I Can’t Remember

Also see the rest of my series on Home Staging:
Part 1: the nursery.
Part 2: the front yard.
Part 3: the front of the house
Part 4: the garage
Part 5: the laundry room / mudroom

What is Home Staging?

And my tips for creating Moving Lists.

When you pretty up your home for company, you stuff clutter behind closed doors, but don’t forget, there ARE no closed doors when you show your house!

Potential buyers will want to investigate the storage in the house, which means they will be poking their noses into the places where polite company usually doesn’t. And while you may be embarrassed if your sister-in-law sees that you have shoved all your clutter in the linen closet (who knew your nephew would spill and she’d go fetch a towel?) if a potential home buyer opens up a linen closet and finds an avalanche of papers and odds and ends, you may lose a sale!

So these forgotten spaces need special care. Don’t forget to use home staging to make storage spaces look extra appealing when you show your home.
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In my never-ending search for adult-safe kids’ movies, I checked The Muppets Take Manhatten out from the library.

One word: hideous!
This is the movie that launched the Muppet Babies (in a musical dream sequence, no less!) If that crime against humanity wasn’t enough, the movie is slow, depressing, and has bad music.

Even the kids didn’t really like it.

Expectations were high, because we enjoyed the other Muppet movies we have seen: the original is a classic, Muppets from Outer Space is hilarious, Muppet Treasure Island is a surprisingly good rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story, and the Muppet Christmas Carol is the best safe-for-kids version I’ve ever seen.

Oh well, I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on it. It was mostly harmless–at least from the kids’ point of view. If my husband and I have nightmares, at least we can wake each other up.

Kids love to color! It’s important for their future success in school because coloring practices their fine motor skills.

Also, if you’re like me, there are two things true about your home office: 1) it generates way too much paper, and 2) their are children underfoot with nothing to do but tell you they are bored.

The simple solution to both these problems is to print up coloring pages on the backs of all that scrap paper!

Supply your kids with environmentally friendly crayons like Prang’s soybean crayons or Stockmar’s beeswax crayons (available at Nuno Organic or Hazel Nut Kids.)

(and of course, use a recycled printer cartridge in your printer and recycle the pages after your kids are done!)

My favorite site for coloring pages are:

Sesame Street

Recycling Letters from Earth 911

Texas Parks and Wildlife coloring books

Celebrating Wildflowers coloring pages

There are more suggestions at Making Friends and this Squidoo lens.

There are two types of environmentally friendly cleaners: ones you make, and ones you buy. Ones you make are easier to find, but ones you buy are also now easy to find. Due to consumer demand, green cleaners are appearing in your local grocery and drugstore.

Green cleaners you make yourself
If the idea of making your own cleaners has you envisioning some mad apothecary hunched over a bubbling cauldron of goo, rest easy. The easiest way to make cleaners is to not mix anything. These are lots of recipes for homemade cleaners, and if you are so inclined, go for it. The rest of us will use baking soda and vinegar. Do not mix them together; you’ll create a grade-school science project!

Baking soda is your scouring powder. Scrub off dried on goop with it. Add it to your laundry as a fabric softener. Use it a carpet deodorizer. Dump it down your drain. Use it to soak up grease and anywhere there’s a bad smell. If you must mix, mix it with water to create a cleaning paste.

Vinegar is your liquid cleaner. It shines stainless steel better than any commercial product you can buy. Plastics were first used to contain acids, so acids like vinegar clean anything plastic better than base cleaners like ammonia and bleach. Mix it with water to clean glass: but realize that tge first time you use it on your windows the vinegar will be removing the film left behind by other cleaners. Until this film is completely removed, your windows may streak. But vinegar will leave your windows streak-free.

Green cleaners you buy
There are a variety of green cleaners available on the market. Read the warnings carefully: some conventional cleaners are masquerading as green cleaners in order to take advantage of the demand for green cleaners. For instance, citrus and orange oil are green cleaners. But not all cleaners with orange oil are environmentally friendly.

Seventh Generation makes some of the best environmentally-friendly cleaners on the market. Their Citrus Cleaner and Degreaser is amazing. I actually like cleaning the stove now: watching it dissolve cooked on grease and tomato sauce is fun. Seventh Generation’s Carpet Cleaner works better on old carpet stains and pet messes than any conventional product I have ever found. Also try their dish cleaners, and paper products.

Ecos is another trusted brand. I love their laundry detergent. Ecover makes my favorite stain remover. They also have great dish cleaning products.

Green cleaners can be found at your local grocery or drug store. If not, ask for them! Every national chain carries at east one of these brands, so your local buyer can easily get them from you. I have found Seventh Generation in small-chain grocery stores, so even if you shop at small local businesses only, they should be able to find them for you. As a last resort, checkout websites like http://www.gaiam.com/ and http://www.greenhome.com/ and order your cleaners over the web.

Last week I played “Capture the Flag” for over an hour in a gym with a bunch of pre-teens. I’m competitive, and not afraid to be tagged, so I landed in “jail” more than a dozen times. That’s a lot of running.

I couldn’t walk for days. I had problems driving because my legs hurt so much. I pulled muscles in my stomach moving boxes because I couldn’t lift with my legs.

I can’t wait to do it again!
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Also see the rest of my series on Home Staging:
Part 1: the nursery.
Part 2: the front yard.
Part 3: the front of the house
Part 4: the garage

What is Home Staging?

And my tips for creating Moving Lists.

The Laundry room and Mudroom are places where things (either you or your clothes) become clean. As a result, they tend to be dirty. And when you are trying to sell your home, NOTHING can be dirty.

Psychologically, when we see a bright, clean laundry room, we happily imagine clean, fresh laundry. And as the mudroom is another entrance, it often makes THE first impression: do you want that first impression to be stacks of coats, piles of mail and muddy boots? NOOOO!
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There is a great article at the Washington Post, “Despite ‘Mommy Guilt,’ Time With Kids Increasing: Society’s Pressures, Own Expectations Alter Priorities” by Donna St. George.

In a my previous post about the working mother / stay at home mother debate, I pointed out that mothers are doing there best.

Apparently, we’re doing better than June Cleaver! That’s right, mothers nowadays are actually spending 3 or 4 more hours a week tending to their family’s needs than mothers did in the 1960s!

This is totally surprising!

I feel better all ready!

Happy Mother’s Day!