Cleaning | The Stressed Mom

What to clean if you only have 5 minutes

Our lives as moms can be SO busy. We don’t know whether we are coming or going a lot of the time. This can make it difficult to carve out time to truly clean our house. Eventually we will have to deep clean, but I wanted to share with you what you can accomplish even if you JUST have 5 minutes. While you are waiting on a kid to get ready, or the water to boil, try doing one of these below:

Five minutes isn’t a lot of time but if you’re efficient you can get a lot done. [...]

Homemaking bundle e-book sale

For 6 days only, more than 75 widely-known bloggers and authors in the homemaking sphere have joined together to offer 97 of their most popular eBooks and eCourses, valued at just over $600, for the incredibly low price of $29.97!

More than anything, our goal for this sale was for it to be, well… ultimate! We firmly believe that you will not find a more comprehensive collection of homemaking resources anywhere on the web, and particularly not in this price range. For this low price, you gain access to every single one of these resources, so that [...]

7 steps to finish the unfinished stuff

If you were to walk into the house of just about any busy suburban family, you would probably find some unfinished business. In some houses you would have to look harder than others, but it would be there, maybe tucked away somewhere, out of sight. In other houses, you wouldn’t make it past the front door without finding it!

Here are some examples of unfinished business: The library books that have been sitting by the front door to go back to the library for 4 weeks The lawnmower sitting in the front yard where it cut off on Saturday, and now it [...]

Do these things everyday

Sometimes we long for an adventurous life. We want to throw caution to the wind and go with the flow. And in some occasions that may be a good thing, but for the most part, routines and habits can be a good thing. Having the important daily things on autopilot, if you will, gives you more time and more brain power for doing all those other exciting things, even if it is just playing Legos with your kids or taking a walk in the park.

10 things you should do every day*

1. Drink enough water. And be sure [...]

The BEST ever organizational tool

Since I am sharing organizational tips, I thought I would republish an old post from my other blog that is very pertinent here!

Everyone is always looking for a magic bullet, and special pill, a trick to help them with whatever issue is bothering them. And when it comes to organizing , it is no different. We all would like an easy peazy way out.

Well, I don’t have a magic bullet or special pill, and I can’t twinkle my nose to clean up your clutter, but I can offer you THE best ever organizational tool, [...]

10 tips for the organizationally challenged – Part 1

You know how there are some people who just seem to have it all together?

Their houses are always neat and put together. Their cars are organized with bins in the trunk. They can pick what to wear from their closet easily because it is so neat and they know where everything is. And they know tonight what they are having for dinner tomorrow and already have all the ingredients.

And then there are the rest of us. We look at those women in awe and wonder how do they do it? Sometimes I just think their brains must be [...]

2 tips to tame the dust in your home

First of all, I am not here to make you feel like you HAVE to get your house dust-free to be a good mom. If the dust in your house isn’t a big deal to you right now, don’t stress over it. This post is for those who feel the need to do something about it, but everyone is at a different point in life.

*Two disclaimers here off the top. I had a janitorial service for 13 years so I know a little bit about dusting. And links below are affiliate links. If you order anything by clicking on them [...]

Create routines to get more stuff done

Productive – Having the power of producing; generative; creative

To produce –

1. to bring into existence; give rise to; cause.

2. to bring into existence by intellectual or creative ability.

3. to make or manufacture.

4. to provide, furnish, or supply; yield.

It seems that the process of being productive would require hard work or creativity, at the very least. The problem is, our lives today are so filled with a lot of mundane tasks that the creative, hard work sometimes gets pushed to the side.

One way to make room for the productive opportunities is to create effective routines for the things that we [...]

Wonder Woman doesn’t live here anymore

*This post was originally published on Living the Balanced Life in June, 2011.

My regular readers know that I spent several days last week at the Type-A Parent Blog Conference in Asheville, NC. If you’re a blogger or a business that works with bloggers, this is an awesome conference to attend!

The closing keynote speaker was Liz Gumbinner. She blogs at Mom 101 and you can find her here on twitter. She was funny and made us laugh quite a bit. We could relate to her stories all too well.

So how does today’s woman “do it [...]

13 ways to stay stressed out

Just in case you aren’t stressed out enough, here are 13 ways to make sure you can turn your stress level up to the MAX!

Don’t have any kind of plan for meals or grocery shopping. Figure out what’s for dinner at 7 pm each night. Don’t designate a specific place for your mail and bills. This will ensure that you have piles of papers all around your house, and you will have no idea where your bills are. Let coworkers pile their work on you. Be the go-to person in the office. Say yes to every request made by your church, [...]