Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to outnumber the podcast episode 172 our favorite home essentials. Audrey and I are not trendsetters. We love products that work and when we find them we hang on to them for years and years and years even decades in some instances. So today we're sharing our favorite products and organizational systems that make our lives so much simpler and easy to manage even with a bunch of kids running around. We hope you love it.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Speaker: This episode is sponsored by Let's Make Art, an incredible resource for art lovers and parents alike. So our family gets their monthly art box for kids and my children honestly look forward to it four weeks. That sounds so incredibly easy and convenient and like something that would actually get used at our house.
Speaker: Yeah, totally. So their watercolor subscription box comes with actually four kids projects in each box. And even better, each project can be done two times. So us with our big families can get one box and actually not have fights, which is amazing. Each box comes with the paint you need, tutorial cards, and like really big, beautiful, colorful ones so the kids can see what they're making ahead of time. It comes with gorgeous watercolor paper, you know, that thick, good quality stuff.
Speaker: And the only thing you have to buy separately is the brushes and they have some amazing high quality brushes that we've invested in. And we also got their butcher tray palette, which is like an enamel palette that has the watercolors run to the side so it doesn't get all mixed up and look ugly. It's just an awesome resource I've never used and we are loving it.
Speaker: That sounds amazing. Their shop is stuffed with online tutorials, their shop, art journaling, acrylic and watercolor lessons for adults. There's boxes for grownups too. It's just amazing everything they offer. Yes. I may have invested in some boxes for myself after I did a couple of projects with my kids. I loved it. And I may have two boxes waiting for me to use once I put some little kids down and get to listen to an audio book and do some painting.
Speaker: Let's make art simple together. Check out Let's Make Art Today by going to our special link zen .ai slash outnumbered the pod. That's zen .ai slash outnumbered the pod to get 20 % off at checkout.
Speaker: Hello, hello everyone. We're back with an episode about homes and some of our favorite things. We're excited to share this one with you guys today because while we're not experts in any home management aspect, we do have a lot of experience. So we're going to share with you some of the best things that work for organizing and living in each room of our home.
Speaker: Okay, first of all, you guys, we got a new review, and this is our opportunity to ask you, please leave us a review on iTunes. We appreciate it so much. We read them live here on the air whenever we can, and it's just really fun. It helps other moms find the podcast. So this one is from T. Fieger, F -E -G -E -R, and it says, Parenting Experts.
Speaker: These two plan their episodes with research and experience. I love how put together they are with a common sense approach to many aspects of momming. They admit real life situations, but have such a good perspective. They really are experts, not the blind leading the blind. They have babies to young adults and all stages in between. They're successful entrepreneurs and other businesses too.
Speaker: I recommend these to Christian moms, to friends, so I figure I can add their social proof here in the app store to strangers, too. Heart emoji. Thank you so much for leaving that review. Aw, so sweet. Thank you. We so appreciate that. And, I mean, yes, it does help other people give us some social proof on the big, wide internet, but it also makes us feel real good inside, so thank you. It's so wonderful to know that what we're doing is helping somebody, so we appreciate that. Yes.
Speaker: Okay, so we're going to share some of our must haves in our homes, specifically organized by room. Okay, so some of these are going to be products, but we're not just trying to sell you stuff. We want to just share things that have worked for us year after year after year. And Audrey and I, I think, are not really trendy early adopters of things. But once we try something, if it works for us, we hold on to it forever, right? So we're not just going to
Speaker: Hey, say, hey, go get this thing on Amazon. You have to have it. It's the latest thing. We're just going to say, hey, 10 years ago, I bought this thing. It's worked forever. But there's going to be some organizational must -haves as well. We have a couple of companion episodes to this one that will be really helpful to listen to about laundry, about toy organization. We'll include all those in the show notes. So don't forget to check those out as well.
Speaker: That is so true. I always feel like when I recommend things, I'm recommending something old. But when I find something that works, I am just not going to go away from it. It just works. True, true. In fact, I think we could do an entire episode of just like kitchen gadgets, you know, all those things that you could not live without.
Speaker: Yes, yes. Okay, speaking of the kitchen, the heart of the home, where we spend like so much time. I have some things that every house that I've lived in, I make sure that these are the first things that I get. So these are the essentials. A whisk. I have to have a whisk. It's just like if I have a whisk, I can make anything.
Speaker: is love a stainless steel whisk and there's different sizes and kinds. A pastry blender. Just really use that tool for other things besides making biscuits and pastries. It's one of my favorite, favorite kitchen tools. There is a specific spatula
Speaker: that I go and buy like three or four at a time. I'll link it in the show notes. It's like the OXO spatula. It is the perfect shape that handles the perfect length. The end of it is not curved, so it works. It's perfect. I'll link it in the show notes because once you have this spatula, you'll never use any other.
Speaker: Okay, another thing I always have in my kitchen is cast iron skillets. Now, a couple reasons behind this. I do have a little bit of anemia that I struggle with, so I like the extra iron I get from the cast iron skillets. But also, hello unbreakable. I have never broken a cast iron skillet. I've never worn one out. I have never lost one.
Speaker: So I cast iron skill. I have them in a bunch of different sizes. You can get them new on Amazon. You can get them at Walmart.
Speaker: You can go to about any antique store or flea market and find a cast iron skillet. I love a cast iron skillet. Okay, some other things I have to have in my kitchen are a water dispenser with filtered water. We think that's one of the most important things we can do for our health is drink good filtered water. So we have all the equipment in the basement to filter our water and we have a spigot in the kitchen that comes up through. But before that, we went and bought filtered water and had it come out one of those little things with a spigot.
Speaker: So, gotta have that in our kitchen. And the last thing I love to have in my kitchen is a well -stocked spice drawer. Like, I feel like I can be an amazing cook by just taking hamburger, ground beef, and changing the taste to make it taste, to go a different direction with it. And my kids aren't like, eh, ground beef again.
Speaker: Yes, totally. I always have just about any spice any recipe calls for and probably hold on to some of them longer than the shelf life suggests, but I can't stand to not be able to do some new unique flavor profile because I don't have the right spices. And on that note, I have a phenomenal spice Lazy Susan thingy that's in my back corner cabinet because I have one of those useless corner cabinets that everything just gets lost in.
Speaker: And that one has changed my life. All my spices are alphabetized, and they're all in this little spinny thing, and I can find one in a second. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. I have my spices in a drawer. I have a shallow drawer, and so they all lay down. They lay down? Yeah. I have an entire drawer full of that.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I was staying in an Airbnb and saw somebody organize them like that, and I thought, oh, well, that's brilliant too. I can't sacrifice any drawers, but I love that idea. The cast iron skillet, I was just going to say, I want to use them more in my house, but we have a glass cooktop. And unlike
Speaker: I mean, instead of breaking the cast iron skillet, I worry a little bit about breaking my stovetop because if a kid puts that down hard, but we love using them. Camping, we have a ton of Dutch ovens. My husband's the big cast iron skillet and Dutch oven guy. They're super fun.
Speaker: Um, so this is funny. I actually have a running list on a note in my phone of all the features of my dream kitchen. So if we ever do a down to studs remodel or a brand new build, then I'm going to go to that note because I've made a lot of different notes, but they're kind of, kind of luxury is like having two full sinks and a prep sink.
Speaker: having two garbage cans on either end of my kitchen island, like big things like that. But as far as the things that we do have currently, one of them is a command center. And I posted about this on my blog before I can share that link. But we actually have two calendars. One is a weekly one that we just use a liquid chalk pen, chalk pan on. And then the other one is a big monthly one that is by our dining room table. And that works so nicely to keep
Speaker: kids on the same page, everyone else. I mean, yeah, you can do digital, but I just really like seeing it front and center. We sit down at dinner and go, oh, look what's happening this week. Oh, don't forget that dad's out of town this weekend. Oh, what do we have to prep for in a few weeks, et cetera.
Speaker: A designated place for water cups or water bottles is essential, in my opinion, especially if you live in a place that's hot and kids just drink water so often. I cannot tolerate standing cups of water on every surface in my kitchen or my main floor. So we hung a bunch of command hooks on the side of our fridge, had everybody hang up their water bottles. We're trying to remodel that corner of the kitchen, and so I'm trying to come up with a new place to put them.
Speaker: But even if you don't want to do water bottles, you can even do like my mom actually has a shelf above her water filtration system where everybody has a different colored cup. So you can just go grab your cup, drink it, dump it, you know, stick it back up there. So it's out of the way, not getting knocked over all the time.
Speaker: Another essential for me is my Blendtec blender. So I actually spent a ridiculous amount of time clinging to a $30 blender that I'd gotten from Target. And all my friends got the expensive ones. And I was like, I don't need an expensive one. That's ridiculous. I can make my green smoothies in this one until I went to a friend's house. We used her blender for a green smoothie. And I was like, you don't have to chew your kale going down.
Speaker: Like actually, but we use it for everything. We use it to whip cream. It takes no time at all to do smoothies, to chop nuts or other things. You can make flour, oat flour, any other green flour in there. So those are just a handful of things that I would die without. I need to check out that blender because I'm constantly breaking on the bottom of my blender that the screw that holds the blade in place, mine is like always broken and then it like leaks across the counter when you're, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's definitely an investment purchase, but they stand behind their products. Especially if you buy them from Costco. We've had a couple of them. I think one or two, the seal started leaking or something, and I just took it right back, and they gave me a brand new one. So it pays to buy quality sometimes. Okay, good to know. All right, let's go into the laundry room. So we have a whole episode about laundry like Bonnie mentioned, and we talk a lot of different stuff in there, but I don't think I talked about
Speaker: like these things there. Um, so I like to use laundry detergent without any scent. So one of the essentials for me is clean and pure laundry detergent that doesn't have a smell. I just get overwhelmed with smells and they, so clean and pure. It doesn't matter what brand it's just got to be no smell and no dyes in it. And then I also like OxiClean use that for everything, keeping
Speaker: things like towels. We do a lot of saunas here because we have a sauna in the basement and just keeping, keeping those fresh and dry. And especially in the summer, things get wet and they hang out, hang around in mildew.
Speaker: Okay. One thing I love to use in my dryer is dryer balls. I don't know how I went so many years without those, those wool dryer balls, but they cut down on drying time and they fluff your clothes so much better. I think I actually have like six or eight of them in my dryer and I just keep cycling out the oldest ones and then get new ones. But those things are magical. I don't even know how I lived without those. So do you use that many with each, with each, um, load you keep in at all times?
Speaker: Yeah, I throw like six in there. Inevitably somebody's got, you know, two folded up in a sock or something. They didn't make it back. Yeah. And then the last thing in my laundry room that saves my sanity is two baskets. One is full of folded socks and one is full of not folded socks. And then anybody, if they have extra time or if they're needing a timeout or if they're
Speaker: needing a little alone time, they can go in the laundry room and they can just pair socks and put them from one basket to the other. But it saves my sanity not having to try to figure out what socks belong to who and where they go and all that. It just is a huge time saver. Definitely an essential for me.
Speaker: Unsorted socks. Yes. I actually really enjoy doing laundry every step of the way, except for socks. As soon as the socks come out, I'm like, nope. Not going to do it. Not going to do it. So we also have a sock bucket, actually. We only have one, and they never get paired, but I don't care. Kids can go pair them themselves when they're ready to put their socks on. I don't care. And they also have been, my kids also often wear socks that aren't paired. I think it even was like the fad for a while. Yeah, totally. There you go, kid. I'm helping you be trendy.
Speaker: One of my most essential things that we did in this current laundry room, because ours is on the smaller side for a large family, is we put shelves above our washer dryer. So we just have the regular on the, you know, not the stackable or anything. Two wire shelves above it. And that is enough room for six of the low long laundry baskets. And that's just about everybody's bedroom. So whoever shares a bedroom, you know, all their clothes going together.
Speaker: Um, and, um, that's where I put all the clean clothes. So, you know, ideally, like my older sons, they'll go in, wash their clothes, dry them, pull them right out. But just about everyone else, you know, they leave underwear on the floor or I find I run a sock here or whatever. So I just go stick it in whatever's washing. And when it comes out, I'm not going to go put each one of these things away. I just toss it in the clean basket. And when it's full, they go put it away. And if they can't find, oh, all my socks are missing. It's probably because you left them all over the house and they're now in your clean basket. So get them.
Speaker: huge. I cannot stand laundry on the floor ever, so it's up high. It stays clean. The cat can't get to it. I also love, love, love OxiClean. I don't really use any other stain treatment other than that one, the OxiClean powder, which is get a big box at Costco.
Speaker: And another system that I've come up with in my laundry room is each. So when you walk in, it's kind of a long, skinny room. In front of the washer is where the dirty stuff goes, and in front of the dryers, the clean stuff. So it's very rare that I don't have any laundry in the queue, right? But when people go in, they know if you're looking to put something dirty in the laundry room, you put it on the left side. And if it's clean, it goes in one of the baskets on the right. I know that sounds super simple and kind of silly, but when you've got four -year -olds that are like,
Speaker: you know, trying to drop off peed underwear somewhere, you want to make sure they know to not drop it in a basket of clean clothes. So that really simple system of this is the dividing line, dirty here, clean here makes a huge difference. Yes. And for our just a side note here for our Patreon fans, Bonnie did a tour of her laundry room and all the ways it's organized and it's amazing. So if you want to support us on Patreon.
Speaker: that is out there for you. It is not Pinterest worthy, that's for sure, but it is organized and I'm really happy with it finally. Yeah, it's used. It's useful and used. That's right. That's right. Okay, so now we're going to move on to the living room area and you could call this the family room. I just call it whatever room we spend the most time in together as a family, right?
Speaker: We have a little decorative bin, a little box underneath our side table next to the couch and in that is diapers of all sizes and baby wipes. I love having that downstairs because a couple of our bedrooms are upstairs and the babies are over here on this side of the house. If I had to go run to somebody's room to get a diaper every time I needed to change someone, I'd have
Speaker: 50 ,000 steps a day. Maybe I should do that. I don't know. But having it just in one central location is really helpful. And then if you have to delegate diaper training to someone, they're right there. Babysitter always knows that we just keep that stocked. I also have sometimes like some diaper rash cream or training pants. If somebody is working on potty training, just all those essentials go there.
Speaker: We also have learned over the years that really the only color or pattern couch that works for our family is gray. Black shows boogers and anything lighter obviously will show everything else, but gray is great, especially if you can get a patterned gray. It hides a multitude of sins and we have a microfiber which can be washed really well. I personally love leather as well, but it just takes one mistimed pen puncture and then your nice leather couch is ruined.
Speaker: we will probably always have a great couch as long as there are children home at my house. And one thing we recently put in our living room that I really like is a nice rocking chair. So we used to have our little glider in the baby's room and then we put another kid in there and didn't have room. So I put it in my living room in the corner and it's in a little reading nook. And so I can sit there with the kid who's having a meltdown and rock them a little bit. I can nurse a baby in it. I can read somebody a book. You know, we can have a little chat about anything. It's just kind of a fun, cozy little corner that we get a lot of use out of.
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds very nice. Very, very good place for living. Okay. In our living room, one thing that I think is essential or one of my favorite things is that the floor is a hardwood floor and we use area rugs. So the hardwood floor is easy, easy, easy to clean. And then the area rugs kind of soften it. Cause we have a great big room that would be echoey, um, if it wasn't
Speaker: uh, um, you know, some rugs and, and soft furniture to soften it. So that is like one thing that I just really like about our living room is the hardwood floor. Easy to clean spells. You just wipe them up, mop them up, whatever. And then the other thing that I just consider essential in our living room is the piano. And this is not for any other purpose. Well, yes, the kids all are learning piano and all that, but
Speaker: It makes me feel like an adult and like I have a home and like it's, it's friendly and like, um, a place I can bring visitors into. It feels more like, uh, Oh, like a sitting room or something. Yes. Thank you. A parlor with, with something a little fancier, a little more adult and grown up in there. And so far my kids haven't been able to like, you know, tip over my piano or ruin it or anything. So it just seems like more of an adult thing. So those are just a couple of things that I really love to have.
Speaker: in our living room. Okay, so next we're gonna talk about kids bathrooms. And it doesn't have to be exclusively for kids, but any bathroom that a child uses intends to destroy. And one of those is we have a toothpaste and toothbrush holder. So in the past we just used cups or whatever, but it kind of grossed me out that everyone's toothbrushes would be touching. And then my little ones would often use somebody's that wasn't theirs. And anyway, gross. I found this really great little holder. I'll include it in the show notes.
Speaker: that get stuck to the wall. And there is an individual slot for each person's toothbrush. And then there are cups that go upside down on top of the toothbrushes. So there's a cup for water and the toothbrushes are also protected from whatever toilet debris is flying through the air when you flush. But I just really like having all that stuff stuck together. There's also like a little cubby on the back of it where you can stick your toothpaste or your floss or anything else you need.
Speaker: We also have to have a stool in every bathroom because we have little ones that are always needing to wash hands and I love the collapsible stools. Ideally, I would find, have you guys ever seen those vanities that the bottom drawer is a stool that you can pull out and step up on? That's what I really want. But in the meantime, we get the collapsible kind so that it's not always dinging the big people's calves and shins and we can just fold it up and stick it behind the door next to the sink.
Speaker: And then we also have hooks for towels in every bathroom, but this is actually a project I've been trying to work on and haven't finished yet.
Speaker: I want to personalize all the hooks and the towels. So we have an issue with towel neglect at our house. If they get left on the floor, they get dropped in somebody else's room, and that's not mine. That's not mine. I didn't leave it there. But with names on them and names on the hooks as well so that they know exactly where it goes, I can tell at a glance, oh, somebody's towel is not here. Where is it? Is it hiding in your room becoming a moldy mess? Go get it. That's going to be a great way to finish. Yeah, towel neglect. That's a great term.
Speaker: Well, we use a lot of those things in our kid's, kid bathroom, bathrooms that kids use too. So I thought I would touch a little bit on a homeschool room. Although I think that we could probably do a whole episode and probably should do a whole episode on what our homeschool rooms look like.
Speaker: Yeah. Some, some essentials that I really love in our homeschool room are a huge chalkboard. It's ginormous and anybody can write anything on it and they can do art and whatever. It's, it's just a really great place and then it can be erased and the room can look neat again. Um, another thing we do in our homeschool room is station. So like areas for certain things, like all the art supplies are in this area and all the, you know, this is a little reading corner over here and this is, um, like the computer desk. So,
Speaker: definite places for things to be done and to be happening. Another absolute essential in the homeschool room is lots of shelving. You just have to, if you don't have a space for things, it's going to end up on the floor or piled up on the work surface and then nobody can, nobody can work because somebody else's books are in the way. And so lots of shelving. And I like to keep my shelves really organized and really, um,
Speaker: like stay up on that so that everybody knows where to find something. And I don't have to be the one always looking for whatever it is that's lost that the kid needs. And then the last thing we have in our school room is a coat closet. And I don't know, I'm forever looking for a system to keep this thing organized and keep the kids hanging up their coats instead of throwing them on a chair on the floor. But it's at least there is a closet where coats are supposed to be hung. Yeah, we don't have that.
Speaker: We don't have a Coke closet, nor do we need one, but I would imagine it would be a mess to keep clean. I just wanted to share one thing that we have in our school room, just while we're talking about it. We have, we built in some cabinets and things when we first moved in and we have cubbies for each child. So I just went and got cheap baskets at the dollar store. And that's where everyone keeps the things that they're working on because there's nothing more frustrating than going to do language arts. And my workbook is missing and, you know, and they even put pens and pencils in there that they're using so they can't complain that someone
Speaker: made off with their pencil and they don't have anything to write. That has been a huge boon. Yes. Yes. Each of my kids have a bookshelf where their books and binders and things are supposed to be kept. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. Let's move on to kid bedrooms. So we took a detour into the homeschool room, but let's go into the kid bedroom. So we have bunk beds, just extra spaces for sleeping. And our bedrooms are quite small in this house. And so we have to go vertical with the sleeping areas. There's not as much horizontal space. Another thing I do in the kids bedrooms is closet shelving.
Speaker: with clear plastic containers for sorting. So little kids that are too young to read what goes in a box, they can still see it because the box is clear. And then I even print out little pictures of, you know, like a Lego. And so this is the Lego box and tape it on the outside of the box. So I really like to have a place for everything and everything in its place. And I don't know that the kids always follow up on everything in its place, but I definitely like to have a place for everything.
Speaker: I like to have shoe baskets in their room so then they can just take off their shoes and throw them in the basket instead of trying to organize them on a shelf or whatever. I try to work with them on a system of keeping their shoes in one place because it's always a struggle when it's time to go somebody's shoes are missing so trying to get them to at least have a place for their shoes that they're supposed to put their shoes in.
Speaker: Uh, and a laundry basket in everybody's bedroom. I don't know why it took me so long to figure that one out, but that's kind of important to keep the clothes off the floor. I was trying to keep like all the laundry in the hallway or in the laundry room, but that just, it just ended up 30 clothes everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last thing that my kids love to have in their bedrooms is there, maybe it's a curtain phase, but all my kids have had this phase is a lava lamp when they're going to sleep. It's just a very calming and they like to lay there and watch it. And it's kind of, I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe I should have talked about it in our, on our episode on teaching stillness, but they just really like to lay there and look at the lava lamp and it helps them calm. And I have a couple of kids who stress out if they don't immediately fall asleep, that they can't fall asleep. I can't fall asleep. I can't fall asleep and they get themselves more anxious. So the lava lamp, they just kind of stay there and watch it and it mesmerize them right to sleep.
Speaker: That is a brilliant, you're like hypnotizing your child to sleep. I love it. Kind of, kind of. I am totally going to go get one for my five year old because she is a stinker and she does not wind down. Like you have to like basically sit there and you know, keep your arms on her to keep her still for five minutes till she finally not off. But maybe try a lava lamp. They just kind of like to watch it. The bubbles are floating and changing. Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah, for sure. OK, so in our kids' bedrooms, we also have a lot of bunk beds. We actually have, I just counted,
Speaker: four sets of bunk beds in our house. Couldn't live without them. And one thing that we invested in in our girl's bedroom that has two sets of bunk beds and five kids in because it's the biggest room we've got and that just is working best for now is the Betty's bedding. Have you ever heard of that Audrey?
Speaker: I have we haven't we don't have it but every time I'm trying to make a kids bed I think uh I think Betty's makes this so much easier I had looked into it for so long but they are pricey and I was like I'm not gonna spend all that it's ridiculous and then finally I walked into my girls room and I had just had enough there was another sheet wrapped around something they've used to like
Speaker: belay off the bunk bed and i'm like enough pillows everywhere so i bought four sets for those bunk beds and have not looked back they look fantastic it requires zipping two zippers to make the bed there's no extraneous sheets or blankets anywhere it's so great it's so great we haven't gone through a summer with them yet so i can't vouch for if they'll be too hot for us here because sometimes things are a little bit warm but they can always just take the blanket off if they need to but
Speaker: Okay. So my question about that is like, how bulky are they to wash? Like, do you have to wash the whole thing at once? Um, so you just unzip the top from the bottom and then just wash the top separately from the bottom. So it does take two loads. I can add more with the blanket than I can the bottom. The bottom half is bulky enough that it kind of takes up its own load, but it's not unmanageable. And that's for the full, the twin is not that way. You can add more stuff, but
Speaker: Yeah, I honestly will never go back. Now I'm saving my pennies to get it for my other boys here downstairs. But anyway, they've been fantastic. Watch for coupon codes. Maybe we can get you guys one. I also really love having a little shelf by everyone's bed, especially in bunk beds, because they'll climb up there and go, oh, I forgot my book. Or, oh, where do I put my glasses when I go to bed? Having just a little shelf there is just great for them to keep a little alarm clock or
Speaker: Like I said, glass is anything else they need. Ideally, we would have them recessed into the wall and built in bunk beds, maybe in a different life, but yeah.
Speaker: I also really like a cheap alarm clock for my kids. We have this one and my kids have requested it as well. The brightness can go all the way down to nothing and all the way to like really, really bright depending on what they need. It's just super easy to use and it's like 12 bucks on Amazon. I can link to it, but I don't allow my kids to have their phones in their bedrooms and so having an alarm clock gives them a way to get up with that phone.
Speaker: And then finally, white noise machines. We have in almost every single room. It really helps everyone all the way up to my 16 -year -old get to sleep, especially if they're anxious or worried about something. The other thing we invested in recently is a YODO player. And if you follow any book bloggers, maybe you've heard of this, but it's kind of like a little audio book machine and they have cards that you can put in and they have audio books and they have music, classical, all kinds of beautiful things that you can put in there. And that's kind of functioned as white noise for some of my little girls like to listen to stuff.
Speaker: All right, now we're gonna move on to the master bedroom and bathroom, our sanctuaries, right? Or where we try to keep a little bit of peace and quiet for ourselves. We also have a no phone rule in our bedroom, or at least I do. My husband, I don't really care as much about what he does, but it's really important to me to not have it right by my bed because when I do, it's so hard for me to sleep. I just think, oh, that thing, I'm gonna go write it down. Oh, that thing, I'm gonna go look it up. Anyway, and it just, it bothers me. So we don't have phones in our room. We plug them in downstairs.
Speaker: I also keep my alarm clock across the room, this cute, cheap one that I have, because it helps make it up. And it's also really, really nice to know what time it is when kids wake you up. So, you know, for the past 15 years, I've gotten up at some point during the night quite often. And it's really nice to hear a baby cry and roll over and think, okay, it's only 11, 15. That baby should be sleeping long. I'm going to give her five more minutes, right? Whereas at 3 a .m., I know it's time for her to feed or whatever. I just really like being able to check at a glance without looking at a phone.
Speaker: We also invest in blackout shades in our house and this goes for the kids rooms as well because we have a lot of sunshine in Arizona and it's really hard to get sleep in the summer with lots of light. One thing I recently purchased that I'm in love with is a bar for shampoo and conditioner.
Speaker: So it doesn't have phthalates and all those nasty chemicals, but it's just a shampoo bar. And it lasts way longer than regular shampoo. It feels just as clean and is made of all natural stuff. So I really like it. And I think I'm going to start buying it for my kids as well. They can't dump all the shampoo down the drain if it's a bar, which they have done before. It's pretty fun. And then finally, this is maybe TMI, but I always keep a book of Sudoku in my powder room.
Speaker: because sometimes I just need a break and sometimes going to the bathroom is the only break I get and so sometimes I just look forward to going in there and sitting for a few minutes and doing my sudoku and the kids are banging on like using the bathroom can't get out I'll be done in a minute and that just kind of helps me recenter a little bit yes absolutely those bathroom breaks can get long when they're
Speaker: You would try to get away from kids. All right. Some essentials on our master bedroom too. We totally do the no phones in bedrooms rule too. I just feel like it affects their sleep and my sleep. So just don't even get that started. So on my bedside table, I like to have my Bible and my journal and I just like, that's my wind down and I write in the journal and I read the Bible and that's my wind down.
Speaker: In our bedroom, in the back of our, in one section of our bedroom is my sewing space. I'm pointing here for those of you watching it on YouTube, I do my little office and sewing spaces in one corner of our bedroom. So that is like also my relax and unwind and be an adult space. And then the last thing we have in our master bedroom that I just really feel like is essential is an ozone and air purifier machine.
Speaker: And it just is really, I don't know, I think when we're sleeping at night and taking those deep cleansing breaths, that's a good time to be in an air purifier. So it does do our whole upstairs where the bedrooms are, but like that. Another thing, all our bedrooms are on the second floor. And so we have the fire escape ladders in all of our upstairs bedrooms, just for safety. Definitely feel like it's an essential because the only, there's only one way to get downstairs from our upstairs and we're there to be a fire on the stairs.
Speaker: You gotta get out somehow, so gotta have those fire ladders. Yeah, that's so wise. I remember reading a story about a blogger a few years ago who had a fire in her basement, and there were some bedrooms in her basement, and her son was trapped in his bedroom when there was a fire, and luckily they had ladders installed in the, they had windows and wells, and he was able to get out safely, but can you imagine? Ugh, that's something you never think about. Yeah. Okay, couple last minute, nope.
Speaker: We have a few final miscellaneous must -haves in our household. And one for me is my robot vacuum. So this was another thing, another trendy thing that I was like, I am not getting that. It's ridiculous. I can run a vacuum. My kids can run vacuum. It's not a big deal. Until on a whim, we bought one because it was on sale and my life changed.
Speaker: we decided to make it a habit to pick up right before bed, which, you know, you can pick up a million times during the day and it's still messy before bed, but specifically right before bed and then just turn it on while my husband and I were relaxing, reading a book or watching a show or something. And then I woke up to a pristine floor every morning and I just thought, where has this little thing been all my life? Unfortunately - Does your robot vacuum have a name?
Speaker: It was Deborah. The last one was Deborah. We got a new one when we moved to this house. Unfortunately, I don't love this one as much, so I will link to the older one. Also, our main floor is much bigger now, so there's more places for her to get lost. She's kind of on my blacklist right now until I can find one. Let's see. Work a little bit better, but so amazing. When they work right, they're so amazing.
Speaker: I also really like my steam mop so my kids actually prefer the old -fashioned kind with the spinny bucket and everything but if I'm gonna mop I use the steam mop and I just think that there's so much crud on my floor and I have babies like eating off it that I would much prefer to have like really hot water and steam killing germs and bacteria and things on my floor so I love using that.
Speaker: One thing we recently did was add one or two auto closing hinges on all our exterior doors and the heavens opened, the angels sang, doors were not left open at my house anymore because they automatically closed.
Speaker: Do it, Audrey. We have them. We have them. They probably open or what? No, no. It's just like the outside exterior door closes and then there's like, oh, I'm just groaning because we have like an interior French door and the kids leave that one open and there happens to be currently a broken window on the entryway porch. And so the flies just come flocking in. Yes.
Speaker: air conditioning the entire countryside, like all the things, right? We did not replace all our hinges because I was really nervous about kids getting finger slammed. So we just did one or two so that it was just enough to, it actually doesn't fully latch my door. It just closes it enough that the air and flies are not exchanging all the time, but love those. And then we also have shoe baskets.
Speaker: or little bins that go in a shoe cubby. So I make my kids take their shoes off at the door because they just get lost everywhere in the house and make a mess and they put them all in their own cubby and they should be there at all times, which is kind of nice because when I'm wandering through the house, if I see them out of place, I know exactly where to put them. I don't have to take them to other people's rooms, but that's worked really well for us, especially with the little ones who are always misplacing the shoes.
Speaker: Yes. I don't know. It's time to go and I can only find a black shoe and a white shoe. Fine. Put them on. Let's go. Yeah, exactly. All right. We have a vacuum that I love as well. It's actually more of a shop vac.
Speaker: but it's a still vacuum STI HL and it is amazing. I really prefer just to stop a shop back in the house because then I can do wet, I can do dry, I can take it outside and empty it. And this one is kind of, I don't know, I don't understand the technology. I'm just going to say it's magic, but it goes from carpet to hard floors without having to change the attachment. It just sort of magically adjusts, which I can do that.
Speaker: Um, one essential is a scrap bucket in one of our porches. Cause we have chickens and we take all the scraps to them. So instead of rotting food, laying around on plates or in a bowl somewhere we, I went to, I just got a step on trash can.
Speaker: And I step on it, throw the food in, it closes. So it keeps the ants out and it keeps the food out of sight until they go take it out to the animals. Um, the thing we have is right when you walk in the house, we have a, we call it the landing strip and it's where keys and wallets and phones and everything, you know, empty coins, empty your pockets, whatever. And then everything is theoretically there and you need it. Um, a mud room for when they come in from doing chores and they have
Speaker: There are muddy boots on there. They have to take them outside. They have to take them off out there on the back porch in the mud room so that mud never makes it inside. And oh, speaking of mopping, I discovered something years ago and I don't know if I'm a genius or lazy, but we're going to call it genius.
Speaker: I threw away my mop bucket because I was like, I'm just rubbing dirt around on the floor. Like after the first mop, the bucket is so full. So I threw away the bucket and this is the way I mop now. I have a bathroom right off my kitchen and I turn the bathtub onto hot. I don't fill it up. I just turn the shower on.
Speaker: the bathtub part of the shower. Why am I having such a hard time explaining this? I turn the bathtub to hot. I turn it on, get my mop wet, wring it out, go mop some, come back, do it again. So I don't even use any chemical cleaner or detergent or anything. I just mop with hot water. It's probably much like your steam mop. I don't know how that works. But I have found that to be the most effective way of cleaning is just straight hot water and rinsing it about every two square feet.
Speaker: So I'm always mopping with clean water and never reusing the dirty water. Would you just run back and forth from the bathroom? I do. Yeah. It's just right there, right off the kitchen. And that's the floor I mop the most. And so just do that. Brilliant. Yeah. So smart. That's my little genius lazy way of mopping.
Speaker: You know, honestly, I wish we could have every one of you all listening come on the podcast and share your secrets with us, because all of us have experiences that are so different and things that have worked so well for us. So if you have anything to share on this episode, please come meet us over on Instagram and share them in the comments of any of our posts this week. We would love to hear them. And maybe we'll do another episode with all the readers suggestions. That would be really fun. And if you're on Instagram, you can always email us at at number of the podcast at gmail .com. So thanks so much for listening. We sure love you guys. And we'll talk next week.
Speaker: Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
