Summer Is Here!

This is our first full week with Hayden out of school and at home with Haylee and Holden.  They are on break from their homeschool schedule right now, so we’re all free to do fun things together! 

We started off the week by going bowling together, and my husband got to go, too, which was fun.  We bought the AMF Family Pass to go with the FREE summer bowling program for kids so we could all bowl for free.  The three big people have their own bowling shoes, so we pay just under $9 for the two youngest kids to rent shoes, and that’s it.  We get 3 games per day throughout the summer, and we had a great time!  I almost beat my husband on the second game, but when he told me I only needed 2 pins to beat him, I threw a gutter ball on my spare in the 10th frame!  Ugh.

Then on Tuesday, we had nearly record heat with a heat index of about 105, so we met our neighbor friends up at Ocean Breeze Water Park for some splashy fun.  It was a great way to spend a scorching hot day!  And the water actually felt warm.  We stayed in the Adventure River, just floating around, until we all turned into prunes!

Then on Wednesday, we all had our semi-annual dental checkups.  I took Holden to the pediatric dentist in Norfolk, Dr. Jillian Reynolds, and he actually had NO PROBLEMS for the first time ever!  He first saw the dentist when he was 5, and he’s had constant repairs since then.  All the work he had done originally had to be completely redone by the pediatric dentist later on, so this is truly the first time Holden could experience seeing the dentist for *just* a cleaning.  He was so relieved that there weren’t any needles!  Poor kid.  The rest of us saw our family dentist in Newport News, Dr. Shannon Martin, and we all had a clean bill of health, as well!  That’s the first time that has happened, too.  Hayden nearly always needs some kind of surface filling because he does a terrible job with brushing, but *finally,* we were ALL good! 

We had to celebrate, so we went and got Slurpees and then spent the afternoon at The Living Museum.  That was fun!  They had a great traveling exhibit on frogs, which was right up our alley.  Holden collects Webkinz frogs, we’ve raised tree frogs and even a bullfrog in the past all the way from the tadpole stage, and we currently have two African dwarf frogs.  We all enjoyed the exhibit very much and had a great time at the museum.

   

I also managed to get two of our vehicles inspected this week, and I made my way through a whole checklist of errands and things I had to do like pay the monthly bills.  So it was a fun yet still productive week!  We hung around home on Thursday and Friday.  We had a lot of intermittent storms this week that were pretty severe, so we watched movies and worked on review items towards the end of the week.  We even managed to go out for a family dinner on Saturday night when the tornados nearby finally passed through.  And today, we had a nice potluck after church, and the visitor we had for morning worship service was able to stay and enjoy some fellowship with us.  That’s always nice!  We all sat around recalling stories of how we ended up with our spouses, and mishaps of our weddings and early days together.  It amounted to lots of laughs, and everybody had a great time!

How was your week? 

It’s Sushi Night!: How to Make Sushi, Step-by-Step

There is a sushi bar inside of Kroger Marketplace where workers show up at dawn every day and make fresh sushi.  And wouldn’t you know that by afternoon, they are always handing out free samples to customers?  Low and behold, my very young son absolutely fell in love with sushi.  He wants it for his birthday dinner, he wants it for New Year’s, and he wants it just because he wants it!  After shelling out $1 per piece for his beloved Spicy California Crunch Rolls a couple of times, I decided it was time to learn how to make sushi at home.  How hard could it be? 

I set out to watch some YouTube videos that allowed me to really see what they were doing, and I read some articles to figure out what basic supplies I really needed to do the job right.  As it turns out, there are 3 essential kitchen tools:  a sharp sushi knife, a rice paddle, and a bamboo mat.  All of these items are super cheap if you have an Asian market nearby.  I got all 3 items at my local G-Mart store for $2 or less per item.  I have to say that my first attempt at making it went so well that it is now on my regular meal rotation!

So today was sushi night at my house, and I thought I’d take a few pictures and show you just how easy it really is!  And it will save you a ton of money.  Plus, you know it’s as fresh as it could possibly be!

 

SPICY CALIFORNIA CRUNCH ROLLS

Ingredients to make 2 whole sushi rolls:

• 3 imitation crab legs
• 1 seedless English cucumber
• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 cup dry sushi rice
• 2 Tbsp. seasoned rice vinegar
• French-fried onions (if you want crunch rolls)
• Spicy mayo (if you want spicy sushi)

Directions:

1. First, I prepare a batch of sushi rice...one cup of dry rice that has been rinsed repeatedly (like 10 times) until the water runs clear.  This is not just any rice…make sure you buy some labeled specifically for sushi.  It’s super sticky when cooked…to the point that you can’t touch it and expect to get it off your hands without eating it or washing it off in the sink!  Be sure to prepare it carefully as directed on the package…you don’t handle it the way you do other types of rice.  Once it boils, it has to remain covered and undisturbed throughout the cooking and cooling process…no stirring!  Once it cools, you transfer it to a non-metal bowl and use the rice paddle to stir in 2 Tbsp. of seasoned rice vinegar.  If you have natural rice vinegar (unseasoned), mix 1/8 cup of natural rice vinegar with 2 tsp. of sugar and 1/4 tsp. of Kosher salt in a small bowl.  Stir it swiftly until all of the sugar and salt are dissolved.  You now have your 2 Tbsp. of seasoned rice vinegar to add to the rice.
   
   
   
2. Next, I lay out my bamboo mat and set a sheet of roasted seaweed on top.  Then using the rice paddle, I carefully spread a solid layer of the prepared sushi rice over the seaweed sheet until it’s covered.  You want just enough to cover it without making it super thick. 
   
   
    
3. Because we’re making California rolls, the rice goes on the outside instead of the inside, so the next step is to carefully lift the sheet of seaweed and flip it over rice-side down onto the bamboo mat.  Once you’ve done that, place one and a half sticks of imitation crab legs near one end of the sheet, right along the longest length of the seaweed.  Then you’ll need to use the sushi knife to peel the length of the English cucumber.  Cut the peeled cucumber in half, and then carefully slice diagonally so you get a long triangular wedge of cucumber.  Place that alongside the crab.  Then cut an avocado in half, peel it, and then slice wedges of it and place them alongside the crab and cucumber. 
   
   
   
4. Once these 3 ingredients are in place, you can begin to roll up your sushi roll.  Starting at the end closest to your ingredients, carefully roll the bamboo mat, squeezing the seaweed and rice layer tightly over the center ingredients, trying not to leave any gap in the middle.  Once you’ve sealed up the center of the sushi roll, continue to roll the bamboo mat until the entire sushi has been rolled up.  Then carefully unroll the mat from the sushi roll. 
   
   
   
5. Next, crumble up a bowl full of French fried onions and press them onto the sticky sushi rice until the whole outside of the sushi roll is covered. 
   
   
   
6. Then using the sushi knife, carefully slice the roll into pieces about 1/2 inch thick and place them onto a chilled sushi plate.  I use plates that are filled with freezer gel, and I pre-freeze them to keep the sushi cold until I serve it.
   
   
   
7. I repeat steps 2-5  to make a second sushi roll, and the single batch of sushi rice is just the right amount to make 2 rolls. 
8. Then the next step is to prepare to apply the spicy mayo sauce (if you’re making Spicy California Crunch Rolls) to your sliced sushi.  If you want regular California Crunch Rolls, then skip this step.  I purchase the spicy mayo from the sushi bar at Kroger.  It costs $1.99 for one little plastic tub that’s just enough sauce for 2 whole sushi rolls.  I like my sushi to look pretty and aesthetically pleasing, so I like to pour my spicy mayo into an icing press that’s normally used to decorate cookies. 
   
   
   
9. Using the icing press, I drizzle the spicy mayo sauce back and forth across the sushi pieces.  Then it’s ready to serve!
   
   

 

Despite being a very messy labor of love, it’s actually quite easy to make, and the best part about making it is seeing all the empty plates after my kids have gobbled it up like lickety split!

 

 

This one batch of 2 whole sushi rolls is plenty to serve my family of 5.  I get about 9 slices from each roll.  And to keep the extra crab sticks in the package from being wasted, I make up packs of 3 sticks of crab per plastic snack-size Ziploc bag, and then place all of the bags inside a larger freezer bag.  Then the next time I want to make sushi, all I have to do is pull out one of the snack-size bags and drop it in a bowl of cold water to thaw.  No waste! 

I hope you’ll try this in your home!  It’s really so easy, and the more you make it, the faster it goes.  It’s so much more affordable to make it yourself, and that means you can have it more often!  Enjoy!

REVIEW: SmartKidz Media Library for Homeschoolers by SmartKidz Media

The kids and I were lucky enough to get to review SmartKidz Media Library for Homeschoolers by SmartKidz Media.

 

WHAT IS IT?:

SmartKidz Media Library for Homeschoolers is an online streaming media site designed especially for homeschoolers.  That means there are no useless filler shows, but lots of wholesome, quality educational programming instead. 

Not only are their interesting documentaries about nature, animals, science, culture, exercise, travel, fine arts, and cooking, but there is also a variety of music, such as classical, jazz and blues, relaxation, and cultural. 

As if that weren’t enough content,  there are also a number of other key features:

• Mighty Ebook Collection: contains animated storybooks and short videos about topics like holidays, bible stories, classic sing-alongs, reading readiness, Aesop’s fables, and Mother Goose rhymes.
• Baby Signs Program:   teaches baby signs and potty training for early learners.
• Quick-Find Study Guides:  contains study guides on topics like language arts, math, science, social studies, and coming soon will be accounting and foreign language.
• My Animal Family:  includes video storybooks, fun facts, and story songs all about animals.
• Early Learning for Special Needs:  includes resources for everyday life, going places, holidays and celebrations, sequencing, arts & science, sing-along story songs, and basic language skills.
• Living Skills Program – coming soon!
• Ready-Set-Sing Songs:  includes kids’ karaoke music and sing-along songs for kids ages 2-8.
• Fun Zone – educational games, jokes/limericks/riddles, and puzzles.

Does that sound like enough to keep your kids entertained and learning in a fun way?  You can get all this plus coming features like soon-to-be-added videos on history and extreme sports by subscribing to this streaming service for just $99/year or $10/monthly.  You can even sign up for a 14-day free trial to try it out for yourself!

 

OUR EXPERIENCE:

There’s really so much to say about this streaming service!  You can use it on any device with a browser since all you need to be able to do is to pull up the website.  The exception is for the games, which may use Adobe Flash, which precludes using those on an Apple device.  The kids don’t always want to watch programming on their tablet or computer, so we loved that we could stream the videos using the browser in our Wii U and watch the documentaries on the big tv in the living room.

I have to admit that I’ve been just as interested in the programming as the kids, and my 15-year old son and I have watched quite a few of the  documentaries together.  We both enjoy that kind of show, and the selections have been really good.  Back in early May, I was using this program through the free trial, and I noticed there was an animated e-book on Cinco de Mayo that I watched in preparation for the holiday, and I have to admit that even I learned some things I didn’t know!  For instance, I always thought, as many people do, that it was the Mexican Independence Day, but that’s simply not the case!  It’s just a common misconception.  In actuality, Cinco de Mayo commemorates a specific battle.  That was pretty cool to learn something like that, even at my age!

My youngest son really enjoys science videos, and there are even some “how it’s made” types of shows on there.  My daughter loves animal videos, and she particularly enjoyed the ones on animal babies.  We’ve even used this streaming service for entertainment for friends.  My kids often have the neighbor’s girls over in the afternoons and on weekends, and the girls have come over and watched many of the nature documentaries with my kids.

We also used the streaming cultural music to listen to the music of different countries that we studied recently, and we scoped out possibilities for our upcoming country-themed birthday party this summer.  I personally particularly enjoyed the classical music and classic jazz/blues tunes from Doris Day to brighten my morning while we did our schoolwork!

I love the portability of this service.  One day, I was teaching science to my youngest son, Holden, using an Usborne book on animals.  He was learning about tigers that day, and I remembered that there was something about tigers in one of the animal videos on SmartKidz.  So I pulled up the video right there on my iPad and let Holden watch the parts that pertained to Siberian tigers in the video, and it was easy to use the preview on the scrolling button to skip to the parts I wanted him to see at that moment.  He loved that!  And of course, he wanted to watch the whole thing, which he did the next day when we were off school.  He loves digital elements like that, particularly for science, and it was such a great way to supplement our studies right there on the spot!

In fact, I think if I could make one suggestion to the vendor, it would be to provide a topical index of sorts on their website, allowing homeschoolers to quickly locate the resources for any particular topic.  That would be amazing!  It would definitely make it even more of a tool for homeschool educators.  So many of the videos cover multiple topics, so that could really be useful.

The vendor also let us know that the upcoming history and extreme sports videos will be added early this summer, so I’m really looking forward to that!  In fact, they’ve already started.  Over the last week or so, they’ve added a 6-part series of videos on World War II, as well as a 6-part series on the Cold War.  Holden really wants to see the extreme sports, and the additional history content will be great for supplementing our school lessons.  The vendor said they are continually adding new content, which keeps things new and fresh.

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop for fun supplemental media for your homeschool, you can’t go wrong with SmartKidz Media Library for Homeschoolers.  Take a look at what other Crew members have to say about this product by clicking the banner below.

Family Freebies

Do you pay much attention to all the FREE offers for food and beverages at national chains?  It seems there’s a special day on the calendar for just about anything these days, and many restaurants offer free goodies to commemorate these unique celebrations.

Just this week, we got a free Jetty Punch Smoothie at Tropical Smoothie Cafe in honor of National Flip-Flop Day.  I don’t even like flip-flops, but my neighbor loaned me a pair, and she and her kids piled into my van with us to go stand in line and earn our free frozen treat.  At nearly $5/smoothie, that was no small giveaway!  Our group of 7 people would have been charged over $36 for those smoothies.  And they were so refreshing after standing in the hot sun waiting to get inside!

Also this week, we all got together to visit Chick-Fil-A for lunch.  On the last day of public school, they offered a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich to all students, and only non-elementary students needed to show their student i.d.  Yum!  I didn’t mind buying a $3 sandwich for myself when my 3 kids were getting theirs for free!

Just a couple of weeks ago, we went to Krispy Kreme and selected the free doughnut of our choice for National Donut Day.  We never eat doughnuts, so that’s a real treat for us!

Then coming up in July, we have two more special days to look forward to.  July 11th is 7-Eleven Day at 7-11 stores, where you get a free small slurpee.  Who doesn’t love a free slurpee?  Our neighbors usually come with us, and we literally go from store to store drinking as many slurpees as we can.  There are so many 7-11 stores around us that we can probably go to 7 or 8 different stores in a 2-mile radius of our house.  When we get home, we make a pyramid of our empty slurpee cups and snap a photo for our scrapbook, trying to beat our record number of cups from past years.  It’s always fun for the kids!  I find I actually drink less and less of them each year, because all that sugar gives me a tummy ache! 

The other freebie day in July is on the 14th this year.  It’s Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A!  On that very exciting day, we get to dress in cow garb and get free combo meals all day long!  Again, we have many restaurants around us, so we find one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and usually have plenty of food to stuff in the fridge for a couple of days afterwards. 

There are others throughout the year, but these are our favorites of summer.  Oh, and don’t forget Talk Like a Pirate Day!  That one falls on September 19th this year.  We wear pirate costumes and hit places like Krispy Kreme and Long John Silver’s for free food.  If you dress fully like a pirate, you get not just one, but a whole dozen free glazed donuts! 

On these special days, we get treated to not only free food, but what we view as a fun family adventure.  What are your favorite food freebies?  Please share in the comments. 

One Crazy Week: Squid Dissection, Spongebob Movie, and HEAV Convention

On Tuesday, I chaperoned Hayden’s final field trip of the year with his Biology class at the Virginia Aquarium.  I got to take Haylee and Holden along, and we all rode the bus together just for fun. 

The kids got to dissect a real squid!  They got to pop out the eyeball and separate the lens, find and dislodge the beak, and remove the pen from its back.  Yuck!  I opted not to touch it myself.  It smelled fishy and gross, and it was clearly squishy!  I took some pictures during the process, though…that was plenty close for me!

The Squid Specimen

 

The Beak

 

  

The Lens

 

The Pen

 

Here are some fun photos we took while on our self-guided tour of the museum.

    

 

  

Tuesday afternoon, we tried to join some friends from homeschool sports to see the new Cinderella movie, but we arrived about 15 minutes late and decided to see the Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water instead because we were right on time for that one.  Holden was really excited, because he really loves Spongebob.  It turned out great…it was funny, and Holden laughed out loud through the whole thing.  Fun!

Then on Friday, I got up at 5:15 AM and headed out of the house by 6 AM to drive up to Richmond to work at the annual HEAV Convention from 8:15 AM to 3 PM.  I was working in the Logic of English vendor booth.  When I got done for the day, I spent a couple of hours perusing the used curriculum sale and some of the vendor booths before getting back on the road to head back home.  Traffic coming back was terrible, and I didn’t breeze into town for gas until about 8:30 PM, so it took about 3 hours to get home.  I was wide awake and ended up staying up until 1 AM, so I felt totally wiped out all day Saturday.  I even fell asleep on the floor at one point during the day!  LOL

Then we headed up to Hayden’s school for a family movie night.  I was so glad to finally crawl into bed for the night!

I had a lot of fun working at the convention and talking with both consumers and vendors about products I’ve used and reviewed.  It was a pleasure getting to meet the creator of Write Shop, and I even spent some time at the Rainbow Resource shop convincing some ladies to buy the New American Cursive books from Memoria Press that we tried out recently and loved. 

I have to say that for spending so many hours in a busy, crowded place, it was a positive experience for me, and I was reminded of what a really nice crowd homeschoolers generally are…just mostly a lot of good people doing something they really believe in for their children.  It’s a nice group of people with whom to associate yourself.

Until next time, stay cool and out of the impending thunderstorms we’re expecting nearly every day this next week!

How Decluttering Changed My Life

For me, I have difficulty relaxing when I have a "to-do" list in my head.  I recently started using Homeschool Planet to organize our home and homeschool schedules, and it works well for me.  I like it because I can keep our school schedule and my daily/weekly cleaning tasks scheduled all in one place. 

I don't function well when my environment is cluttered and messy.  For years, my house was just more than I could manage when the kids were younger.  It seemed like just getting through a day was challenging enough.  And it felt that way EVERY day.  Eventually, we rented a giant dumpster and seriously got rid of "stuff."  That was only the beginning, though.

Over the next couple of years, I started organizing one room, one closet, one drawer at a time.  This past year has been organizational "projects" that sort of fine-tuned things and made daily life easier.  I read a great article on organizational ideas for the home that really got my mind working.  I made lists of the ideas I wanted to implement and kept it in my wallet.  I worked on one idea at a time until I had done them all.  It included everything from making a rotating menu board for daily meal planning, to a hanging organizer on the coat closet door for collecting gloves, hats, and scarves, to a hanging organizer for my seasonal garden flags, to hooks inside my cupboard doors for hanging measuring cups and spoons by size.  One thing just led to another. 

Then recently, I got some new flooring put in my hallway and downstairs bathroom, and shortly thereafter in my laundry room and pantry closet.  That inspired me to remodel the bathroom and clean out and reorganize the pantry again.  I've had yard sales and recently participated in a community yard sale.  I've stayed on top of cleaning out and getting rid of the kids' outgrown clothing and toys.  I've freecycled a lot of their stuff just to be rid of it.  I've been cleaning out bookshelves and thinning out outgrown school materials.  I've sold curriculum on Facebook and listed toys on Craigslist.  I've made a little extra money, and I've purged a LOT of stuff.  We also purchased an extra city trash can so I would always have room to throw out more "stuff" without using up our trashcan space for regular trash.

All that to say that over time, I've come to a completely different place.  My house is now manageable, and even presentable!  I feel on top of things for the first time in a LONG time.  I am keeping up with my daily cleaning routines, and now it's just maintenance rather than heavy decluttering.  That feels good...SOOO good.  That allows me to focus my attention on other things.  I have more time for blogging, more time for bible study, more time for leisure...a word that was never in my vocabulary before.  Heck, I even take a nap in the afternoon oftentimes!  I "feel" better.  I've learned to relax a bit.  And now both bible study and blogging are on my schedule during the week.  I can make purposeful time for them so I can do them regularly.  If a friend were to drop by unannounced, I’d have no problem inviting them in without a second of apology or embarrassment for things out of place.

I don't feel overwhelmed any more, and I don't feel depressed the way I often did before.  I can see the progress.  I can feel it.  It has made my daily life better.  And I can plan for busier times and not get behind.  Aaaaaah.  Sweet peace.  When I go to bed at night, my mind is able to slow down better, and my sleep is so peaceful and, well, restful.  Truly, my life has changed.  I look forward to each new day.  I embrace my mornings!  And when I check off that last task on my list at night, I really feel free to let go of my day.

And it really is true that once you get to this point, cleaning suddenly feels so easy and not overwhelming as it used to.  I used to feel like it would never end, and I could never feel “finished.”  Now my cleaning routine focuses on one room or area of the house each day, so that over the course of the week, the whole house gets a good cleaning, and the hot spots and high traffic areas are taken care of every day.  It no longer feels like an insurmountable task.  It’s now just a few minutes here and there throughout the day in between the many other things that take up my day (like homeschooling two of my three kids), and I actually have time to do fun things with my kids and read bedtime stories and cool things like that.

I’m in a really good place…better than I can remember in a long time.  I’m sorry my parents aren’t still around to share it with me.  Things are good.  I’m thankful and truly blessed.  Rejoice, for this is the day the Lord has made!

 

photo credit: Belize - Sarteneja-36 via photopin (license)

More Spring Organization Projects!

I had so much fun yesterday reading blogs and perusing Pinterest for some new home organization ideas.  While I didn’t find exactly the solutions I needed, I found enough inspiration to come up with some of my own, and before the day was out, I managed to finish two complete organizational projects that made a real difference in my home!

PROBLEM #1:  I have this one cabinet in my kitchen, beside the stove, that has always been just a jumbled mess!  It has so many different kinds of things inside it that we’ve never been able to make rhyme or reason of it…beverage mixes, medicines, seasoning packets, spices, cake decorating stuff, baking supplies like extracts and sugars, aquarium gravel, vitamins and supplements…you name it, it was in there.  Nobody can ever find what they need in there, and I often end up buying repeats of medicines that would then go on to expire in the back of the cupboard.  It’s been a sad state of affairs since 1997 when we moved in here.  Ugh.

SOLUTION #1:  I went out and bought 9 baskets that fit perfectly side by side in that cupboard, 3 per shelf.  I cleaned out all the expired medicines and products, moved out items that already have a home somewhere else (like the cake decorating stuff that belongs in a bin in my pantry), and sorted the items that were left into the baskets.  Then I labeled the end of each basket (I plan to get nicer-looking labels down the road…I just used file folder labels for right now) and slid them into place.  Voila!  This cabinet finally makes sense, and my husband can now go to the right basket when he has a headache or thinks he has a fever and easily find the pain reliever and the thermometer without having to plead with me to wade my way through there in order to find him some relief!  Yay!

PROBLEM #2:  I have a really small laundry room that has just enough for my washer and dryer and some overhead cabinets for laundry supplies and not much more.  The closet in there is my pantry closet, and there’s a door in between there that gets opened and closed a dozen times a day to let my dogs out back to go potty.  With 5 people in the house, that’s a lot of laundry, and I have to wash one load every single day to keep up with it.  Up until now, I’ve had 6 separate small laundry baskets…one for each person plus one for the towels that belong in the linen closet upstairs.  We’ve done it that way so each person can take their own basket to their room and put their own clothes away.  In theory, they are supposed to do it every day, but not all of us (and you can probably guess which ones) actually do that on schedule.   As a result, I’m forced to unstack those baskets every single day in order to fold and sort laundry and then restack them full of clothes to try to keep them out of the way.  Unfortunately, my little dog has a habit of laying on top of the clean clothes in one of the baskets, and my big dog just plain barrels into them and knocks them over so that I have to re-fold everything in them all over again.  Yikes!  And I’ve always disliked that anyone can see the stack of laundry baskets from the rest of the house since you can see right through the doorway into the laundry room at all times.  Blech!

SOLUTION #2:  After seeing on Pinterest where someone had built a wooden frame with lips in it that allowed them to slide their laundry baskets into it so they were stored vertically, that got me thinking…vertical storage is my only option in my tiny laundry room, but I definitely don’t have space for another piece of furniture to permanently sit in place, particularly since that room is L-shaped.  So my brain started working, and it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps some of those large 3-drawer plastic storage carts would fit beside my washer and dryer sideways if I pushed the appliances really close together.  I have some carts like that in my craft room, so I pulled out one of the drawers just to check the spacing, and sure enough, it would fit!  So I rushed out to Walmart and bought 2 more Sterlite carts like that with the extra wide drawers, and I put the wheels on one and stacked the other one without wheels on top of it.  That gave me 6 drawers to replace my 6 laundry baskets…one per person and one for towels.  My husband is going to clamp them together for me in some way so the top one doesn’t slide off the bottom one.  Then I pushed the appliances together and rolled the drawers sideways against the wall by the back door, which means no one can see them from other parts of the house.  Voila!  Now every time I fold laundry, I just roll them out in front of the back door, open my dryer door beside them, fold clothes, and sort them into the appropriate drawers as I go.  Then when I’m done, I just roll them back into place out of the way.  When each person comes to put their clothes away, all they have to do is take out their drawer and return it when they are finished.  Yay!  I’m going to make some nice labels for the drawers so the younger kids can find their drawer easily.  Perfection!  I was so excited last night that I couldn’t go to sleep until after midnight.  Seriously…it makes this everyday task so much simpler, and it keeps my laundry room looking spiffy at all times.  Hooray!

I feel so inspired that now I’m looking for other projects I can do the next time I have some time to spare.  I saw something promising on Pinterest about a product called Grout Renew that I want to try on my tiled kitchen floor, and I picked up a used vanity cabinet and sink top for my bathroom for $25 at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store yesterday that I want to re-stain and seal and add to my downstairs bathroom.  So many projects!

What projects do you have going on in your house right now?