Make your child’s birthday extra special!

Birthdays are a great way to introduce some special family traditions. With all the expense & time spent organising parties and gifts…sometimes it’s the extra special little things that make the day memorable 🙂

One tradition that we have started in our house is filling a room or their bedroom with balloons, streamers, decorations etc. Even if you are not having a party at home. 

   

Another birthday tradition we have had since the kids could eat solids is to make special birthday pancakes for breakfast with a candle on top 😊 

Every birthday we always let the birthday boy or girl pick whatever they want to eat for dinner. Some years I have eaten noodles because it’s what they wanted LOL!

One thing my two LOVE is that on their birthday they don’t have to do any chores and get to watch whatever they choose on tv etc 😊 a great perk to it being your birthday 😊

These are just a few things that we do in our home to make a birthday more memorable 😊 A great one that I’m looking to add to the list is using washable paint markers and writing “honk for willows 8th birthday” on our car!!

Let me know if you have any birthday traditions, I’d love to hear them 😊

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x 

Declutter your kitchen!

Once or twice a year I declutter my kitchen. It’s necessary because over time I acquire so much stuff it becomes unmanageable and I become slack & just toss things in the cupboards, etc! 

Here’s how I do it by being productive & systematic, which results in an organised kitchen.

Clear an open area where you can create four piles; rubbish/toss, keep, move to another room and sell/charity.

Start by clearing out the rubbish. Throw out dated paperwork, receipts, ripped plastic bags, food wrappers, empty cartons or boxes, anything on your benches, etc.

Start the sorting process. I go cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer, then the pantry. Pull everything out of the cupboard/drawer/pantry and sort into your piles (rubbish/toss, keep, sell/charity and move to another room). To help sort ask yourself questions such as “is it broken?” If yes, toss.  “have I used it within the last month?” If yes, keep. If no, sell/charity. Except obviously for seasonal products like Xmas plates, etc. If your keeping an item but it belongs somewhere else, put it in the move to another room pile. 

Once all the sorting is complete, your cupboards, drawers & pantry should be EMPTY. This is the perfect opportunity to wipe down the insides! 

It’s then time to put away all the piles. I start with the “keep” pile & put it all away in an organised manner (cutlery together in one drawer, plastics/Tupperware together, etc. I then put the sell/charity pile away in my spare room or garage until they are sold or I get to a charity store. Obviously the rubbish pile is put outside in the bins or in my hard rubbish collection pile for the next collection date.

A decluttered kitchen is so refreshing 😊

Happy decluttering!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

Declutter your kitchen!

Once or twice a year I declutter my kitchen. It’s necessary because over time I acquire so much stuff it becomes unmanageable and I become slack & just toss things in the cupboards, etc! 

Here’s how I do it by being productive & systematic, which results in an organised kitchen.

Clear an open area where you can create four piles; rubbish/toss, keep, move to another room and sell/charity.

Start by clearing out the rubbish. Throw out dated paperwork, receipts, ripped plastic bags, food wrappers, empty cartons or boxes, anything on your benches, etc.

Start the sorting process. I go cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer, then the pantry. Pull everything out of the cupboard/drawer/pantry and sort into your piles (rubbish/toss, keep, sell/charity and move to another room). To help sort ask yourself questions such as “is it broken?” If yes, toss.  “have I used it within the last month?” If yes, keep. If no, sell/charity. Except obviously for seasonal products like Xmas plates, etc. If your keeping an item but it belongs somewhere else, put it in the move to another room pile. 

Once all the sorting is complete, your cupboards, drawers & pantry should be EMPTY. This is the perfect opportunity to wipe down the insides! 

It’s then time to put away all the piles. I start with the “keep” pile & put it all away in an organised manner (cutlery together in one drawer, plastics/Tupperware together, etc. I then put the sell/charity pile away in my spare room or garage until they are sold or I get to a charity store. Obviously the rubbish pile is put outside in the bins or in my hard rubbish collection pile for the next collection date.

A decluttered kitchen is so refreshing 😊

Happy decluttering!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

My tips to survive a road trip with kids!

We just returned from a short holiday away which involved a two hour drive, which with kids can be hell on earth! There are ways to make it more pleasurable for everyone though 😊 Here’s my tips:

Be Prepared! This means make sure you have snacks & water bottles for the trip. Have on hand baby wipes for those side of the road toilet stops! Make sure your hubby checks the oil, water etc on the car before you leave. Pack a first aid kit and Have EVERYTHING you can think of incase of an emergency.

Pillows, pillows, pillows! Nothing worse then the kids complaining of a sore neck or finding it hard to sleep. The best ones to use are the travel pillows which you can by from any chain store like target or Kmart. 

Baking trays. Say what? Yes, baking trays! Use them as stable tables for the kiddies! They can lean on them to colour in or do a puzzle or to put their snacks on 😁

Books on CDs 😊 sometimes kids get bored of music! A book on cd can help ease boredom 😊

Good old fashioned car trip games like eye-spy can keep kids entertained for hoooooours!

Don’t forget to take plenty of rest & toilet breaks and most of all enjoy your car trip!

Happy driving!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

How to make your own bouncy balls!

Here’s a super fun activity to try out with the kiddies over the holidays 😊 we did it the other day and it was a lot of fun!

You will need:

1/2 a cup of warm water

1 tbsp of borax (found in the laundry aisle of Coles/woollies 

Food colouring or watercolours (if you don’t want a little bit of staining)

1 tbsp of cornflour

2 tbsp of white liquid glue

(The above makes ONE bouncy ball)

Hint: use disposable gloves 😉

Method:

In a cup mix the warm water and borax.

In another cup, mix together the glue, cornflour & food colouring.

  

Pour the glue mixture into the cup with the water/borax mixture.

  

The glue mixture will slowly harden. When this happens pull the mixture out with a fork. If still soft put back in the water/borax mixture for a bit longer.

Roll the hardened glue mixture into a ball and voilà you have your very own bouncy ball!

  

Happy making!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

Organise those pesky toys!

Is your house over ran with toys? Mine sure is! We used to have a playroom but it quickly became a junkyard and was overfilled to the brim. I had enough and cleared it out. 

The first thing to do is do your clearing out & organising is to do it without the kids around, whether they are at school, asleep or out with daddy…because all they want to do is play with long lost toys or prohibit you from throwing anything away. I started by creating 3 piles: keep, throw away and charity (in my case I sold these ones on a buy swap sell site on Facebook and gave the money to the kids). 

Once this was completed ( it took me a good three hours!) I put all the throw away toys in garbage bags and stored in the garage until next hard rubbish day. I straight away listed all the charity/selling toys on Facebook and stores them in my spare room until they were sold & collected. 

The keep pile was a little bit more tricky. I didn’t want a playroom anymore so I separated  the toys into sections of who they belonged to. I then used large plastic tubs, baskets, storage containers etc to group like toys with like. For example; Lego all together, barbies & accessories together and so on. I then transferred these all to designated spots in the kids rooms (floor, bookcases, cupboards, etc) this way every toy had a place! 

This organisation made my life so much more easier! The kids had their own toys in their own rooms, they could easily pack away their toys as everything had a place and I had a study area for myself all of a sudden! 

Happy Organising!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

Hands down, best way to clean your microwave!

Is the inside of your microwave a tad yucky? Do you have food stuck all on the inside? If you have a spare five mins, a lemon and a sponge try this!

Put one cup of water & five slices of lemon in a microwave  proof bowl (lemon juice works just as good). Turn the microwave on for two to five minutes. When it’s finished, make sure you keep the door shut for a couple of mins to let the steam do its job! Carefully remove the bowl and wipe down the inside of your fresh smelling microwave ☺️

Happy Cleaning! 

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

Kids school work & art work storage

Are you like me and just was overloaded with piles of art & such from school?! Don’t stress, I have a few solutions 😊

Use your digital camera and take photos of the pieces & back the files up on your computer and iCloud. This way you can just throw all the paper out as you have saved them forever 😊 you can then display them as your screensaver or on a digital photo frame!

Another way is to buy a large, two ring binder and name and date each piece as you store it in the folder. This way you can flip through it as they get older ☺️

A new modern way is to use an app such as artkive, canvasly or keepy. They aren’t all free but are a great way to keep a record of your child’s artwork 😊

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x

Laundry Schedule

This blog post was actually a request by a dear friend who is having trouble keeping up with her laundry. I up until about 7 months ago had a huge pile that took up my whole laundry & my darling mummy helped clear it out so I could start fresh! 

The 1st thing I did after the big clear out which require taking the clothes to a laundry mat to get on top of it, was to put laundry baskets in everyone’s closets. This seperates the washing, keeps socks in pairs, and let’s the laundry floor stay clear. I then created a laundry schedule. Monday is my washing, Tuesday is my husbands, Wednesday my daughters, Thursday my sons, Friday my baby’s and Saturday is sheets & towels. I constantly have laundry going in and out, I never let it pile up anymore. 

I also always take the day befores washing off the line, fold it and put it away when I hang the next load on. This way I don’t have a god awful pile of clean washing lying around waiting to be folded! Doing laundry bit by bit, day by day makes it more manageable! 

My kids put their own washing into the machine on their washing day, pull them out into their basket for me to hang and also put their folded clothes away in their drawers/cupboards. I started getting them to do this once they started grade prep 😊 takes a little work off me and gives them some responsibility for their own belongings 😊

Day to day Organisation & Planning

I can’t function without my calendars, diaries, etc. If I lost them I would have no idea what’s going on in my life! That’s why I have a system and a back up system 😊

Here’s my family calender that hangs on my pantry door (was purchased at Kiki-k)

  

It goes by month and has columns for each person in our house. I write down important events, appointments, dates on here as soon as I become aware of them. The best part is the kids & my hubby know what’s happening everyday. I even have written what days my daughter has to hand in her dollarmite or when they have sport so I never forget.

I also back this system up with an app called “mom planner” (the free version). 

  

Once again as soon as an event or such is made aware to me I STRAIGHT away input it into the calender. 

  

I even add my cleaning schedule, what day I do menu planning, etc so I’m constantly reminded. The best thing about this app is you can set it up so things reoccur. For example, I set it up so every Wednesday it will display that I need to Hoover & mop! It even allows you to set alarms to once again remind you to do something. 

 

Another great feature is the the to list function. Here I input all the tasks I need to do, such as organise a birthday present or go to Centrelink. You can once again set an alarm to remind you and a date that it needs to be completed by 😊

Thirdly every day I write a little to do list in the morning and tick it off as I complete the task. I just use pen & paper for this. For instance, today I wrote down wash my daughters sheets, check emails, defrost mince, etc. 

None of this would be useful to me or anyone else if I didn’t actually take the time to check the calendars and actually input the things I need to do and remember!

Happy organising!

Sarah (The OCD Mumma) x