of her program, but quit trying to follow most of it.

I was beginning to get a handle on the house spring before last when I came down with bronchitis. Then as I got over that I injured my feet. By that time my house was back to its horrid state and I was so discouraged I couldn't motivate myself to get up and do anything. I just didn't even know where to start anymore.

One day, after joining a couple housekeeping groups on Facebook, I said to myself "These groups are great, but I just need some site that will give me daily assignments so I don't have to make any decisions or even think about it. Just read-and-do.....Oh.... Flylady."

I went back to her website and joined up again.

She has reduced the numbers of emails to no more than 7 a day. This is much more manageable.

Mrs. Flylady's program is based on routines. You pick a few things to do everyday. Add in the daily missions (10-15 minutes each, 1 per day) and 15 minutes of decluttering a day and your house just magically gets clean.

Some things Flylady says:

• You're not behind. Just jump in where you are.
• Housework done imperfectly still blesses your house. (In 
• !n fact, "perfect" is a bad word we are not allowed to be used).
• Your house didn't get this way overnight. It won't get clean that fast either.

"Fly" by the way, means "Finally Loving Yourself."

Though some links here will eventually be affiliate links, the ones to Flylady are not. I simply believe in her program. So go to Flylady's site and get started!

It's time to Fly

Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens

By Kathy Garrison
I received this book for Christmas several years ago. I really enjoyed reading it, though I have already implemented most of what it says I need to do.

Everyone needs to evaluate their preparedness needs for themselves. Ours are minimal.

We don’t live in tornado country.

We don’t live in Hurricane country.

We don’t live in the city where riots are very likely.

We don’t live too near a volcano.

We don’t live near a floodable river. (Seriously, if the nearest river floods enough to threaten us, you had better have an ark built!)

Our danger of disaster is pretty much limited to wildfire, and earthquake and we aren’t at too much danger from either, really.

We did come very close to being evacuated for fire a few years ago so I will be make evacuation kits as suggested in the book. The truth is, though, you kind of have to have fuel growing to have a wildfire and we are desert. Even our sagebrush only get shin high. My Volunteer Firefighter Son says its is extremely unlikely our would ever burn in a wildfire. They might evacuate us if the hills were on fire just to be sure, but a fire just wouldn't have enough fuel to jump the road and get to us.

We have also had times of as much a whole day without electricity. Not much of a problem except we have a private well and no electricity means no water. Otherwise, my children are already used to living without electronic entertainment and we would enjoy the chance to cook dinner over an open fire in our large, gravel parking lot. Actually the major thing we appear to need is a gas generator so we could still have water :-)

However, I do try to keep our pantry stocked, so we could go as much as a couple of weeks. If there was a bad storm food might could not get over the Sierras to our grocery store for a few days. Or if we were to all get the flu at once, so no one could go shopping, it would be nice to have the cupboards full.

I do need to find a good way to store at least a couple day;s worth of water though. That one could be a big deal if something happened to the generation plant over the hill from us so we didn't have electricity.

Remember the whole Y2K scare a couple decades ago? I read about a couple that stocked up with months worth of food and water because they were convinced that the world would come to a halt. They felt like fools when nothing happened on January 1 …

Until the blizzard hit on January 3 snowing them in for more than a week!

There is another reason to be stocked up; what if your neighbor's house burned down? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take them a couple weeks worth of food? Or if they lost a job, stock their pantry from yours? What a wonderful way to love our neighbors like we love ourselves!

It is wise to evaluate all possibilities and be prepared, even to the point of having enough to share with your neighbors. Then trust God to take of the rest.

Of Mixing Bowls and Measuring Cups

I have been traveling towards Minimalism for some time now. I find it freeing.

Let me tell you about my "Baking Center Cupboard" (the cupboard below my mixer where I store my mixing bowls and everything associated with baking. Mixes and ingredients are in the small cupboard above the mixer.)

I was reading an article about Minimizing and Simplifying. The author recommended you picture what you want your living room to look like and then make it look that way.

That was way more than I could handle at that moment, picturing what my living room should look like.

So I thought about my lower baking cupboard instead; two little shelves.

I closed my eyes and pictured what the perfect baking center confined to that space would look like.

Shelf 1: My favorite, clear, glass mixing bowl set stacked neatly inside of each other with their lids in size order underneath them (I only have one bowl that actually works in my mixer and it belongs with it on the counter.)

The funnels behind these, and the rolling pins next to them (yes, I actually do need two rolling pins. Most people simply don't, but when you are making cookies with nine children two is a necessity: However, neither is used often, so behind the mixing bowls is fine.)

Shelf 2: Glass mixing cups neatly stacked in size order with the attachments for my mixer that don't fit in the drawers behind that.

That's it.

This picture was so beautiful and freeing that I immediately got up and took the other three sets of mixing bowls, all the spares, and everything else not in my picture out to the car to donate to a charity thrift store nearby.

That was 2 1/2 years ago.

...and that is still what that cupboard looks like.

I have never missed the bowls or anything else I got rid of.

(I will note I was given a set of metal bowls that I put in my craft stuff. The kids now know very clearly what they can use for crafts and mud pies and whatever, and what is only to be used for cooking.)

And the Interesting Thing...

I was walking through a store the other day and there was this adorable set of mixing bowls. I looked at them and smiled, enjoying the sight of them on the shelf.

Then I passed them by without a second thought. It never seriously entered my head to get them.

I am satisfied with what I have. The urge to buy baking stuff is gone. I am satisfied and happy.

Contented.

So, here is my advice for simplifying:

Picture what you want your end product to look like, whether is is a closet, room, shelf or your calendar.

Then go remove everything that is not in that picture.

Most of the time, that is it. Most of us have all we need and want and more in every area.

We just have too much junk in the way to know that.

We want to buy more because we are unsatisfied, when what will really satisfy is to simply get rid of the junk so we can get to the lovely things we already own and love.




(If you find you do need to purchase something, as I still do with my living room, you won't be nearly as tempted to just buy stuff to fill a spot. Because you know what you really, really want, it is easier to wait until the exactly right thing comes along. Everything else is just stuff.)