New Year, New Datebook - Getting Organized

It's a wonderful time of the year! Time to browse for a planner for the new year!

Yep, I am one of those people who still carry a paper & pen day planner. One reason? Because I can't carry miscellaneous items and an emergency $10 in my phone.  Other reason - I like writing stuff down. I rarely take notes on my phone, only when there's nothing else around. For notes to myself, to-do lists, jotting down phone numbers or things I want to check out later, quotes, notes from an event - I like to keep it all on paper, in one convenient, portable, always accessible place.

There are some folks who would settle on one planner and get the same one every year, rather than launch an annual search for a new and different book. One day, perhaps, I will be that person. For now, I'm switching planners again.

This year, I'm ordering my planner from FallinDesign.  It's a South Korean company that I came across when looking for the datebook I had a couple years ago, the LiveWork Agenda, but that company seems to have gone out of business or maybe changed their name, not sure. With the numerous array of journals and datebooks, you might assume that despite all the electronic and digital gadgetry that comes from South Korea, paper & pen is still very popular.  The options are great and the prices are reasonable, though admittedly, you may take a hit on shipping and timing for delivery.

In the past, I've had these planners:
ARC Disc-planner, from Staples.  I like this planner for its flexibility, but I realized that at year's end, I like all my pages to be bound and easy to flip back through, if necessary. I noticed a lot of people have this in a larger, notebook size and I may consider this system for full-page notes.

LiveWork Agenda - This is the agenda I had previously, and found again at FallinDesign. It's book bound, approximately 5"x7", i.e. fits in my purse, and is pink (important feature.) I like the open page design, which lets me customize to my use - there's space to write appointments, but also to-do lists and dinner plans.

PassionPlanner - If you need a planner that helps you set goals and all the steps to get there, or you like products with a story, go with the PassionPlanner. The pages are laid out to encourage you to think about where you want to go and how you are going to get there. You can order the journal in whole or download the pages for free (yeah, I don't know how they make money on that!)  I don't have the whole planner, but I like the monthly pages for my posted-on-the-wall, always visual planner - partly because it prints on two pages so its big and easy to see.

GoogleCalendar - is my electronic back-up, primarily because of the automated alerts via email and/or texts. This has saved me many of times. If only my paper & pen day planner could do this! It's also useful for my family to be able to look up dates and input their activities. Another nice feature is being able to print out the calendar, with custom-selected dates, so I can leave it with my husband, children and/or babysitter to keep them on track without me.

I've collected a few other day planners and journals that I like on a Pinterest page, as well, in case I need some more options.

For me, the new year is like the first day of school. I'll sit down with my new planner, pen, pencil, couple cute stickers, and put in all my appointments and reminders. And of course, a cup of coffee.  Happy planning!

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How to Get Thru the Parent Homework (i.e. back-to-school paperwork)

My desk (i.e. kitchen counter) is full of papers and calendars and reminders and notices.  All stuff that has to be read and filled out and returned for school and extra-curricular activities.  With four kids in three different schools (elementary, middle and high school) there’s quite the assortment and very few duplicates.  I’ve piled it all up and will sit with a cup of coffee, my calendars, checkbook (you know that's got to be in there), envelopes, and folders and sort it all out.  It’s all part of the back-to-school parent routine.

For all the forms required for school, a copy machine and/or scanner is one of my favorite tools for trying to keep some order.  I copy everything!

• Health forms - At your kids' pediatrician appointments, ask for the school required paperwork then, especially the sports clearances, even if you think your child will never play a sport.  Make a copy and send this to school when requested; save the original at home.  This saves the trouble of going back to the pediatrician (and paying for another copy plus a rush fee) when needed.  Its also helpful to have one on hand when I need to know when was their last tetanus shot.

• Emergency forms - How many times can you write your name, address, and phone number?! If you have kids in the same school with the same forms, fill in the basics – home address, parent phone number, etc. – make copies of the form, then fill in each child’s name, teacher, other personal info on his/her copy.  Make a copy of all of them and file them away, just in case it gets "lost" (middle-schoolers especially are known to lose important papers in their backpacks). 

• Absent/tardy notes.  I have a pre-printed, fill-in absent/tardy note that I created myself, a version for each child.  Pre-printed is the child’s name, teacher’s name (for the elementary students; blank for the middle-schoolers), my name and contact information.  Then I have a check-off list of why they were absent or late, why they need to be excused early, and a blank for anything else I need to mention.  They are especially handy when we’re running late – who has time to write a note?

Dear Teacher....

And all those checks?  I probably go through a whole checkbook in the month of September - PTA dues, lunch money, early quarter field trips, payments for year-end field trips, sports uniforms, spiritwear.  I know my kids and there's no way that I can hand them a pile of checks and expect that they will get to  the correct person in the correct office.  Each check and accompanying paper goes into its own clearly marked envelope.  

Considering the mountain of paper involved in back-to-school, I do try to recycle and reduce paper uses as much as I can.  A few ways, other than putting all the stuff I don't need in the recycling bin:

• Make 2-sided copies
• Print the absent/tardy notes on the backs of unneeded documents (old flyers, notices from school, rough drafts of school assignments)
• Use those payment envelopes that come with the bills to send checks back to school
• Write any necessary responses to a note on that same paper, rather than on a separate paper

Sometime during that first week of school, I make a pile for each kid, then paperclip it, put it in an envelope or put it in their homework folder, then wish them a safe journey and assume that they will make it to the appropriate school office.

This post has been updated from a previous post I wrote a few years ago.

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Get Organized with Thirty-One Totes

Confession: I am a bag lady.

Purses, tote bags, cute re-usable shopping bags. All that stuff.

A friend introduced me to Thirty-One Gifts and its like a bag-lady shopping spree. I think I might be getting close to actually owning 31 bags from them - mostly multiples of my favorites in various colors.  The patterns are fun and bright (and I’m excited that they finally got pink!) and are pretty durable, because I do drag a bag around and put it through some work.

These are my favorites and I keep coming up with more uses for them.

A few of my 31 bags

Large Utility Tote. I own three, or maybe four.  

(It's the big blue one with Just Piddlin' embroidered on it, in the photo)

It’s large enough to hold a small child. Or laundry, to the Laundromat or on a roadtrip. It holds all the towels and snacks and goggles for a day at the pool or beach.  Or all the stuff that you keep in the back of your trunk – more reusable grocery bags, a pair of sneakers, wipes, tennis balls (everyone does carry all this in their trunk, right?)  Keep one packed in your car for the impromptu fun day - balls, sunscreen, frisbees, picnic blanket.

As an indie writer and publisher - I have one specifically for book vendor events to carry all the materials (tablecloths, bookstands, decorations, etc.) that I need for my table.

Utility Tote with pockets. I own three - two regular ones and one with a zip-top.

The Organizing Utility Tote is a great mobile office

This is a great bag to be used as a mobile office, whether for “real work” or “mom work”.

I use it for my PTA meetings to carry my files and notes that I’ll need, and fill the pockets with other random items – pens, notecards, snacks, a bottle of water.

For my sorority conferences, I tend to volunteer in some of the behind-the-scene tasks, so I’m running around a lot. In my bag, I carry paperwork and schedules, snacks and personal items in a Zipper Pouch, and in the pockets I have all the things I need to get to quickly – my phone, room keys, pens, candy and a bottle of water.

The Zipper Pouch helps to organize everything in the big bag

And again – as the small business woman – it’s perfect to carry the supplies I need for book vendor events.

I've seen other moms use these as diaper bags and the family tote bag for all the stuff you need for a day out.  For the kids' sporting events, pack your snacks, hand wipes, cowbells, a hat, and (for the swimming and track parents) a book.  Going to the park? Water bottles, first aid kit, snacks, bubbles, hat, sunscreen - it all fits in there. Since the bags are wipe-able clean, you don't have to worry about the little spills from all your necessities.

Zipper Pouch.  I own two and need at least one more.

Always have your crochet or knitting project with you

Since I carry so many big tote bags, I needed a way to organize and collect the small things in my life. These are the perfect size for an iPad, as well as a wallet, keys, phone, inkpens and a lipgloss – all the important miscellaneous for the day.

I use another one for my yarn project.  It fits a small skein and a pair of needles or a hook. I can take along a small project – a scarf, a headband, the beginnings of a blanket – wherever I go.

I have the regular sized ones; there's also mini and thermal ones.

Organizing Shoulder Tote.  I own one.

For those days when all you need is a phone, lipstick & keys.

I was given this one as a gift and immediately, I knew I would use it for those outings when I don’t really need a purse, but do need to carry around all my miscellaneous personal items (see all the stuff I carry in the Zipper Pouch.)  I use it when I’m at a community volunteer activity or a day out wandering with the kids.  I’ve also found it to be a great size for the traveling knitting or crochet project - since it hangs on my shoulder, I can walk and stitch at the same time.

Okay. Am I up to 31 yet?  I’m pretty close. And I think I’ve left out a few.  Go – check out the site for my favorite Thirty-One Gifts consultant, Sakima - she's set up a special page for Just Piddlin' readers - and see how these bags can help organize your life.  And if you come up with any other great ideas - leave them in the comments (I can always use another excuse for a new bag.)

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#Organized Calendar To-Do System

Ah- the  ever-present, never-ending to-do list.  Whether scribbled on designed, organizing sheets or typed into a smartphone app – but do we ever ever check everything off?  And then there’s the pile of papers to go along with it. If you’re a parent, this may be dominated by permission forms, tests, progress reports and volunteer forms to sign and return, presumably before the deadline. Then there's the sale you missed, the coupon that expired.  Every now and then, I wonder if there’s a better way to go about this necessity of life, other than the scribbled long lists on my calendar pages or the clipped stack of index cards, I’ve been employing.  But I like that system, so I’m not trying to abandon it, just improve upon it.

There’s a lot of options and how-to’s out there, but none of them are really effective  unless it’s do-able for you – your personality, your lifestyle. This do-able part is important because any organization system has to be one that you can keep up with and manage, regardless of what the experts say.

Recently, I came across this idea of “43 folders.” Although new to me, this tickler system seems to have been around for a while.  With the 43 folders plan, you have- yeah, you guessed it – 43 manila folders, each labeled 1-31, for the days of the month, and for each month.  All the stuff that you have – primarily all those papers that you have to do something with – you stick in the folders for the day (of the current month) or the month that you need to do it. Each day, you pick up your folder and do whatever’s in it.  At the beginning of each month, you move all the stuff from the folder and distribute them to the appropriate day folder.

I like this idea, and I like folders, but 43 folders sitting on my desk seems like a whole lot of folders. Plus, I generally plan out my to do list and meal plan along with my schedule.  Doesn’t make sense to make a long to-do list on the day I have to be running around to meetings or with the kids, that’s just a set-up for disappointment of not checking anything off. So I’ve modified this idea and am trying out a new plan.

How-To: Calendar To-Do

1. I printed my weekly calendar from Google Calendar.  Yes, I still have the paper date book, but also keep an electronic version so my family can input and access our schedule, too. And I do like the reminder feature – a text or email to remind you of where you’re supposed to be.
2. All those papers that have some kind of due date - permission slips, bills, library books due slip, invitations – I sorted by week.  I could also add coupons, restaurant discounts, sales ads, and other random things that have an expiration date.
3. Clip the sorted papers behind the calendar page when they should be done.
4. Each week, I have that packet of papers that are due, my calendar, and I can jot additional reminders on the calendar page.

I’m in week 2 of this new system. We’ll see how it goes.

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My freezer is full of … yarn

A few times, I’ve pulled out a new skein of yarn for a project and merrily stitching along, all the sudden I’m out of yarn. Mid-skein. I look and there’s the rest of the skein sitting there, with a break in the yarn.

“Those kids!” I’ve mumbled, sure that my kids took a pair of scissors to my yarn. But it slowly dawned on me.  If anything, my kids would take the whole ball for a craft project, not cut into it.  And I’m way in the middle of the skein, how would they reach this section anyway?  So I realized it was probably an even smaller culprit.

Moths.  Clue – it was mainly the wool yarns that were broken. My kids really wouldn’t differentiate which yarn to ruin.

Back in the recesses of my brain, I remembered hints to freeze yarn to get rid of moths. I took all my wool and wool-content yarns from the cute, open, plastic bins with a basket-weave design and put them in plastic bags and bins.  All my yarn would not fit in the freezer, given that there is, you know, food in there.  The bags went into the freezer and, since it’s been quite cold around here, I decided to take advantage of Mother Nature. The bins are out in the garage.  It may not be consistently cold enough out there to kill the moths and larvae, but I figure it might slow them down until those bags' rotation into the freezer.

The articles I read recommend a week in the cold freeze to get rid of the little yarn munchers.  With a weekly rotation, we should be moth free by spring.  After that, I’m switching bins.

My new moth-proof yarn storage bins

I picked up these close-top bins, the “sweater boxes” from Container Store.  They work well because they're clear so I can see what's in them.  Any kind of closed, can't see into containers are terrible for my forgetful self.  I also read that lavender is a natural deterrent. Maybe I’ll put some sachets in the bins.

Here's to being moth-free.  How do you store your yarn?  Do you have any other yarn-saving tips?

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Mom-Me Celebration - Day 12, 13 - Relax & Clean Out Your Car

No - Day 12 & 13 are totally not related - don't try to find a deeper meaning.  These are all pretty random, whatever I feel like we need that day.

Mom-Me Celebration - Day 12 - I wanted to know how you RELAX?  Or do you even relax? When I posted it on Facebook, I had to give it some deep thought myself.  I tried to remember the last time I totally vegged out in front of the TV doing absolutely nothing else.  I'm usually doing at least 2 things, even when I'm relaxing.  Watched The Voice the other night - really like "playing along" by listening with my back to the TV and deciding whether I will turn around (you do it, too, right?).  And while I was listening, I was on the computer doing some sorority task and getting ready for my PTA meeting.  This - focusing on doing nothing but relaxing - is something I need to focus on.

Mom-Me Celebration - Day 13 - Take 30 Minutes and Clean out your car.  Did you find the time today?  This is what I found: a clothes hanger, water bottles (both empty and full), Apples to Apples cards, those wax bottle candies (you know the kind with the sweet juice inside?), shoes (mine).  What have your kids left behind in the car?

If you are anything like me, your car is your second home. There are days that I spend more hours driving and going somewhere than I do in my real living room.  And just like at home, every now and then, its time to clean up so you aren't pushing reusable grocery bags and old magazines around on that passenger seat, looking for the carplug to your cell phone.  I'd like to add some more decorative touches - you know how some people have those solar flowers that wave back and forth or the hula girl on the dashboard? Maybe not exactly like that, but something. My car's pretty basic.  Any ideas?

Follow along here on my blog or on Facebook - JustPiddlin with Frances for our 30-Day Mom-Me Celebration all the way until Mother's Day.

Clean Out Your Closets with 5 Simple Piles

With the anticipated (but as yet not fully realized) change of weather, I tackled the seasonal task of sorting through my kids’ clothes. My closet is next. I’m sharing my steps with you for when you, too, are finally ready to check this off your to-do list. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, that’ll make it seem more relaxing.

Starting with the youngest and working with one child’s clothes at a time, I went through every drawer and closet. Everything was put into one of the following piles:

• Keep  The clothes that fit that child. I think this was a small percentage of clothes for each child.

• Pass down   Too small for that child, but will fit the next. Of course, most of the items for consideration for this pile were from my oldest daughter to the next one, and the middle one to the youngest, but there were a few exceptions. Since my oldest often wears boys’ sports shorts, these could go to her brother. And some of my son’s sweatshirts were fine for his little sister to throw in her drawer, especially since she really only wears sweatshirts on the way to and from her tennis lessons.

• Donate    Of course, anything that goes into the Donation pile should be clean, still fashionable, and wearable. I always consider each piece thinking “would someone else really want this for themselves/for their kid?” This pile is further sub-divided, I’ll go into the details in my next post. For now, put your special occasion items and ones you have some kind of sentimental attachment to in one pile, and everything else in another.

• Re-use, recycle    This was mostly jeans and t-shirts, with a few sweaters. If you are particularly crafty, throw in dress shirts and skirts, too. Part of my keep-everything-ness (my pack-rat tendency, as my husband would put) is that I feel like I might come up with a great idea to re-use something. And I also feel wasteful throwing stuff away that someone else might have a great idea of how to re-use. Anyway – more on what to do with what accumulates in this pile in a separate post.

• Trash    All the stuff that did not fit in the piles above, mostly holey socks and too-small underwear.

Once all the sorting is done and there’s piles of clothes all around the room, it’s time to put everything away.

• All the “Keep” clothes gets folded or hung back in the closet.
• All the “Pass down” clothes gets moved into the appropriate younger siblings drawers or closets (this is why I start with the youngest, so there will be space for the new clothes).
• Bag up the donations and mark where they are going.
• I have a plastic bin for the re-use/recycle clothes until I get to them.
• And trash the rest.

Depending on your energy level, available time, and how much coffee you have left, you can repeat this process with the next kid’s closet now or wait until the next day. But do try to do it all within a short amount of time, say a few days, so you won’t have piles sitting around forever.

Please share any other piles or closet cleaning tips I've missed.

Organizing and Cooking

As a busy mom, there are many days that I loathe hearing the words, "what's for dinner?"  But, not because I don't like cooking.  In fact, one of the few household chores that I like is cooking.  The rest - laundry, dusting, mopping - I do because that's what grown people are supposed to do.  But I enjoy cooking, especially when I have the time to slice and dice and saute.  And if I am working from a new recipe, even better.  When I don't have time, I feel bored returning to the same meals over and over.  This boredom is colliding with my effort to de-clutter.

I read an article the other day by a de-cluttering expert that says you only need 2 cookbooks.  I don't know how many I have, but I think the count may start with "2", including a couple in another language (anyone know what "eierdooier" is for my "pecannotenwafels"?)  I'm not trying to cull my cookbook collection to 2 - that would not really be a collection, anymore, would it?

My cookbooks, although numerous, are in pretty good order.  I have them neatly on the shelves, tabbed with my favorite recipes, the tried and true go-to recipes marked by the spill marks on the pages.  It is my piles of cooking magazines and torn out recipes that are a little bit out of control.

"What's for dinner?"  The answer is somewhere in this pile.

To start putting this stack of "one day I'm gonna cook this" pages into a usable format, I sorted them out into categories, you know, like a cookbook.  Meats, Veggies, Desserts (baked and frozen - because I like making ice cream), Soups, Breakfast, Breads/Baking (not desserts), Pasta. I kept or discarded the recipes based on a few simple criteria:

• is it something I'm really, actually going to make?  Although, I like the idea of making fresh, yeast breads, I really don't have the patience to wait for yeast to rise - out went all those recipes.
• is it something the husband and kids are really going to eat?
• are the ingredients easily purchased at the local grocery store?  If I have to go to any specialty market, it's never going to get made - out went those recipes.
• do I have a recipe I already like for this food?  I have several cookie and dessert cookbooks, so I didn't keep any basic pies or cakes or cookies like sugar cookies, vanilla pound cake

Torn-out recipes sorted into food categories, ready to try out.

The keepers, I put in a vertical file folder.  I plan on pulling recipes each week and trying them out.  After I cook them, I'll keep the ones I really like.  If I'm in a particularly organized mood, I might even type them up.  (If you look real close in the photo, you might note a few scribbled on a piece of paper.  These are recipes I jotted down while watching TV or talking to someone.  I'm telling you, I get recipes from everywhere.)  The keepers will go into plastic sleeves and I'll add them to a binder of recipes I've already collected.  I'm thinking I might make separate binders for different categories, because already my existing one is almost full.

I'll keep you posted on the good ones (you know I will!)

I'm a Procrastinator and Don't Need a 12-Step Program

The blog's been pretty quiet this week.  It's the Christmas season and the end of the year, so I've been busy doing all the stuff I was supposed to get done this year.  Like organizing my cookbooks, losing 10 pounds, sorting my yarn stash, finishing the summer vacation (last year's) scrapbook, reading a stack of books.  I've been out in the malls and stores with all the other last-minute shopping folks, searching for Christmas cards (what is Hallmark for if not boxes of cards?), looking for the prettiest Barbie outfits and the coolest Lego sets, and trying to figure out what pre-teens like (with 2 daughters and 3 nieces, you'd think I'd know, but I don't).  And of course, I've been shopping for a new datebook, as one of my friends/readers guessed (she must've remembered my post from last year) and sent me a list of options - thanx!  Add into that mix, not one sick kid, not two, but three sick kids (true Sesame Street fans can hear the Count laughing) and the accompanying days off from school. And of course, not all on the same day; no, no, no, that would be too easy.  It's all left little time for blogging or even thinking clearly.

I know, the organized folks, the ones who finished their Christmas shopping while the rest of us were enjoying 4th of July fireworks and had their Christmas cards out before the Thanksgiving sweet potato pie hit the table are shaking their heads.  I know, if I just did what I was supposed to do when I thought to do it, I'd be less frazzled as I approached a deadline.  And Dec. 31 is quite a deadline - looking at the last page of the calendar and considering all those things I had planned to do over the past 365 days.  We even got an extra day this year and I've still got projects yet to do.

"Stop procrastinating" is the simple answer, right?  But its not that easy.  I might argue that its not even necessary.  Almost every month, there's some magazine article with tips on how to be better at completing tasks and getting things done NOW.  The psychological, organizational, and time management experts act as if those of us who put off tomorrow can be re-organized with 10 easy tips.  Let me explain why those tips don't work, why those articles keep coming out.

1 - A true procrastinator will never finish reading the article.  I've dog-earred articles, torn them out and set them aside, book-marked them, never to look at them again.  Exactly - I put it off to read tomorrow. And the few I've actually looked at, I got bored by tip number 3 and set it aside, to return to after I finish crocheting a scarf.

2 - According to all the experts, people procrastinate because they want to make sure they do whatever it is perfectly. This is also referred to as fear of success and fear of failure (I'm not sure how it can be both).  The alternative is to be okay with things not being perfect.  That's good advice for someone who is wired to expect things to be a certain way?  Complete a task in a way in which you are not too happy with it.  Uhh, no.  Then the next problem would be a lower self-esteem because you are constantly reminded of your unmet potential.

3 - Procrastinators don't really mind pulling all-nighters and do feel like they work better under pressure, just like do-it-now folks like getting 8 hours of sleep and need extended time to do the task properly.  The advice to combat this "problem" is to break the task down into smaller tasks, with intermediate deadlines.  Okay, so this kinda works to not have an entire project backed up to the deadline, but it doesn't really end procrastination.  It just breaks it into smaller segments.  I will still put off until each mini-deadline to finish the sub-task.  So now, I've got multiple times to stress myself out about the same project.  That's a little bit inefficient.

4 - We're going to put off not procrastinating until tomorrow!  (Fellow procrastinators - have you made it this far, to number 4?  Good for you!  Thanks for hanging in there, because I'm sure there's something else you are supposed to be doing instead.  A few more lines and then you can go off to find another distracting activity.)

Why do we act like procrastinating is a character flaw that we must be cured of?  We don't bother people who are early all the time or never seem to have 13 projects going on at the same time.  We don't encourage them to change their ways and wait a few days before starting their exercise plan or writing that report.  In fact, instead of bothering the over-scheduled, sliding into the finish line folks, we need to encourage the too calm, strolling along unfazed people to find some more to do, help out the folks who obviously have too much going on.

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It's Always the Mother's Fault

It's the mother's fault.

This is pretty much the message I’ve received from my own mother.  I always thought she was being so dramatic and you know, oh so Asian, to take on this load of mother guilt whenever something didn’t go quite right.  Whether my father’s cold was lasting longer than expected or my knitted scarf looked awful or my brother hadn’t called her in a whole two days, she accepted that it was somehow her doing.

Now, I’m starting to get it.  It is the mother’s fault.

Every morning, I rustle my kids awake.  5:45, 6:30, 7:00 a.m.  It’s like the schedule at Penn Station.  And on schedule, I go back up stairs and call them to wake up again.  And then I remind them to “hurry up – you do have somewhere to be this morning!”  After enough time to have brushed every single tooth one-by-one (which I doubt they did) and try on every piece of clothing in their closet (which I believe they do) they saunter downstairs to the breakfast table, sans socks.  On a good morning, we get through breakfast, including a glass of milk, and they go back for some socks.  On a great morning, they comb and brush their hair.  On an absolutely terrific morning, they know where their coats and backpacks and homework from last night and library books and shoes are, somewhere near the front door.

We rarely have an absolutely terrific morning.

One not so absolutely terrific morning, after the sixth “it’s raining, no you cannot wear your pink suede boots” (yes, that’s my child; yes, I helped her pick them out), a tear-filled search for rain boots and scampering off to the bus stop, I realized – this madness in the morning is my fault.

Although in my head I get the concept of checking the backpacks at night, laying out their clothes for the next day, and hanging the coats on the coatrack right by the door, by the end of the day, as we go through the bed routine, I’m too exhausted to think of the next morning.  So I don’t insist that they pick out their next day’s outfit, mindful that they have P.E. or art.  I don’t always make sure the lunchbox has been left on the counter, to be washed and dried, ready to fill with lunch in the morning.  And I don’t always check the weather to know to look for the rainboots the night before.  I intend to sign the homework assignment sheet and fill out the permission slip, but it gets mixed in the ple of other to-do’s.

And then, on schedule, our morning routine begins.  5:45, 6:30, 7:00 a.m.  So who’s fault is that?

Cell-phone Cameras - More than taking photos of the kids

When they first started putting cameras on cell-phones, I wasn’t too impressed.  I didn’t think I would use it that much, seeing as I already owned a camera.  What was the point? I thought.  I got a phone with a camera just because there was no other option.  Of course now, like everybody else, I expect not only that my phone would have a camera, but that it be a good camera.  Grainy, low-quality photos just wouldn’t cut it in this post-photos-to-social-media age.

The other day, I was reading a blog with suggestions on how to use a phone-camera to organize your life.  What a concept!  Actually make this instant photo capability productive.  There were about five suggestions, some of which I thought were more trouble than they were worth.  She suggested to take a photo of the cables on the back of your computer/TV/other electronic thing with a lot of cords and label them with a photo-editor.  This is one of those things that sounds like a good idea in theory, but I’ll never do that.  Although, I am in the process of labeling the wires and cords in my house with plain ol’ real-life white labels and a Sharpie, because I am realizing how many look-alike cords we have and I’m tired of having to try to match the plug-in part to each device when I need to charge or plug something in.  

Labeling all the black wires and cords that charge our life.

But back to the photos…

One idea the blogger suggested that I really liked: when you don’t have time to make a grocery list, take a quick photo of your refrigerator and/or pantry to refer to when you are shopping.  What a great idea!  Had I done that before my last grocery trip, I wouldn’t now have 4 containers of cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator and only 1 person in the house who likes cherry tomatoes (me).  This could also be useful when clothes shopping, when you are going out looking for something to match a piece you already own.  Or even shoe shopping so you don’t buy another pair of black heels just like a pair you already own. 

Here’s a few additional ways that I use my phone for other practical purposes.

Record scores – At my son’s swim meets, the scores and finishes are recorded for each race – a listing of every swimmer, their time and place.  He likes to know all of that and I usually copy it down for him.  But at the big meets, there’s such a jostle of parents all doing the same thing, it gets a bit hectic and dare I say, a little pushy.  I snap a photo of the sheets for his race and look at them in peace at my seat.

Copy magazine recipes, sidebars – You’re sitting in the doctor’s office, flipping though magazines and come across a recipe for a delicious looking chocolate cake.  What do you do – tear out the page, try to scribble down the recipe on a piece of paper you find in your purse or take the magazine?  (We could get into a whole ‘nother discussion about taking the magazine, but we’ll save that for another day.)  

I’ve started just taking a photo of it, then leaving the magazine intact for the next person. 

“I could make that” – my DIY motto.  
I rarely pass a crocheted or knitted piece that I don’t investigate to see if I could make myself.  Now, if I ever get around to it, again, another story.  But as I’m walking through the mall, I will take a photo of a scarf, sweater, hat, anything that I like that I am confident I could source the right yarn and create it myself.  This habit has even spread to my friends who will take a picture of some yarn-y thing they’ve found and send it to me with a note, “can you make this?”  I will even do this to clothing pieces someone is actually wearing, but you’ve got to be really careful about that, strangers will look at you kinda suspiciously if you stare at them too long then take their picture.

Summer top I found at the mall - I'm still trying to figure out how to do those long straight runs of yarn

Surprisingly, I don’t use my cell phone to take a lot of pictures of my kids, as you would probably expect any good mom would do.  I realized this when I ran into an old friend this summer and she asked, of course, to see a photo of the kids.  I laughed as I flipped through photos of food I had eaten, stuff I wanted to buy, and crocheted pieces I wanted to make, and finally came across a silly photo of the 4 at the beach.  But hey, that’s my kids.

How do you use your cellphone camera?

*Note – I would love to give credit to the blogger with the idea about taking a pic of your refrigerator, but I don’t remember who it was.  If I come across the article again, I will update with proper credit.