CAR CLUTTER WITH CHILDREN

I remember the days when my car was littered with fast food containers, children’s shoes/socks (usually just one of the pair), sporting equipment, trash, and toys of all kinds. With busy lives and families that are involved in a lot of different activities, containing the mess in your car can be a real challenge. While it’s not truly a problem driving a messy car, I think that it can add to your daily stress. Who doesn’t like getting into a car that isn’t at least orderly, if not clean? I would suggest that if you invest a small amount of time and money getting your car ready to really serve your family’s needs, you will feel a lot more in control.  I think the key to managing your car space is to keep things like sporting equipment or toys for the kids to use while travelling together in easy to access baskets or bins or hanging pouches. I’ve attached some links to the bottom of this post that may be useful. Using items like this may give you a better chance of knowing where everything is you need, when you need it. I suggest you add the following to your car, regardless of the ages or activities your children are involved in:

  •  Wet Wipes (to clean children, spills, or whatever happens).
  • An umbrella for an unexpected rain.
  • Plastic grocery bags (to throw trash into, to put wet things in, to simply help you carry things from the car into the house).
  • Books or small toys that are only used when in the car- that helps keep them interesting to the children. One idea is to go to the dollar tree every once in a while and pick up some “surprises” for play in the car. Even bigger kids might find something affordable that they weren’t expecting.
  • Healthy Snacks that are car friendly- food won’t melt in the heat or children’s hands or can be eaten without crumbs (maybe beef jerky as an example).
  • A towel (can be used to sit on, clean up, or just for several unexpected reasons).
  • Music that is kid friendly. Most of us have electronics we can stream from but playing music you and the kids can listen or sing to can help make the errands goes more quickly.
  • A small electric vacuum if you have the funds, to help you keep the floors and seats.

I’ve attached some items I think might help you start organizing your car. Each family has their own activities, but these might be a good starting point. Let’s see what happens with a clean car. Be Blessed.

Gail

Hanging Organizer

Amazon.com: Car Trunk Organizer, Backseat Hanging Organizer with 8 Large Storage Bag Super Capacity, Waterproof Trunk Storage Bag for SUV Car, Black : Automotive

Trunk Organizer

Amazon.com: FORTEM Car Trunk Organizer, Car Storage Organizer, Collapsible Multi Compartment Car Organizer, SUV Trunk Organizer, Non Slip Bottom, Adjustable Securing Straps, Foldable Cover (Black, Standard Size) : Automotive

DINNER TIME STRESS

Sitting around the table with your family enjoying time after our work and school days seems like something that should be fun and relaxing, but often becomes the most stressful battlefield of the day. We picture everyone smiling and talking about their days and enjoying a meal as a family, but often, this is just not what happens. Arguments about eating the food cooked, fighting among the children, and even having problems keeping everyone seated at the same table can be hard. Today we aren’t talking about those nights when your family is not home till late because of after school practice. This blog is about those days when we all are present for a meal at the same time. We are going to discuss ways to deal with crazy after-school activity schedules on another post.

For now, I want to encourage you to consider trying some of the ideas I found in the material attached called The Dinner Project Newsletter. While implementing all these ideas at once may be an overload for parents, I think picking a few and trying them may be worth the effort. The simple concept of “setting a mood” by background music or lighting candles, for example, may help children pick up on the fact that they have a set of expectations that occur when the candles or music is on. Whichever options you pick, please sit down in advance and tell your children what you expect from them. For example, “when I light the candles on the table, we are going to sit down, eat, and stay at the table until I blow out the candle”. You are trying to get the children to associate the candle being lit with sitting appropriately at the table. The same thing can be done with playing the same music every evening when people are sitting at the table.

I’ve attached a great article with suggestions on how to reduce the stress during mealtime. I encourage you to read the brief article and pick one or two to try with your family. Let’s see what happens and be blessed!

Gail

Tips for Reducing Tension at the Table – The Family Dinner Project – The Family Dinner Project

Food for the family

Welcome to the Tipsforthetiredfamily,com third post. So glad you are back to pick up some ideas for ways we can help reduce the stress we have in our daily life. When I talk to young families, I frequently hear that making a weekly menu, shopping, and preparing food seems to be a huge time consumer. Additionally, the stressors around the process of eating a meal with a young family (especially dinner) are often the most challenging of the day. I plan on doing several posts surrounding what we eat, how we eat together as a family, and to offer some ideas to make this whole process easier. Today’s post is just informational to make sure we understand what a nutritious meal even looks like. I grew up with the food pyramid as our guideline. However, in doing more research, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has gone through several changes in what is felt to be the best over-all diet. In 2005 the Food Pyramid was changed to a program called “My Pyramid”.  As more information became available, the newest USDA guidelines are called “My Plate”. I encourage you to do a crash course on this by watching the attached 3-minute video. Once we have a handle on what the goal for daily nutrition looks like, we can begin to develop systems that allow us to feed our family a nutritious diet without working hard to do it. I promise a little preparation right now will help a lot as we go through future posts on more specific ways to make your menus, shop, and prepare foods. This is going to be Important so get ready to change the way you think about what a healthy diet looks like, and as always, be blessed!

Choose My Plate Dietary Guidelines – Bing video

Laundry

Welcome to the second post of Tips for the Tired #Family. I appreciate your joining me here to consider ways to bring the stress levels down in our busy family lives. Today’s topic is the dreaded Laundry!

I must admit right from the start that I actually like doing laundry. It’s a job that’s like mowing the grass, you immediately see the improvement. However, I recently folded a giant pile of clothes for a young family and I have to tell you, the magnitude of ongoing laundry for this family of four must keep them busy all the time. This family always looks good, but it comes at a cost of time, money, and chaos that might not be worth the effort.

As an alternative, I would suggest the creation of a capsule wardrobe for each member of the family. If this is a new concept to you, I’ll simply say it’s a way to limit the number of clothing pieces each family member has and still allow them enough variety to dress for whatever their needs are. I’ve read several articles of people using capsule wardrobes and I would suggest that if you explore this option as a time and cost saver, you will want to customize it to your comfort level. At the end of this post, I’ve given you a link to a YouTube video by a woman who does an excellent job describing how she manages her child’s capsule wardrobe. It takes about 22 minutes to watch, but it is a great example of how to begin creating this for your family.

Let’s list the benefits of a capsule wardrobe:

  • The child’s closet has fewer items in it, each of which “go” together, and they can dress themselves more independently
  • There is no running around looking for things that match in the morning or on your way out the door to a sport practice for example
  • Since you are handling fewer clothes, you can limit your laundry time. You may build wardrobes that accommodate 7 days. That way, you only must do laundry once weekly. Set aside laundry time to a day when you can get the job fully done and clothes back in the closets. If you only get them washed and dried, but not put away, you’re asking for things to get out of hand quickly.
  • All of us have gotten to the end of the season and found clothes we purchased and the child either outgrew it, or they never got around to wearing them. It’s doubtful they will be the same size next season. Managing fewer clothes will help prevent this from happening.
  • Children can have a laundry basket in their own room.  Even a three-year-old can be given the responsibility of “tossing” their clothes into a basket at the end of the day. That way, whoever is responsible for the laundry just goes and picks up the baskets from each room once weekly. This can be a good way of establishing responsibility in our children and it will keep clothes from ending up all over the house.
  • Cost may not be a concern for some of our readers, but I love the way the women in the attached youtube link really uses her knowledge of what stores carry to keep the cost of clothes to a minimum while still allowing enjoyment and fun in the items selected. Great example of a mom doing purposeful shopping, and who doesn’t like a deal?
  • For those of you with older children, I think they would benefit from active involvement in the development of their wardrobe. Sit down with them and explain the concept, the benefit of knowing what’s available when they roll out of bed in the morning and help lay a foundation for how to manage clothing costs.

I have done a partial capsule wardrobe for myself for a couple of years and love it. I didn’t know about this concept when I was raising my family, but I think it’s worth considering. I’d love comments from people who have tried this in terms of what worked and what didn’t. Check out the attached video to learn more about the way you create a capsule. It’s summer now, but learning now may help you be ready to create the family’s winter capsules!

Let’s see what happens and be blessed.

Welcome tired families

Raising a family? Things can get crazy. Let’s chat.

I want to introduce myself and this blog to those of you who stop by looking for a community of encouragement and tips for the young families who feel like their world is too crazy. I am on a 12-month journey researching and sharing ideas that might help young families reduce the amount of craziness in their world.

I’ve raised a family of my own and am now watching my amazing children raise their young ones. For all practical purposes, I was a single parent with a solid support system while raising my family, so I remember those days when the night comes, and you may wonder if you did anything right.

I have a heart for young families and the fight they have to juggle work, children, and their own needs. If there is anything I can do to help find not only more peace for their family, but also identify some techniques that might help them be more successful in achieving their goals, I want to contribute.

Like anything, families are all unique so please feel free to take anything that sounds like it might work for you and leave the rest behind. Please be open to trying new ideas, and if they don’t work, just toss them out. Navigating raising a family, whatever that looks like for you is extremely complicated and time-consuming and I simply want to help take ideas from other sources and pass them on to you.

Let’s have an honest discourse about what worked and didn’t work for you as our whole purpose is to improve all of our quality of lives.

Once a week I’ll toss out an idea or concept that I’ve gotten from my own reading and I’m counting on you to let me know how things worked, how you modified them to work for your particular family, and how we can improve on ideas. I believe in the concept that “it takes a village” and I want to offer my support to your family.

I look forward to going through the year with you and hope we can identify ways to help make your families a little more effective and a lot happier.

Thank you for joining me and please feel free to give honest feedback. Being real with each other will be the key to refining ideas from something that sounds good on paper, to something that can really make a change in your family’s functioning.

Let’s see what happens and be blessed!

Gail