Posts Tagged ‘home improvement’
Yucky Bathrooms
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Bathrooms, particularly when you have kids can get kind of yucky after awhile, particularly if your kids (and/or your spouse) spend a lot of time playing outside in the dirt! Here’s how I’ve managed to save both money and time while keeping the bathroom grime to a minimum!
- Clean while you condition your hair. How many of us actually leave the conditioner in our hair for the recommended 3-5 minutes? Try this instead: put in your conditioner, turn off the water and pick up your Kaboom! (an extremely effective cleaning product that won’t burn your lungs like bleach) and a scrub brush and clean while your conditioner is working its magic on your hair. You are already in the shower anyway, so you might as well make some good use of your time!
- Replace the vinyl shower liner with nylon. There is a reason that hotels don’t have vinyl liners–they would have to replace them too often when they get moldy. Instead of grappling with scrubbing your vinyl liner, replace it with a nylon mildew resistant one instead. If the nylon liner gets grimy, you can simply throw it in the wash!
- Keep a container of Clorox or Lysol wipes in the cabinet. These are great for between major cleanings–you can quickly wipe down a sink or toilet without having to drag in the whole bucket of cleaning supplies! The same goes for one of those Magic Erasers–they work pretty well on grout and paint stains.
- Use a flushable toilet brush. These are the kinds that have a handle that releases the flushable ”brush” part into the toilet. They are more expensive than having a regular old toilet brush, but if you are like me and grossed out by the bacteria & water harbored in that brush holder, this is a much more sanitary solution.
Happy cleaning!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: cleaning, home improvement
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“Summer Brains” Out; Saving Money In
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Today I thought I would talk about some fun ways to get kids to use their heads in the summer by helping the family save money without wasting time!
Throughout my book I have “Kid-tivities” that help get kids involved and making it easy and fun at the same time.
I thought I would share a couple with you:
The “Getting Rid of Debt” Game: If you are one of the many American families with problem debt, don’t try to hide the situation from your children, because they are smart enough to realize that something is wrong. Instead, sit down with them and explain that in the past you have spent more than you made but you are trying to fix it, and if the whole family works together to make it better, everyone will be happy. Then brainstorm with your children what you can do as a family to bring in extra money and pay down that debt. Whether it is through a yard sale or two (or seven!), or having them help you sell items on eBay or whatever, include them in the process and make it a game, rather than a drag!
Playing “House Detective”: This is a game that can work on those rainy days (like the Northeast has been having for the past 2 months!) when your kids are bored and stuck in the house. If your circuit breaker box has never been labeled, you have your kids run around the house every time you shut off a breaker so you know which room(s) corresponds to what fuse. Then you can show your kids how to shut down the breaker box in the event of an emergency. You can also play house detective to find the source of leaky pipes, since kids are particularly good at crawling in places (such as under sinks) that are hard for us adults to reach!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: debt, home improvement, kidtivities, saving money
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“Redoing” a Kitchen Without Spending Anything
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Sorry for the lack of posting the past couple of weeks–being in France visiting with family made it tricky to fit everything in. However, we are now home and I am back to blogging!
Spending almost a month with my in-laws and away from home allowed me to reflect a bit on how we manage our household. When I see a system or product or idea that works for someone else, I am always trying to figure out if it can work for us as well.
In this case, it was a kitchen makeover. Now, our kitchen was cluttered, but not over the top. But the junk drawer started to have problems closing and I often felt like I was searching for things in the middle of a meal.
In contrast, my mother-in-law has the most organized kitchen I have ever seen, but without being OCD about it. Everything has its place, which makes for cleaner countertops and a more relaxed state of being.
So, after we got home and unpacked the suitcases, my husband and I spent our Saturday putting our kitchen in order. It took us the better part of the morning, but it was a free makeover! Here’s what we did:
- Putting like with like. We had drinking glasses in 4 different cabinets. Instead, we rearranged the organization so we are down to 2 cabinets on 2 different shelves. And those college-years shot glasses were stored away instead of cluttering up the wine glasses. We also washed a bunch of glasses because being in cabinets and not being used can make them icky.
- Tossing stuff previously we couldn’t part with. Like the old pasta pot from my husband’s first apartment with a broken handle and a leak when the water went past the handle level. And the old Brita filter water pot that hadn’t been used in years. Tupperware lids that had no mates. All of these things take space. Of course, whatever we could throw in the recycling bin, we did.
- Re-purposing kitchen items.Our fridge/freezer with ice maker also came with a plastic dish for holding extra ice cubes. Instead of continuing as a empty space taker in the cabinet, it is now holding rubber gloves and dishwashing soap under the sink. Ditto for Tupperware bottoms with missing lids; they are now holding sippy cups and lids.
- Ditching the dish rack. This was harder for me than my husband. But in the end, we tossed it. Instead, we place hand-washed dishes on a large dish towel, which makes us put them away faster. And when we are finished, the dish towel either hangs out to dry or goes in the washer. No more grody water lingering at the bottom of the dish rack. And a whole lot more counter space!
When I look at our kitchen now, it is almost the kitchen of someone who just moved in. I quite like the “new” feel–without spending anything but a few hours doing it!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: clutter, home decorating, home improvement, organizing, remodeling
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Managing your home improvements
Monday, May 19th, 2008
One of the bigger challenges I have found in doing home improvements is when we’ve had to call in professionals to sort something out. If we hadn’t had the problem before or didn’t like the last electrician or plumber or whatever, we were starting from square one.
And so went the process of calling a bunch of companies from the phone book, getting one call back (or two, if we were particularly lucky!) and hiring them because we had no choice. Sometimes we’d get a referral from a friend or another trusted professional. Sometimes this worked, but usually the referral never called back or did shoddy work and then we felt bad about telling the referrer.
Enter www.servicemagic.com. It is a referral service for all sorts of home improvement contractors, from handymen to roofers, plumbers, you name it. You log on to the site and you tell them what service you are looking for, how large the project, and how soon you want it completed. You enter your contact info, and boom! you are given the names and info of 3 professionals in your area. And guess what? These people actually call you! They actually come out for estimates! And they are actually nice! And the whole process is free!
The way it works is this: the contractor pay to be a part of the service as well as for each referral they receive (unlike with Angie’s List where you pay for membership). So that is a good incentive for them to contact you. You have no obligation to use their services, but since they are paying for the referral, you want to use www.servicemagic.com if you are seriously considering a repair or upgrade, not just to price a “someday” project.
www.servicemagic.com has a price estimator for those “someday” projects that is quite specific and based on zip code, which is great as the cost of labor and materials can vary widely across the U.S.
We have found some great home improvement people for around our house through www.servicemagic.com and hopefully you will too!
Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.
Tags: home improvement, top 10
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