Category Archives: Domestic Blitz

In which we don our aprons and putter about the house.

Prioritizing

04/01/2009 Nichole 2 Comments

Today’s tip is one I picked up from Simple Mom (which is a really great place for the picking up of tips, by the way). I put together my version of one of her Daily Dockets a while back, and it did wonders for me in terms of getting my stuff together. Then I thought it would be terrific to have my pages laminated and spiral-bound, so I could use them over and over again. That was a few months ago, when a work thing had Rockford stopping by Kinkos pretty much every morning. So I gave the pages to him, he took them to Kinkos, and … no one ever picked them up. I’m guessing Kinkos has tossed them by now.

But that wasn’t the point I was trying to make here.

The most helpful part of the Daily Docket for me is the making of the Most Important Tasks list. As the name suggests, you pick the day’s top priorities and give them their own special place on your to-do list. And then you do them.

There was a special place for those three-to-five items on my Daily Docket pages. Fortunately, though, I can write down a few important things on a non-specialized piece of paper. Yesterday I only managed to do three of the five. But on a day when I don’t write ’em down? I might’ve accomplished one of the five.

One of these days I’ll put “Reprint the Daily Docket” on my Most Important Tasks lists. Until then, though, jotting those MITs down on a scrap of paper will have to work for me.

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Domestic Blitz

It's stinky, but it works

10/22/2008 Nichole

While on a little “green” streak awhile back, I tried to make my own household cleaners. I still haven’t kicked the commercial cleaner habit, but I did learn something interesting when I was trying to go green: Vinegar is awesome. You can use it to clean just about anything in the house, and it’s cheap. (That’s my favorite part.)

The Vinegar Institute has a great list of ways to use vinegar. Here are a few I’ve tried:

Garbage disposal cleaner. Garbage disposals may be kept clean and odor free with vinegar cubes. Vinegar cubes are made by filling an ice tray with a mixture of 1 cup of vinegar and enough water to fill the ice tray and then freezing it. Run the mixture through the disposal, and then flush it with cold water for a minute or so.

Coffee maker cleaner (automatic). White distilled vinegar can help to dissolve mineral deposits that collect in automatic drip coffee makers from hard water. Fill the reservoir with white distilled vinegar and run it through a brewing cycle. Rinse thoroughly with water when the cycle is finished. (Be sure to check the owner’s manual for specific instructions.)

Clean the microwave. Boil a solution of 1/4 cup of white distilled vinegar and 1 cup of water in the microwave. Will loosen splattered on food and deodorize.

Rockford hates the smell of vinegar, so I was a little hesitant to use it so freely. The smell dissipates pretty quickly, though, so I can use it in the morning while he’s at work and the smell is gone by the time he gets home.

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Domestic Blitz

Taming the clutter

10/15/2008 Nichole

Rockford and I are genetically predisposed to clutter. My mom still has every piece of “artwork” I ever brought home from elementary school, and my in-laws have a letter that little 6-year-old Rockford wrote to Santa on the wall in their dining room.

I’ve kept a few things — like the kids’ ID bracelets from the hospital and Poppy’s first drawing of a person — but so far I’ve been able to restrain myself in the sentimental clutter area. My problem is recipes. I have subscriptions to a couple of recipe-heavy magazines, and a few years ago I realized I had a problem. We were moving, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the stacks and stacks and stacks of back issues that were on the cookbook shelves. Because there were things in there that I still wanted to try.

Enter today’s Works for Me solution: A recipe binder. I bought a 3-ring binder and some clear plastic inserts, and I went to work tearing out the recipes that had me holding onto the magazine. I slipped the pages into the plastic inserts and then threw the rest of the magazine into the recycle bin. Now, I try not to let more than two magazines pile up before I start the process again.

This still hasn’t prompted me to get around to trying those recipes any faster, but it’s definitely cut down on the clutter around the house.

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