That’s how they are called in our household – and with the soccer season starting last weekend, I have been in and out of this one quite a bit.
They are 50cm x 35cm x 27cm see through plastic with a lid that closes by folding over the handles. They are big enough for most items and small enough to not be overloaded. Because of their size, they are a bit sturdier then the bigger ones you get from hardware houses and container stores.
See through is good for labeling. I just slide some scrap paper with the content clearly written in big letters on it on the inside. Easy to change and no endless rubbing to get rid of last year’s labels.
It’s a excellent idea to decide on one main storage container for the whole household or office. (Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a couple of other fitting sizes, but the general purpose ones). It makes it easier to replace broken tubs or lids, the spacing between shelves can be adjusted with a minimum of wasted space – and I think it looks good if everything is uniform, even if it’s just in a garage.
In addition, these have been around at Woolies, Big W and SuperBarn for the last 15 years, and you can always buy more or replace bits and pieces.

apart from the obvious like use it to wrap presents or cut it up to make cards, this is a beautiful romantic idea:

Children’s Art Lanterns

http://www.artful-adventures.co.uk/2012/02/06/childrens-art-lanterns/

5.2 billion $ a year are wasted in Australia on food that’s bought but doesn’t get eaten.
With a projected population of 22,836,899 for Feb 2012 that is $227 per person per year. For an average family  of four: $908 per year. A big enough amount of money to start thinking and changing something. A considerable amount of production cost, packaging  and transport wasted. What’s the ecological footprint of that sum and what can we do about it?
I tried to get information about the ecological footprint, but found that too hard to calculate, as even experts are not agreeing on what needs to be taken into consideration when coming up with a meaningful ecco footprint number. But I do have a few ideas about why we do it and what can be done about it:
I think everybody is  guilty of throwing some food out – but it should be the exception, not the rule. Nobody does it intentionally and there are varied reasons why it will get to that point.
·       People have very high standard when going shopping and all good intention to “home cook this week”. And then never get around to it.
·       Lack of planning ahead and impulse buying.
·       Some people can cook and would love to do it, but are so overwhelmed with the clutter on bench top and dinner table that they rather feed the kids baked beans in front of the TV.
Sometimes it is the second generation eating like this. A lot of my clients tell me, that they never learned. When Jamie Oliver filmed his Food revolution in America he made a comment about his utter surprise about kids who had never, at the age of 10, used knife and/or fork. For them food is always finger food!
I think we have to distinguish between eating as the task of putting food in one’s mouth so you don’t starve and eating as in family dinners, sharing stories and food. Food needs to be appreciated – kids have to develop a relationship with food, they have to learn about food. But it’s not just lack of cooking skills and time and ability to use a knife and fork. I am a Professional Organiser and come across a lot of families that basically don’t have a dinner table they can use.
And that’s not because they don’t have that piece of furniture, but because it’s so full of clutter that nobody eats at it.
So mums feed the kids in front of the TV, that’s easy and very non confrontational. As far as I am concerned, you might as well serve Play- dough! And when dad comes home, the parents do the same, balancing their plate on their knees.
No wonder kids grow up with some sort of eating disorder, either too much or too little, because who would go to the effort of cooking nice food if nobody really gets what’s eaten , distracted by watching TV or bored because they eat on their own
·
By being mindful of these reasons, there are easy ways to work against that over consumerism:
·       meal plan
·       Shop with a shopping list.
·       Organiser your pantry – every half year!!!!
·       Ask for help and learn
·       Always unpack the dishwasher – this one sounds a bit out of line, but if you treat the dishwasher as a cupboard for dirty dishes rather than clean ones – you are not going to have to clean away mountains of dirty plates before starting to cook all that delicious produce you bought.

Via: www.ructables.com
Gotcha! Find tiny lost items like earrings by putting a stocking over the vacuum hose.

With the first couple of school weeks under our belt – we start to see the weak points in our and our kid’s time management. I am a believer of nipping it in the butt early, so my kids start using a diary of sorts from year 3 onwards. I have drawn up our own A3 sized term planner: undated so I can photocopy the same template for every term for every child. They fill in the dates and colour in the weekends themselves. We then sit down and write in fixtures: like German lessons on Monday afternoons, or rowing on Sunday morning. As soon as homework starts we allocate days for the reappearing, every week tasks they have to do. For the older kids, we start back-calculating from assignment hand in day; to find a good way of project managing that task – which doesn’t mean me rushing to Officeworks on the morning it has to be in to have something spiral bound or laminated.
Again, different days of the week lend itself to different activities. If you know you don’t have internet access, what about creating a reading folder and take a highlighter to actually read through all the websites you found in your research. Try to do the physical acitve homework parts on the days they have extra curricular academic lessons like musik or language.
It works pretty well – although Mr. (almost) 9 prefers a little booklet he can carry with him and ignores the Term Planner – but that’s fine. Even kids have their own organising style and as adults, we just have to find a way of helping them find and use that style. It seems to work for him. He told me very proud in the car this morning, that, thanks to his diary, he didn’t forget his library bag!

P.S. If you want something to start with for your own term planner. I have a pdf version of ours I am happy to share. Just pop into the comments box and I’ll send it to you

I do like maths -and love statistics. This week’s ‘Good Weekend’ had another interesting one.

Which leads me to this year’s Christmas gift giving tip:
Give sensible, give things people need – even for children, ask what they want, accept if someone says “I don’t want anything”.
Because if you keep on giving, it can get  too much. People find the task of putting all the gifts away after Christmas overwhelming. You don’t want to be the one tipping someone from ‘a bit too much stuff’ to “I have so much clutter around, I don’t know where to start!”
Did you know, that most of us find it harder to let go of an unwanted gift than something we bought ourselves for a lot of money? So be mindful this year – and if you think potatoes are a bit too ‘down to earth, think of something slightly more pretty, but still useful.

Our family cycled over the Harbour Bridge, participating in the Sydney Spring Cycle. With 10.000 others, we prepared the bikes and lunches the night before, got up early, took a train to North Sydney – up the first hill –“are we there yet?”
At the starting point we had to find the choir, because on top of cycling 55km we were registered to take part in a Guinness Book of records attempt to be the biggest choir on a bicycle. We rehearsed Waltzing Matilda with the Choir of the Opera House. (The lyrics are actually hard to learn; and explain to a 8 year old why someone wants to die rather than go to jail; and how he can drown in a puddle?!)
“are we starting yet?” when we waited for our choir section to get the go ahead. “can we have morning tea?” as we cycled through the Rocks. “how much further?” every 5 km.
Despite having participated in that event for 7 years, we are never sure of the route. They changed it considerably this year and because we don’t have (working) bike computers, nobody ever knew exactly where we were going and where we where up to.
So we focused on the ‘now’ time, on our instincts as how much further to go, on our knowledge about local bike paths to try to guess where we are heading.
We knew where the finish line was going to be – the kids knew they would get an ice cream, but apart from that, we just took our time and enjoyed the ride.
I think it’s a good analogy how I work with most of my clients: Be prepared. Have a end result in mind. Have a plan that doesn’t’ have to be followed by the letter. Embrace the unexpected.  Have a  clear idea about the reward at the end and willingness to enjoy the journey.
PS: despite the brilliant rehearsal, the singing on the bride was quite disputable – and we haven’t heard back from the organisers yet whether we are indeed the biggest choir on a bicycle.

please have a look here for my guest blog about camping simplicity

This weekend a  friend of ours popped in with, this story:
“I have been buying Philip’s irons for over 40 years, they used to last 10 years, now they just do 5. I kind of accept that loss of quality. Last week I bought their middle of the range model, and it didn’t even last at all. It was kaputt straight away. So I went and returned it – got another one, which, in turn had the same fault. Going back to the shop I was offered an upgrade to the top end model, which cost twice as much. I am very happy with what I gained, but felt the need to write to their operations manager for Australia (someone with a ‘van’ in his name, being Dutch!) informing them of my ordeal and that really this shouldn’t be necessary. I also included a copy of my travel ten (public transport ticket in Sydney) and asked for a refund of the travel cost.”
He got his refund and a better, brand new iron. This story highlights two things for me: the necessity to keep receipts, an understanding of which ones could be relevant for how long and the need for all of us to make use of our right for perfect products and customer service.
I pride myself as being a bit of a queen of refund and return: I returned stockings with a run (luckily I still had the packaging in the recycling) and last week I returned some flour to Aldi. It wasn’t flour. It tasted all right, but everything I baked was dense and gooey. I did a test with two identical loafs of bread, baked with two different flours. The Aldi one was UN edible (except Mr. 8 eats everything, so he toasted it and gobbled down the whole loaf). On returning the flour (without a receipt – who keeps that?) I got my refund and the remark: “but you are the first one returning it.” But it wasn’t what it is supposed to be – and NOBODY realised????

… I do when not organising

I have been teaching an “Art Club” at my kid’s primary school for the last two years. It’s one of the many things like chess club and bands they offers after school. I don’t get payed for this, but I enjoy it so much. I was always complaining about what kids learn in art but whinging gets you nowhere so I started this. Before the Easter break we did action painting with a group of 10 “advanced” kids. They absolutely loved it and it was good fun, especially because it was very messy. Action painting is such an event art, that I had to try my new found movie editing skills and did this video.

If you are interested in more, we did murals two years ago