Series: Handy Family Tips

Last month, I visited my sisters and nephews. One of my sisters is in her late 30’s and the other is in her early 40’s and both became moms just last year. For years, they had lived on their own and managed a household perfectly, but when their babies arrived, they started dedicating most of their time to their “bundle of joy” and managing their house became a challenge.

Although it seem like a gradual progression from living on your own to living with a partner and then living with kids, the shift from managing a house as a couple to managing a house with kids is huge and can shake the most organized people just as it happened to my sisters.

As a parent, you probably remember yourself saying, “I don’t have a spare second to do the basic things anymore”. My younger sister was happy simply because I was with her baby so she could take a shower in the middle of the day. “Sometimes, I don’t have time to eat”, she said.

Read Handy Family Tips: Dishwasher »

Being efficient is every parent’s dream. Time is a limited resource and the faster we do things, the more time we have left to spend with our kids. So when I meet “the girls” for an evening out, we always talk about household stuff and share ideas.

Making dinner is one particular task that takes lots of energy. I have heard many parents saying they come home at the end of a working day and start making dinner. As you know, if you do not buy fresh meat just before you cook it, you may need to take it out of the freezer and wait for it to thaw or spend valuable time to defrost it in the microwave or in tons of running water.

Read Handy Family Tips: Pre-Marinating »

There are some things that make life so easy it makes you wonder why you never thought about them before. I did not think of adding this as a tip until a friend of mine opened my cutlery drawer and found scissors in it.

“Scissors?” she asked me, really surprised, “You keep scissors in the kitchen?”

Since many bags and packages have a little drawing of scissors on them, I assumed the best tool to use was scissors. I thought everyone had a pair in the kitchen too, but I guess not.

“What do you do when you need to open a sealed bag or cut the corner of a milk carton?” I asked her.

“I use a knife”, she said to me with that “Isn’t that obvious?” look, “And sometimes with my teeth…”

Read Handy Family Tips: Kitchen Scissors »

I grew up in a family that collected food. We joke about my mom that she has more food in her home now, living there only with my dad, than she did when she had all 5 of her kids living there too. If something happens, she could probably survive for about 2-3 years solely on the food she has at home.

But as a family, I would not recommend doing that, because my mom has so many piles of food that she ends up throwing lots of it. Some of it expires and some of it is hidden so deep in her freezer that she finds it once a year during spring cleaning and must get rid of it.

My dad collects other things, but we can get to him some other time…

Anyway, as the daughter of such collectors, I had to struggle with this tendency to collect food. I have not fully recovered from it, but I did find some tricks to make things work better.

Read Handy Family Tips: First use date »

Sooner or later, every parent faces this dilemma: what to do with the kids’ drawing or art creation? When I had an early childhood center, I ran workshops for parents to explain how important it is to keep a record of their children’s development. If you have more than one child, you know that we forget.

This is a lot like taking photos of the first child, but not as many of the second and only capturing the third child on special occasions (I do not even envy those with more than 3 kids). Keeping a record of our children’s progress and development gets harder with every child.

In all the early childhood centers I have managed and directed, I used to send home all the kids’ artwork every week and record it. I created a folder with the kids where their parents could keep all their work to make sure it does not get lost. But the folder filled up so quickly that after a very short time, they had to clear it to allow more room for new artwork.

So how can all this artwork be kept without overflowing?

Read Handy Family Tips: Kids’ Artwork »

I do not know why, but I have always had a problem with keys (not with the keys themselves but with keeping them). When I was a kid, my parents worked so much that when I came home from school, I had to use my own keys to get in. My siblings (I have 4) and I never had a good way of keeping our keys and most of the days, we would count on one of the others to open the door for us or used the spare key at our neighbors’ house.

Some people hid their keys under their welcome mat so their kids could enter the house while they worked long hours, but that was not really hiding at all, since all the kids in the neighborhood could find them easily.

The only thing on my mind was how expensive it was to make a new set of keys and the hassle my parents had to go through to get me new keys (not to mention the look on their faces saying I have failed them).

Never in my childhood did my parents or anyone else teach me how to make sure I could always find my keys. As a kid, I need that as part of life. As a teacher, I find it alarming that kids are not being taught how to be organized with their possessions (among oh, so many other useful skills).

Read Handy Family Tips: Keys »

I hate it when we are ready to take the rubbish bin outside and it drips. Yuck! I remember when we lived in the USA and there were garbage disposers (insinkerators) everywhere, I never had that problem. Oh, how I loved it. Without the garbage disposer, I have a feeling our home is a garbage production facility, exactly like the animals thought in the movie “The Hedge”. We have so much trash it is not funny.

Rubbish is not something people talk about much, but in a business course, the instructor once asked us what would happen if for one week, one week only, the cleaners (or garbage collectors) did not come to work?

It is different when we talk about a family, but in a sense, a family is like a small business, so what happens if one day, the cleaners do not show up for work or when the bin is overloaded?

Smelly bins are something I really hate and over the years, I have tried many things to overcome the smell.

Read Handy Family Tips: Smelly bins »

In most home, space is a very limited resource. We all wish our house was half empty with only what we need. Every time our family moves (and I have moved 27 times already), we discover how much we have accumulated. 17 years ago, Gal and I moved to another country with 3 suitcases, 2 boxes and a little girl. Today, we would probably need a 40-foot high-cube container.

Accumulating things is part of life. We accumulate things because we think we might use them (later) or because they have some sentimental value. Just a while ago, I wrote about how hard it is to get rid of kids’ artwork to clear valuable space for new creations. Taking digital photos of many of our things can be one solution to saving space, but there are always things that we cannot throw away as parents, or that our kids, partners or other family members need to decide what to do with them.

When I was 16, I made myself a treasure box and put all my treasures in it – cards I had received from people, special show tickets, photos and awards I had won. Having that box, which I made out of a shoebox, was a great way for me to monitor what I was keeping and what I was not. The space in the box was limited, so I could not keep everything.

Read Handy Family Tips: Treasure box »

In the last few years, I discovered that glass containers were cheaper than plastic or metal ones. If I buy tomato paste in a glass jar, it costs almost half the price of buying it in tubes, sachets or sealed plastic tubs, so I decided to start recycling glass the way I had recycled plastic. It is even easier to remove the labels from glass containers, because they can stand heat and I they are dishwasher safe.

So I wash them, take the label off and use them to store things in my cupboards. One clear advantage of glass containers is that you can easily see what is inside them.

If you buy the same product regularly, after a short time, you can have a whole set of glass jars. For example, we use one kind of mayonnaise, so now our cupboard jars look like a set.

Basically, everything I buy in a large quantity, I transfer to a glass jar, because it is easier to manage. When I buy a bag of something, as soon as I open it, I transfer it to a glass container – I like to see in the container and it saves me having to deal with many bags and clips.

Read Handy Family Tips: Glass jars »

Many times, the concept of “on time” is translated to “at the last minute”. Running a family is very similar. When your “on time” means “at the last minute”, you are going to have lots of problems, stress and heartache, not to mention raising kids with that philosophy who grow up to miss opportunities and fail in situations that otherwise could be very successful.

My son Tsoof is studying composition at Griffith University’s Young Conservatorium with Ralph Hultgren, who is a very inspiring person. Ralph is a very talented musician, composer and probably an excellent teacher, because he has managed to build one of the best music schools for young people in Australia.

One expression Ralph has used with his students and stuck with Tsoof was:

“On time is late and early is on time”

Read Handy Family Tips: On time is late »