Quick Update

Sorry everyone that I haven't been updating. As most of you may know, I have been ultra busy with my newest blog, I Want To Be Debt Free, and earning free money online. Check out my new blog for ways to earn free money online, and to see how much I am making right now.

But as for Mama Knows Best, I have been compiling a very long list of ways to advertise your home business offline (instead of online). My deadline has been to get this up last week, however that doesn't seem to have happened. So, my new deadline is by Monday night (2/23). So, if you are really interested in this list, then keep me focused and on track. *Wink* (Tweets, comments, or even emails)

I will be around today, but not sure how much tomorrow because it is my hubby's birthday (Yay for 27! Even though he's not too thrilled about the age. Hehe). We have lots of people coming over, and lots of food to cook. The menu will include: Chili, Cornbread, and Homemade Pizza. Then the night will probably commence with Poker, because that's how my hubby's family is.

So wish us luck in the gambling, and wish me luck in the typing.

Feelings of Accomplishment

I am feeling rather accomplished and proud today. I have finally gotten through to my husband that I need help around here, and it is going to happen whether he likes it or not. I got all the dishes cleaned and caught up on, and I refuse to let them get behind again. If my husband fills any with water, I stand over him until he washes them himself. I have demonstrated to him my concept of rinsing dishes with hot water instead of "soaking" them and how much more effective it is. Needless to say, he finally saw my point of view. (Now if only I can get rid of that nasty smell coming up from the sink drain.)

I have also finalized (for now) the chore list and system that hubby, Mack, and I are going to follow daily from now on. I spent an entire night deciding on the chores, frequency needed, and who can do what. I know I talked about using Chore Buster awhile ago, but that will only work if you already have everyone pitching in with the chores. No one was before, so I had to get a system in place first.

After a whole night of debating, categorizing, and analyzing I have come up with a solution.

This is a picture of the Family Chore list I posted on our fridge. Each person has their own set of chores, and even a few days off. I had to create it in a way that was fitting to their activity spans now, so as you can see my husband only has one chore a day and one day off completely. Then Mack has between 1 and 3 chores a day with the weekends off (because she spends time at her Grandma's). I know you can see that I got the sh** end, because I have at least one chore everyday and a few days I have 4 chores. However it's easy because I like dishes done a certain way, and everyone has to wash their own dishes anyways. So, really my chore of "washing dishes" entails my own dishes and any meal dishes (pots, pans, etc.). Having it written like this though and already having everyone trained to follow through and wash their own plates and stuff, they don't notice my little loophole *wink* So don't tell them.

Do you have a chore list for your family? Does it work? How is it set up?

My Own Reading Program for a One Year Old

As I type, I have been in the midst of working on my very own version of how to teach my son to read. I have seen the infomercial for "Your Baby Can Read" and was astounded to find out how big of a trend this is. They have a system and it does seem to work on so many babies ages 3 months to 3 years.

I also found so many sites dedicated to Dolch words for beginner readers, word card suggestions, even a short article by Gwynne Spencer about how she taught her son to read using manicure scissors at 3 years old!

Then that got me thinking, 'If Gwynne created her own method that encouraged her son at 3, why can't I create my own method for my son at 1?' He is already interested in learning so many new things, like sign language, new foods, new places, etc. He is an open book for me to write LOL.

So, here I am, ready and willing to get started, and my first step was to identify the words I wanted to teach him. I was reading this article on eHow.com where they suggest to make 100-200 word cards and show them to your baby 3 times a day for no more than 30 seconds each. How you do it is by showing one new word a day until you get to 5 words, then retire the first word, etc etc. For more details, please go read the article, it is very informative.

I decided to identify my own 100+ words that I would like to teach my son. I started with his body and his environment. Mostly words that are easy for me to show him.

As I got over 100 words, I began thinking of an idea I had when I was younger... I wanted to write words on name cards for objects around the house and then tape them to each object, like what they do in preschools. I did this for a short while with my step daughter, however with many moves and all, the cards became torn or lost.

But that would be perfect to lead my son into the venture of reading. My goal is going to be to make these name cards again, and as I tape them up I will have my son with me. I will read the word, show him the object and then he can help or watch me tape it on (hopefully out of reach and for good, otherwise I will be replacing them often).

Then the everyday game I want to play is by making index cards with the words of the objects on them. I will show him a card, read it off, and then go show him the object. Eventually I want him to be able to run around and show me the objects as I show him the card. I have no goal for a length of time for him to learn, and I am taking a more direct approach than one word a day. I am going to treat it more like with sign language. I sign to him as often as I can.

I will do the same thing with the reading cards I make. Every time I say the word, I will show him the card (and probably sign as well). At this age, kids are sponges to information. Their brains are still developing and capable of taking in much more information than most people give them credit for. My son was able to pick up on his routine in only 2 weeks, and then we moved and he still was accustomed to his routine in the new environment.

I have been astounded by my son's intelligence and I really want to give him more credit than I have been. No more am I going to think, 'oh no he is too young for that,' because he can never be too young to be exposed to the real world and education.

Do you have any amazing teaching stories of your kids? Please share with us here. All links welcome! Videos of your kids being amazing would be great, too.

Decluttering ~ Day 4

If you saw me on Twitter today, then you should know about most of my progress. Oh and I have to share my ChoreBuster chores for the day:

1. Cook Breakfast & Lunch
2. Declutter House
3. Wash dishes

"Declutter house" is set to occur every 7 days, and I did not choose a start date but ironically it randomly chose today's date and me to start with. LOL.

Anywho... I had an hour of energy this morning and was able to downsize 1 giant box and 3 laundry baskets of random clothes that came over last night from the old apartment to only 2 laundry baskets (small ones) of clothes to keep. The rest will be going over to Salvation Army first thing tomorrow (they are closed today, and we just had a snow storm last night so we didn't want to leave it outside overnight).

I am also purging a small tupperware container filled with old McDonald's toys I collected as a kid (Barbies and Pokemon), two purses, and all my old Halloween outfits (yes, I kept all of them for years).

Now we are off to have dinner at a friend's house tonight. They have been helping us move, and still offer more. Once we get the house, food, etc in order over here, we will be inviting them over. Also, I am going to write a thank you note to the wife's work, Wild Side Florist. They so generously offered up the services of their delivery van and gas yesterday to help us do a day's worth of moving!

Decluttering ~ Day 3

I didn't post anything yesterday on my decluttering efforts simply because my camera died, so I could not take a pic of my efforts. However, I would like to post saying that I did end up purging two large black trashbags filled with old clothes from myself, my son, and my daughter. (The hubs barely has any clothes to begin with.)

So, keeping that in mind here I am at Day 3 and this is what has gone on today.

Hubby dragged over some more things from the old apartment, and put most of them in the kitchen instead of in the basement as per our plan. So, now I have 2 large bins, 2 large boxes, 2 boxes of baby clothes and 3 laundry baskets worth of things to go through.

I tackled the smallest and quickest thing first, the baby clothes. Hubby found these, I guess, in one of the closets at the old apartment and they contain lots of things given to me while I was still pregnant and working by an ex-coworker. I never even opened up the boxes! Needless to say, some of the items were too small for my son, however I was surprised to come across quite a few that actually did fit him.

So out of 2 diaper boxes stuffed full of baby things, I have resorted and will be keeping barely one box worth of it all. The rest will be brought over to Salvation Army first thing in the morning.

Chores Made Fair

Last night, I worked real hard on coming up with a chore list for the new apartment, so that hubby and I can keep up on all the in's and out's and keep this place looking spic and span. I didn't want it to be too complex and as fair as possible, so we alternated most chores and each had our own chores (i.e. he empties the cat box because I am pregnant and can't, while I pay the bills because I don't trust him too LOL).

Then I sat down with him (while he was playing one of his video games, so I didn't really have his full attention), and asked what he thought and if it was fair enough. I got a quick read through and an 'Uh hmm,' as if that was supposed to really give me the feedback I needed. Then I tried to ask if he thought I had forgotten anything, but the answer to that was a very simple and quick 'Nope.' But of course, after thinking for a few minutes and looking around the house some more, I had forgotten some things and proceeded to add them.

Then this morning, I woke really early (4:00 AM) and could not get back to sleep, so after some quick cleaning and toy pickup, I decided to do some Internet surfing. With the chore list still fresh in my mind from last night, I decided to read up on some household organization tips and such. Throughout my searching, I came across a wonderful review from Money Saving Pro about a unique and free website that helps organize family chore lists online! Hmm... that got my attention.

The website is called Chore Buster, and it is designed to help families or couples fairly assign the chores of the household. And yes it is 100% free. Although there are a few nice features that can be used if you donate to the site.

Even so, without paying anything, a user is able to enter the names of as many family members as they have, customize each member's chore settings (i.e. No chores on Sunday or 75% less chores for kids), and set a list of chores. This service is so helpful that it can email each member their chore lists on a weekly or even daily basis. Or you can simply print a master one out and hang it on the fridge for all.

It also lets you customize the frequency and desirability of each chore. Desirability? Yes, you can set things like pick up toys to 1 for easy and cleaning the bathroom to 6 for medium and then cleaning the gutters to 10 for extreme. You can also set certain chores as not being assigned to certain members, such as I won't let my daughter clean the cat boxes or the oven, and my hubby won't be paying the bills or folding/putting away the laundry (he can never tell who's is who's). Also, since I cannot clean the cat boxes because I am pregnant, that is all hubby's job.

You can also set rewards for each chore (dollar amounts only), and then there is a checklist that you can tally up the rewards for each person. I have this set for simple dollar amounts from $1 to $10 for each chore. Then instead of giving each person the exact amount they earned, I am using it as a percentage from our allowance fund. I am not sure about the nitty gritty just yet, but I will work it out once we get this more underway.

Some examples of my amounts are $1 for picking up and vacuuming a room, $2 for taking out the trash, $5 for cleaning the whole bathroom, and $10 for 'Surprise husband/wife with something nice.' (That last "chore" I found in the preset list, and just had to use it for us). That is another nice feature, you can search through a list of popular chores or look at other member's lists entirely. This helped me to find some things I was missing in my list.

Then after all that nitty gritty, Chore Buster will divide up the chores based on your settings for each (frequency, members, and desirability) so that each member will have a fair amount of 'points' for chores to do each day. *It even has an option to set a random quality for surprises.* The points are the ones you assign as desirability and difficulty. I set my daughter's chores to 75% less, because she is only 6 and has school. She also gets the weekends off from any chores.

You then have the option to create a chore list for 1, 2, or 3 weeks (and by member if you donate), and view it in web page, Word, or Excel form to print. There are many more unique and awesome features that are available if you donate to the site.

You can take a look at my chore schedule here, and sign up for your very own free account here. They have some advanced features, such as viewing chores via mobile or RSS feed, and also a dektop widget you can download. They also mention that soon they will be integrating Facebook with Chore Buster soon, so stay tuned on that.

Do you use Chore Buster? If so, what features do you like? If not, are you going to give it a go?

Decluttering ~ Day 1

Yes, I will be updating my progress everyday of my decluttering project. I outlined the steps here for this, but in case you missed it, they are:

My Plan to Declutter Our New Place

1. Everything that is not 100% essential to our everyday survival is being moved into the basement here.
2. Each day, I will bring up one bag at a time and go through it.
3. I will only keep things that are essential, and not keep things simply for material or sentimental reasons.

So, that is the plan, and I am asking you all to help encourage me to keep at it. Emails, comments, tweets, anything to keep me motivated, updating, and moving. This is a new year, and I am determined to not force my kids to live in clutter anymore.

Okay, well rant over, this is supposed to be an update. What have I gotten done today? Well, I finally went through Ronin's old toys to make room for the new ones he got for the holidays. Here is a pic of the box I brought over to Salvation Army.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but this box is really deep. I counted and it is about 20 toys in all (maybe a bit more). Not a bad start in my mind.

Have you donated or decluttered anything today?

I'm back. Did you miss me?

Of course, I have to start with a cute for the day.

Above is a pic of my son being his adorable self, playing with my cell phone.

How can you not love those eyes?

Now onto my update... we are here, we are getting settled, and the Internet is back on. *Angels singing* Very poor planning on our part, however with a 1 year old, winter storms brewing, and living in a poorly heated/insulated apartment, can you really blame us for up and leaving as soon as we signed the lease to our new place? All I needed for motivation was to wake up the next morning, realize the heat was cranked to 90, but we were all still bundled up and freezing, and to feel my son's ice cold hands that I can never keep covered.

By that night, we had the two kids beds, the couch, the spare mattress, and all of our electronics moved into the new apartment. I could barely get out a post saying that we had signed the lease. However my family's health was so much more important than any of that. I can sort of relate it to a fire, only much much colder and none of our stuff was burnt.

So now, we are here with the good majority of our things moved over, and just some more of the clutter to pack up and move over here. Yes, we are taking our clutter with us. However, we have a plan in place for getting through it all.

My Plan to Declutter Our New Place

1. Everything that is not 100% essential to our everyday survival is being moved into the basement here.
2. Each day, I will bring up one bag at a time and go through it.
3. I will only keep things that are essential, and not keep things simply for material or sentimental reasons.

I have many tools and advantages at my disposal now to help me keep up with this new plan. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, Salvation Army is right across the street! A declutterer and frugal shopper's dream, right? Also, this apartment comes equipped with a dumpster right in the complex. But of course, I think it is all possible, because of the basement storage space we have. No one else uses it right now, so we are free to store as much as we need to for now. But of course my goal is to tone it down to practically nothing within the next few months.

If you want to see some pictures of our new place, click here. So far they are all of the place empty before we moved anything in. I have a few as we started moving things in, but my flickr upload limit is practically reached just with these. So, I will wait to post better ones instead.

Yay I am Moving!

Well, finally... the day has come that I was not expecting. We were finally accepted for a new apartment. We have been looking and looking and waiting (not so patiently) for something in our price range (low income) and cleaner than where we are now. I am not proud of my current abode, and do not post many pics or videos because of it.

However that is all about to change. My MIL's contact at a real estate agent actually helped us out and found us an amazingly clean and cheap apartment ($825 a month, including heat and hot water). For those of you not familiar with the market here in Central Mass, that is a deal!! Right now we are paying $650 with nothing included, and the place is a dump. Really the building should be condemned like the one next door was. I have felt depressed and guilty forcing my children to live here in such conditions, but tried my damndest and more to make it homey, comfortable, and clean. Mostly my son is confined by a puzzle gate on the area rug in the living room, which has been getting ever more difficult with his newly found walking skills.

So, anyways, I never held my breath that our credit would be accepted anywhere better, and sat here and listened while my parents, brothers, and other family members knocked the only place we could afford or be accepted to live in. (Personally, if you are not willing to help out, then really you should have no say in the situation we are in now.) But that's a different issue that will soon be history.

Of course, knowing my mother and the perfect rental units she lived in because of being a military family, she will find something, if not many things, to complain and irk me about. She means well, but she doesn't always know when to keep her perfect opinions to herself.

The new place is small, ok much smaller, than where we are now. However, I have been begging hubby to help me downsize on our clutter forever now. This is the exact incentive we need. Also, the best part about our new apartment is... Salvation Army is right across the street! How much more perfect can it get? I can donate all that old clothes from high school that I will never wear again (and never let my daughters wear), and then go inside and find some real deals on maternity clothes that actually fits me. I am happy.

So, yeah, I will try my best and keep up with posting as this was very sudden and last minute. I am a bit upset with myself that I still don't have reserve posts, however this way I can post updates on the move and how everything is going with 'the fam' in our new place. Wish us luck cramming into a smaller apartment, and if you have any tips about decorating for a very small apartment, please feel free to email me or comment here with them.

16 Days of New Things ~ Day 6 & 7

My apologies for not posting yesterday, I was only able to be online for a few hours when I suddenly was struck with a massive migraine that did not go away until I went to bed at 10.

So, I will post two things today.

Day 6

I found an interesting website that I am curious about other people's opinions on and would like to help promote. It is called CharityAds.org. If you visit the website, you can click once per day per charity and they will donate money to that given charity. The cost to you ~ NOTHING!

That's right, it is absolutely 100% FREE to you. All you have to do is click! So, why would you not do something like that?

They way it works, according to their website, "CharityAds.org turns over all the net proceeds from our Sponsors to the charity whose page generated the view or purchase."

So, what is your opinion? Let me know in the comments below.

Day 7

I am in the midst of a huge lifestyle change for my family. Yes, I am talking about coupon clipping (and using). I added that last part, because I have always been avid at looking at, thinking about, and sometimes even clipping coupons out. However, I never really use them. I would talk and talk about it for hours, but when it comes down to it, we would always be in such a rush I would forget all about them.

So, today I was determined (and lets hope this lasts) to find a method, outline the way, and do it.

I went to multiple blogs that I already read, The Coupon Coup, Freebies 4 Mom, and even $5 Dinners for advice, tips and tricks. I ended up getting led all over to keep finding and researching more, and I ended up at CouponMom.com.

The reason I stopped here is because she has an increasingly in depth database filled and updated weekly with store sales and circular coupon deals. She tells you where to find the coupons, and when to use them, etc. The best part about this site, it is FREE!

She even has a few eBooks to help you get started (and yes those are available for free as well).

So, this is where my journey has taken me today. I am following her advice (possibly a bit more in depth than most) and aiming to really get my family into reaping the rewards of saving.

How about you? What new thing(s) have you learned today?

My New Button

Finally I made a new button for this blog. Let me know what you think. It is located in the upper right hand sidebar. Also, below it is the code to grab my button and add it to your site. Yay! If you do grab my button, let me know in the comment section of this post below. And please don't forget to let me know what you think in the form below.

15 Days of Marketing ~ Day 4

I have been working on this one and Day 5 for awhile, but I forgot to post my progress on it yesterday. So, today I will type of this post and Day 5's post, back to back. Also, just to keep any new readers up to date, this goes along with Jessica's 15 Days of Marketing on her blog JessicaKnows. So, if you are lost on what I am doing, read her series, because I am only posting my progress on my blog.

Day 4: Part 1

√I signed up with Twellow and followed Sarah Evans' advice to add a few pages worth of PR tweeps to follow.

Day 4: Part 2

√I have just begun to get a line written that I can use to send to all those that follow me (or follow back) that includes the link to this blog.
√I always include #15days in my tweets that have anything to do with my progress in the series. Just go to summize.com and type in "15days" or "#15days" and I will usually be near the top (@mama4kids).

15 Days of Marketing ~ Day 3

Start following this series with Day 1 here.

Day 3

I started this task days ago, but I wanted to post in working order. This day was simple, I was having trouble getting my camera to work and then my recording volume wasn’t working. However then my hubby fixed it for me the other night, and I was able to get started yesterday morning.

Out of the three options:

1. Start vlogging.
2. Sign up for 12seconds.tv
3. Confess in your blog posts, be real.

I am vlogging on 12seconds.tv http://12seconds.tv/channel/Mama4Kids Check me out and follow. Also, I am pretty sure that I am ‘being real’ here on my blog, so you could say I have all three of these covered, even though only one was required.

I will be taking a break for the holidays on this and working to launch this new blog at Blogger. I will begin again with Day 4 on Monday December 1st. Also, don't forget to subscribe to my feed to be the first to receive my updates.

15 Days of Marketing ~ Day 2

Today, marks Day 2 of me following JessicaKnows tips on her 15 Days of Marketing series. If you missed Day 1, read it here.

Day 2

1. √ I signed up with Mom Central, Mom Select, and One2One Network. And I am considering signing up with more, just because I love free stuff.
2. √ I have signed up for an account on WishPot, and begun to add products to my many wishlists. Also, it has features to write product reviews which will help me with step 4 of Day 1.
3. √ I applied for a spot on Blissfully Domestic, because I love their site. Then I signed up with Type-A Mom and I love their simplicity much more than the others.
4. √ I have signed up with NewsVine, however I am still at a loss of where to begin. I am not much a news person.

15 Days of Marketing by Jessica Knows ~ Day 1

For those of you that don’t know, Jessica knows something that you need to know (lol). JessicaKnows is a great blog for many reasons, but today I am deciding to follow her 15 Days of Marketing series to help better my Internet presence and this very blog.

I’m not going to go into much detail about what she tells us to do, because I would love for you all to get the full picture by visiting her blog and reading the series for yourselves. Instead, my postings are going to be my write-ups for my progress and the answers to the “homework assignments” she gives us.
I am also going to be posting my progress on Twitter occasionally and in the “15days” group on Twitter Moms. So, you can link up with me in both of those places as well.

Day 1
1. Include your contact info on your blog to make it more PR friendly.
√ Email: mel (dot) bail (dot) mama (at) gmail (dot) com [they didn't have an easier email name available that I liked]
√ Twitter: @mama4kids
2. √ Sign up for HARO.
3. √ Sign up with GetClicky.
4. Write some product reviews to get exposure in the PR world. [Haven't started this one yet, but when I do you will see then on this blog.]

Homework
3 Favorite Brands:

1. VTech ~ My son has so many VTech toys, and I remember my first laptop [very basic edition in black and white] was a VTech as well. Their toys are educational, fundamental, safe, reliable, and fun.
2. Sony ~ Our whole house is practically filled with Sony products, and my husband can barely pry himself away from the Playstation3 (especially now that he was finally invited to Beta test “Home”).
3. LG ~ I have loved LG for quite some time. At first, only knew about their cell phones (which all of my phones have been), however when I became an adult and now I see all the commercials for their ground breaking and awesomely unique products, I just want them ALL! Especially the washer and dryers