2012 May

Bring on the Summer of Clean!!

May 31, 2012 By Nony 36 Comments

Today, June 19, Teaching Kids to Clean is FREE on Amazon!

I’ve hinted around about a BIG project I’ve been working on. Well, it’s done.

And I’m exhausted! I’m also sooo excited to share it with you.

Summer is here! As of tomorrow, my kids will be out of school for almost three months, and I couldn’t be more excited!

If you’ve read from the beginning (or if you’ve been around from the beginning) you know that summer is my favorite time of the year but also the most challenging time for me to keep the house out of chaos!

Two summers ago, I was nervous. The previous August, I started this blog in a desperate attempt to get my home under control. I saw huge improvements over the course of the school year, but was starting to panic that summer’s lack of routine would send our home back into Disaster Status.

Added to the panic . . . was guilt. I LOVE having my children home all day in the summer. My fear of losing my Clean(er) House Momentum didn’t jive with my desire to enjoy Quantity Time with them.

So . . . I determined to make it the Summer of Clean. I continued my routine of tackling one household cleaning task per day, and involved my kids in each task. I created printable instructions to maximize independence, and acted as teacher/director/supervisor each morning.

It wasn’t easy, and during that summer I sometimes wondered if any of these cleaning lessons were actually being learned.

Now . . . I can say with confidence that our Summer of Clean was a success!

What makes me say that now?

It’s two years later and I see the fruits of my focused efforts to teach my children to clean.

On Sunday evenings, when it’s time to sort every last piece of laundry in our home to be ready for Monday’s Laundry Day, I just have to ask them to do it. They are able to sort our laundry without any direction or supervision from me. Wa-hoo! Mommy scores!

Here’s one more (big) piece of evidence. My kids are now able to help me get the house ready for guests in less time than it would take for me to do it on my own. I’m able to assign each child a job such as dusting, vacuuming, or counter-wiping, and these jobs get done with minimal supervision from me. That’s exciting!

But what’s the big project?

I’ve written a new e-book called Teaching Kids to Clean! Other than my bathroom cleaning checklist which is here on the blog, it’s all new. Based on my experiences teaching my own kids to clean, I share advice, “lesson plans,” supply lists, age-appropriate task lists, and printables to help you teach your kids the skills necessary for big cleaning tasks.

The tasks include laundry, bathroom cleaning, dusting, vacuuming and mopping.

And if you don’t have kids, you might just learn something for yourself! I know that checklists help me stay focused!

Head over to Amazon to get your copy of Teaching Kids to Clean (Teach Your Children Basic Cleaning Skills). The kindle version contains a special link that will give you access to the NEW and IMPROVED printable lists and checklists!

Filed Under: Summer of Clean | 36 Comments

Cleaning Tips and a Giveaway!

May 30, 2012 By Nony

***Kristina won this giveaway and she has been notified! Yay, Kristina!****

I STILL have not figured out how to get my house perfectly clean by wiggling my nose.

So irritating!

As I’ve gone through this deslobification process over the past few years, I’ve realized that even more important than knowing how to clean is . . . doing it consistently.

Again, so irritating!

I’ve also realized that for the most part, I do know how to clean. Once the clutter is out of the way, I’m able to draw on the cleaning skills I learned from my mother and from working at a summer camp as a teenager. But there are always a few things that stump me. Things that make me shake my head.

And look away.

And pretend the cleaning dilemma doesn’t exist.

Which, unfortunately . . . doesn’t work. Because the not-so-clean item either stays in my house and continues to subconsciously irritate me, or I get rid of it. And suffer the guilt of knowing that the item could be salvaged if only I knew how to clean it.

But now, in the age of the internet, it’s ever-so-much-more difficult to use the excuse that you do not know how to clean something.

Molly Maid is well-known for their Maid Service, but they also now have a YouTube channel with videos of tips specifically for cleaning hard-to-clean items. There’s advice for washing baseball caps, getting sweat stains out of t-shirts, getting rid of furniture indentions in carpet, and more.

I thought I knew how to wash a shower curtain liner, but appreciated an extra tip that was given in this video:

I do wish that the videos contained some demonstrations, but they’re very clear and quick to watch. All of the tips are extremely simple and make irritating cleaning problems easier, which makes life easier.

I’m excited that Molly Maid is offering a giveaway! The giveaway is for one “Take Care of You!” gift pack including a nail file, foot pumice scrub, microfiber cleaner, etc.

Giveaway Rules:

Win a “Take Care of You” gift pack from Molly Maid ($50 value)!

This sweepstakes will end June 7 at 11:59PM PT, so enter now! A winner will be selected randomly from the comments on June 8 and contacted via email, at which time the winner will have 48 hours to respond with shipping information before a new winner is selected.

Enter up to five times by doing each of the following:

One Entry – Tweet about the Molly Maid sweepstakes (you can even use one of the handy-dandy Tweets below, if you like) and leave a comment here with either the Tweet or the URL to the Tweet. Please be sure to tag your Tweet with #MollyMaidTips.
One Entry – Tweet out the URL to one of the Molly Cleaning Institute videos and leave a comment here with either the Tweet or the URL to the Tweet. Please be sure to tag your Tweet with #MollyMaidTips.
One Entry – Post about this sweepstakes on Facebook, and leave a comment here saying what you posted. Please tag the post with the #MollyMaidTips hashtag.
One Entry – Write a blog post including at least one of the videos, and – you guessed it — leave a comment here with the URL to the blog post.
One Entry – Just leave a comment on this blog post telling us about your favorite cleaning tips. They could potentially be included in a future video!

Sample Tweet: I just entered to win a gift pack from Molly Maid! You can too! http://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2012/05/cleaning-tips-and-a-giveaway/#MollyMaidTips
Sample Tweet: I just learned a new cleaning trick, courtesy of Molly Maid. Check it out for yourself! http://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2012/05/cleaning-tips-and-a-giveaway/ #MollyMaidTips

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Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor. Advertisers do not produce the content. I was compensated for this post as a member of Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all my own.

Filed Under: sponsored posts |

Freezer Cooking’s Most Important Step

May 28, 2012 By Nony 11 Comments

Wow. This has been one busy month/three-day-weekend.

Money Saving Mom has been hosting a freezer cooking link-up every night this month, and I haven’t once been able to participate. There’s just so . . . much . . . going . . . on.

But last week, as I once again realized that while I had menu planned, I hadn’t grocery planned (and was lacking an essential ingredient for whatever was supposed to be on the menu that night), I grabbed something out of the freezer which I had purchased at Costco several months ago.

This something needed to be served over rice. So I did what I usually do when I cook rice, and doubled/tripled/quadrupled the amount that I needed.

I love to pre-cook and freeze rice to use in our family’s favorite Chicken Fried Rice recipe or in my Mexican Casserole recipe.

But there’s one small step which I tend to forget when I do this. It’s kind of an important one.

It’s called freezing.

Yes, I love to cook extra. LOTS of extra. But I have been known . . . to leave that lots of extra in the fridge and forget to freeze it. Because of my totally-made-up-and-self-diagnosed Time Passage Awareness Disorder, I generally realize what I’ve done (or haven’t done) when I go looking for my rice-cooker and see that it is full of pink-polka-dotted rice.

Did you know that rice-mold can be pink? It can.

So, I’m proud that not only did I do a little freezer cooking last week, I also did a little freezing.

And here’s my bonus tip for freezing cooked rice: The best way I’ve found to freeze rice is to first let it get very cold in the fridge so it becomes hard and solid. Then, I divide the rice chunks into freezer bags, seal the bags, and smush down the rice chunks. The large chunks break apart easily when the cooked rice is cold and dry.

After they’re as broken up as possible, I freeze the bags flat.

This allows me to easily break off as much rice as I need for a recipe, and also greatly decreases thawing time compared to large chunks of frozen rice.

Be sure to check out all of my freezer-cooking tips and recipes here.