LifeHackMom.com

Ever since my son learned to pee standing up at the ripe age of 3, my bathroom has suffered. The inconvenience of changing diapers was soon replaced by the need to clean the bathroom ALL the time . A little boys’ aim is not great, nor is his memory for lifting the toilet seat up to pee. Now that he’s nearly 8, things still haven’t changed that much.
Although I thought I was doing a good job keeping the bathroom clean, a few months ago I noticed a urine odor in the bathroom that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much I scrubbed the toilet.

I could SMELL urine, but I just couldn’t FIND it. I took a tip from the television show CSI and bought an ultraviolet flashlight. Waiting until night time, I turned out the bathroom lights, closed the door for total darkness, and turned on the UV flashlight. Voila - the source of the bad smell was revealed. The walls to the side and behind the toilet were covered with fluorescent white streaks. Seems my son’s aim was REALLY bad. Totally gross, but effective.

Last night we got 2 1/2 feet of snow here in Western New York. Needless to say, schools are closed and the landscape of my carefully scheduled day has drastically changed. It’s not even a fun kind of sledding snow day — it’s only 3 degrees outside so I can’t sent the kids out to play.

What to do? First things first, get the kids distracted by a dvd long enough to get on the telephone and cancel all my appointments for today. That’s done in the nick of time. The television has started to bore the kids already and their attention is drifting towards me. “I’m boorreed. What can we do?”

Any chance of me doing work at home has disappeared. As soon as I open my laptop, my chatty 5-year-old daughter comes over to ask “What are you doing Mommy. Can I help you?” I’ve been through this before. There is no computer work getting done today, at least not while the kids are still awake.

Turn to my “with kids” context from my implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD).

My with kids GTD context consist of items that I CAN do when they’re around. They like to help me with these projects. I have the routine @next actions, like laundry and dinner, and I have someday/maybe items, which are projects that are worth doing, but not urgent.

Today’s productive yet time-killing with kids item was Tear Down the Kitchen Wallpaper. This project was something we were told to tackle in the next few weeks anyway, as we are getting our house ready to put on the market. Apparently new buyers hate wallpaper.

Kids love to destroy things, so this one fit right in. In fact, my daughter started her love of tearing down wallpaper in the crib, when she used to pick at the border in her room.

I had the tools, and we had the time today. It wasn’t how I had intended to spend my day, but the kids dove right in, and the three of us finished this task in 5 hours.

Breakfast cereals are one of the more expensive items on our grocery list. To save money, we buy them bagged instead of boxed. Generic brands of cereals often come in bags, as do bulk bags of brand-name cereal at places like BJs and Sam’s Club.

The problem is that these bags are hard for my kids to handle. There isn’t as much structure to a bag as to a box, so more cereal often ends up on the counter than in the bowl. Also, they don’t stack or stand up well in a cupboard.

Tupperware-type cereal bins are fairly expensive. I had several plastic drink pitchers that weren’t being used, so I poured the cereal into them. The spouts allow the smaller cereals to pour through. For larger cereals, it is easy to just pop the top off and pour. This has been working fairly well for the kids. Both my cereal cupboard and the cupboard where I kept my pitchers are now less cluttered as well.

Small, simple hack but I hope it works for someone else.