LifeHackMom.com

“Teach a kid to fish and they can feed themselves for life.” Or maybe that should read, “Take a kid fishing and they will be occupied for hours.”

This LifeHackDad loves to go fishing and I love to fish with the kids. (As long as they are catching fish The activity is fantastic for teaching kids about nature and an activity they can do for the rest of their life. Part of the beauty is you usually don’t need to go far and it doesn’t cost a lot to do.

Go to a local Sporting Goods store or discount store (aka Wal-Mart/K-Mart/etc) and get a rod/reel combo. This should be around $20., some hooks, bobbers, and sinkers. If you don’t know how to set up the rod/reel or tie the knots, just ask a couple of people. You’ll find someone willing to teach you.

Bring with you some gloves and maybe some needle-nose plyers too so you can hold the fish and get the hooks out.

I prefer to use live bait when I fish with the kids. I know it is a little more messy, but fish like the real thing better than plastic. Where you get bait can be anyplace from your backyard, the local gas station or a bait shop. This really depends on where you are fishing, but the bait should match the fish. Just as that friend who showed you how to tie the knots and they can probably direct you to a good bait. Generally if you are fishing in fresh water, worms work great and the kids love to play with them (at least the boys do). If you are in saltwater, then frozen whole uncooked shrimp work great.

Part of the hack for this is get ALL setup before you get in the car and go fishing! That way when you arrive it a quick setup and they are fishing.

Above all relax, enjoy and make it family fun.

So you have a garden and need to keep it watered. You could try to remember and fit it into your day, but your plants may suffer. We recently installed (DYI Project) a Drip Irrigation system at our house and have watched the garden flourish! Drip systems use ‘drippers’ which release drops or light sprays of water directly to the plants. These drippers are rated in Gallons per Hour (GPH) with a typical potted plant in the summer needing a .5GPH dripper run for 2 times a day for 15 minutes each time putting the water where it is needed, directly on the plant.

I have expanded the system to have over 90 drippers/sprayers around the whole yard and we have plans to expand the system again to have it rain water feed. (This is how one project cascades into the next.)

Check out the folks at Drip Depot http://www.dripdepot.com/. They have some great instructional videos and starter kits.

To finish our system off, I attached it to a water timer I picked up from Wal-Mart and set it to run for a total of 30 min per day (15min at 6am and 15min at 6pm). Now we can travel and do things and know the garden is going to at least get its water.

The system was cheap considering what we pay for plants and the potential savings and health benefits for growing your own food.

I just took an assessment on Monster.com — Jasper (Job Asset and Strengths Profiler).

While the results did not tell me anything I did not already know, they did provide me with some good verbiage regarding my strengths. I can use this on my bio or my resume.

For example,

“Innovative. Your leadership style can be characterized as Innovative. You tend to be inventive and proactive in creating new ways to get things done, bringing a sense of confidence to most things you do. You aren’t afraid to take risks if it means finding a new, better way.

Independent. You show strength in your ability to be an Independent worker. While you no doubt can be quite effective working on a team, you feel much more productive when you have the freedom to do things on your own. You simply enjoy the autonomy that independent work entails.”

Take the JASPER test yourself at Monster.com .