Category Archives: Household

Everything and anything relating to the household structure.. From organization, living frugally, natural living, or fun ideas for families.

Large family organization tips part 1 hallways

Posted on 09/17/2013 | 41 comments

Since wanting to start this blog, I thought to myself, “How can I show people plain and simple living with a large family when I feel so scattered myself?”  It took me back to my first post on accountability. It reminded me that it was time to get back in my game  and organize this large family of mine—–something I really like to do.

I also had just finished reading Kim Brenneman book Large Family Logistics and I was like, people do want to hear about how to organize a large family.  I know myself, I was curious at ways in which to help my household, so I decided to write how we do ours.

It has been a long time since I have felt I have any “real” time to do anything.  Now that the babies are getting older, life does get easier.  For awhile it seemed my life was nursing, changing diapers, cleaning up, nursing, changing more diapers, and more cleaning up, all day every day.

Nowadays, I still have the nursing, changing more diapers, and cleaning up, but with less demands.  Now I have some time to focus on more than just keeping up with daily life, I feel like I can tackle the household.  

I hope to take you through a glimpse of our household and show you how we do large family organization.  Lets get started with our hallways……

When you have a household, especially with 12 people, things can get out of whack real quick.  If you do not have an “everything in its place” rule, then most of your time is spent feeling quite harried.    Which by the way I have done many times over the last few years.

With all large family  organization projects they take time.

  • Time to actually weed out the junk and get it organized into something you think will work.
  • Time to realize that it isn’t working.
  • Time to redo the organization and get it just right.

Over the last few years having so many little ones I have realized that some of my organization methods were not working.  I had to re-do things a few times over.  One of these areas is our bookshelf.

We  bought the bookshelf at a furniture store pre-assembled, heavier duty, and paid about $20 more than the generic put together shelves that you find at your local Walmart.   It is sturdier and has held up over the last 10 years of our marriage.  And trust me, after having 10 children we don’t have many items that last a long time in our household.  I have gone through numerous “cheaper” bookshelves over the years.
Whenever I try and purchase something I generally think heavy duty, industrial strength, “is my child going to break this is a month?” mentality.    Which is important to have especially in a large family household.   Buy nice quality one time, otherwise you will replace it over and  over.
Being of the mindset of minimalist,  I feel the need to weed things out occasionally if they start becoming a messy problem.  When I first started homeschooling, we had collected enough books and materials to fill 3 bookshelves in our household.  Some of the books we used more than once and others we rarely touched.  My thought was that one day I might need that.  That only led to me holding onto many books and taking time to go through the bookshelf several times a year when it got messy.   When you have a large family you want to minimize the amount of time that you have to organize and clean something.  The bookshelf was one of those “time consumers.”  Time to weed it out.

How do you go about organizing a bookshelf for a large family that wants to cut down on things?

  1. Most reading books are available free from our local library.  Get rid of the books that are readily available to you from that source.
  2. Nonfiction books—if you have access to internet you have access to millions of nonfiction subjects.  My children would rather watch a video or read the latest news on subjects for school. Ditch the books that can’t update themselves.
  3. Any books that we haven’t read in the last 2 years, pitch.  I used to hold onto books thinking that one day I will read it.  If it has been 2 years and I haven’t read it, I probably won’t.
  4. I do keep books that I can’t borrow for free.  Many of our good moral lesson books from private publishers I hold onto the ones that I want my children to read one day when they are older.
  5. We hold onto favorite children books that I want to read to my grandchildren one day.  Like A Pig Tale,  Love you forever, and Pigsty.—get them from your library I am sure they will be a family favorite.
  6. For toddlers and babies, we try and keep hardcover books.  I look for them at our Goodwill and then I don’t feel too badly when they become destroyed.  Having many little ones is a guarantee for ripped books, save yourself some sanity and buy hardcover only for them.
  7. If you have magazines that you hold onto for that one recipe, or one great article–rip it out and put it in your household binder.  That way it can be put to use instead of taking up space.
Here is a photo before I started organizing my bookshelf and before I painted our walls.
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When I organized my bookshelf last year for the school year, I put everything where I thought it looked good.  Figured children would see this nice and neat way and follow suit.  But I was wrong, halfway through the first month, workbooks were taken out and shoved wherever they saw fit.  Cds and books that I ordered for specific lessons  got lost among the regular books.  Most of  everyday children were searching for their books.
I had had enough, time to get simpler.

I first placed all books vertical not horizontal, to make the bookshelf look  taller and neater.

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I used old cereal boxes, cut into book holders. I covered the fronts of them with dollar store contact paper. Wrote the children’s names on the front. Now everything has a place 🙂  If I had school text books that I would not be using for a few more years, I put those in a box in the basement.
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I weeded out unused items. Threw out ripped books.

Found a permanent place for library books instead of wherever the fit.

Found an easy spot for toddlers little books.

If you notice we have an empty bottom shelf. At the moment we have a curious toddler who seems to enjoy pulling down all of my books daily. I found the best way to combat that is just remove the books. All of the others eventually grew out of it, I am sure he will too. So for now it remains empty, I put some of this toys on it while he is playing during the day. We usually reserve it for library books and will one day again soon.

 

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Bookshelf completed.

The other part of our hallways contain our homemade Modge Podge clipboards. I love these because I can put any paper or notes that belongs to each child on their clipboard. No more notes scattered on my counter tops. Very inexpensive and easy to make.

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The rest is still very simple. We made our $10 shelves. Adorned them with photos in Dollar Store frames.

 

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The walls are lined with our Modge Podge photo collages. 

 

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This is my favorite spot to stand and stare at all my beautiful babies faces.

 


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I found the inspirational word plaques at our local Christian Book Store on clearance for around $4.

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The flower pots I got at the Dollar Store and arranged some fall flowers.  I will be changing those flowers for every season.


Here are my winter/spring flowers.
 2014-04-29_00100 If you wonder how I get my plaques to not get accidentally knocked down over down the stairs— Velcro.  I use it to hang up all my pictures as well.  It is my new favorite way to hang things. We have only had one of the plaques get knocked off while we were doing a teen open mic at our house, someone accidentally knocked it over:)  But my children have never knocked them down.  Velcro the way to go!

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Also in our hallway, we have a front door closet. We rarely use it for anything but our major cleaning tools.

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In it we keep our vacuum, steamer mop, broom and dustpan–hung on nail, 5 gallon water jugs–we get filtered water, and a plastic storage bin that we take with us when we go anywhere in the van.

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I put all of our items, like diaper bag, my purse, drinks, snacks, etc into this box.  When we leave the van I just grab the box instead of armfuls of stuff.  This closet will hold our extra coats that we have in the winter time or it is a place that we can hang guests coats.

**a note about vacuums.  Vacuums are something that we have owned many of over the years.  True, we never paid for a really expensive one like over $300 but who has money to spend that much on a vacuum??  When we did invest and spent the $150-200 on a better quality vacuum,we were shocked when it stopped working.  Frustration, well I had had enough. I finally went to Walmart and bought the cheapest one that they had–cost me $25.  Well I am happy to say that we have had the same vacuum for over 2 years now, and it is STILL sucking at the same rate that it did when we first bought it.  I realize vacuums are over rated.  Maybe I am wrong, but I will let you know in a few years from now if we still have it:) ***Note we just replaced our vacuum it is 9-2016.  This $25 vacuum has worked for over 5 years.  I only replaced it as the locking mechanism to make it stand upright or bend for when you push it, has broken.  I just bought a new one at Walmart and paid $36 for it.  The 2nd cheapest one.  🙂  We will see how it holds up.

Hallways all set.

Check out part 2  ……..the living room

Part 3….the kitchen

part 4 …..the dining room

part 5 …the boys room

part 6 …the girls room

part 7 ….the little boys room/family clothes closet

part 8…the master bedroom

part 9…the laundry room

part 10…the storage room

part 11…the pantry

photo attribution sweetclipart.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

41 Comments

Posted in cleaning, Household

Making and freezing homemade applesauce

Posted on 09/17/2013 | 1 comment

When we had four little ones, I used to do a lot of preserving for our family and then the Lord blessed us with 6 children all in a row.  I haven’t gotten to do as much canning as I would have liked to do over the past seven years, but we have slowly started enjoying doing things like strawberry picking and blueberry picking.  We have been able to make  our own freezer strawberry jam and have a supply of blueberries in the freezer for them to eat throughout the winter months.  Making and freezing applesauce is something that we also try and do because of its ease..  We don’t usually pick the apples ourselves, we have a Mennonite store that we go to to purchase them fairly inexpensively.  It is a great fruit that doesn’t have to be done all in one day either a bonus with having many little ones.004

What a blessing we had received this past week, our neighbor had an apple tree in her yard that was abundantly flowing with apples.  I had asked her if she did anything with them and she said she did not because they were too tart.  Well my children had each taken a few to munch on and were liking them.  We then decided it was time for us to start making and freezing homemade applesauce this year.


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We had three pots cooking most all of the day on the stove.  I just wash our apples and leave them the way that they are, no peeling or slicing required.  We put about 1-2 inches of water in the pot and place the lid on it.  Keep it on a high heat until it boils then turn it down to a medium to low heat to keep it simmering, until all of the apples are soft and the tops ones are splitting.  Note….we do make sure to remove the leaves from the apples,if you do not,it tends to make a bitter taste in your sauce.

008We then put it in our Victorio food strainer and let the machine do the separating.   You pour your cooked apple mash into the top of the machine and turn the handle.  Out one shoot come the clean applesauce and out the other is all the peeling, seeds, and stem.  Could this get any easier??

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This year was so great doing it because I had most of my children helping with the process.  Even the little ones were enjoying taking a turn turning the handle.  009

I am not sure on the name of the apples that the tree produces but to us, they tasted like McIntosh apples.  We only needed to add about 2 cups of sugar to this large black roaster pan.  Last year we used Jonagold apples and did not use any sugar at all,but the year before we used McIntosh and had to add about the same amount of sugar.
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Having to do this on a school day and with all of the demands that are placed upon us, we made sure to make an easy dinner early on so that we could focus our day on doing apples.  While everyone was getting ready I made a pan of sloppy joe casserole and homemade macaroni and cheese.  I placed it in the oven and left it there until dinner time.  An easy meal and only 2 pans to clean up, we of course used paper plates as to not have to wash so many dishes.  Oh and yes we had applesauce with it too.003

When it was all said and done we came out with about 100 quarts of applesauce that we put in freezer bags.  I then diced up about 25 bags of apples to use in baking foods like apple dapple cake, oatmeal apple bars, and crockpot apple oatmeal—a recommendation from our neighbor.  I

This is the first year we didn’t make any applesauce for a baby, but if I would have, I would have made it with no sugar and then put it in my ice cube trays and froze them.  When frozen, just pop them out into a ziploc baggie.  You only have to remove the amount that you need.

I know that most people don’t enjoy making and freezing homemade applesauce, they prefer to can it.  Our family enjoys it frozen.  I like to get a bag out of the freezer in the morning and let it thaw for dinner time.  When we serve it we like it partially slushy.  It is very good, try it sometime.

Why do we freeze our foods that we harvest instead of canning them in jars???

The reason we started freezing it was for safety reasons. After I did all my canning years before, I started reading stories about babies being more susceptible to food borne illnesses. As a mom, I never would want to harm my children in that way.  Well when we had so many little ones, it was pointless to serve a “safe frozen food” to some and then to others my canned items.  After that I got rid of my canner and jars.  We started freezing everything.  I know that it is not the first choice for most foods especially for pears and peaches, but I choose to make the foods that are good frozen like applesauce and homemade freezer jam.  Maybe one day I will go back to canning in jars, but for now,with many littles ones to worry about, I will stick to freezing them.  I am thinking I might need to invest in another deep freezer.

 

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Posted in Household, preserving

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diy wood pallet bed

Posted on 09/16/2013 | 2 comments

 

I have been busily organizing and decorating our home these last few months.  I feel like I got all the way through all the rooms and then I came to our room.  It was the last but not least room.   Our room has taken a back seat over the years. You know how it is when you have children, you want to spend all of your money on them not yourselves.

We had a king sized bed, but over the years,having so many little ones, we decided to just put the mattress on the floor, to avoid babies from rolling off and getting injured.  We have been looking into getting a new bed and frame, as ours is older, but it seems you will easily spend $1000 for a king sized bed.  We didn’t want to do that.

 

For the winter, we heat our home with wood.   To cut down on the cost of starter wood we use pallets that we get for free from local businesses.  One day while doing a search of “what you can make with pallet wood,”  I came across wood pallet furniture.  Then I found it……..

a diy wood pallet bed.  I thought it  was very original looking.  They were making these and selling them in high-end boutiques in big cities.  I had to first show my husband, in case he thought my idea was kooky.  Instead, he thought it was pretty cool.  So we started collecting our pallets.  A few trips into town and we had all 10.

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We took and painted half the pallets(you don’t see the other half because the mattress will be covering it) black to match our color scheme better.  You can always leave them regular wood color, maybe add a coat of clear coat.   We got a quart of black paint for around $8

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Having the pallets stick out on each side is convenient for setting our drinks and other items like cell phones, books, etc.
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Our home is quite simple, we don’t have alot of “things” to crowd our floors with.  Our room has the bed and a hopechest that has a tv setting on it.

Our walls were bare until I decided to make another picture collage, this time with Dollar Store frames and velcro.  I had our business cut the sign “All because two people fell in love….”  It has been shown to be a top seller for us.  I then have randomly placed different sized photos of us and the children.  I did it more in a random pattern, because  I like to be able to add more photos as I take them.

 

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This is an inexpensive way to make a bed frame that is creative and different than anything you have ever seen.

 

 

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Posted in decorating, Household

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Modge Podge photo coasters or tile hangings…..another photo craft

Posted on 09/12/2013 | 1 comment

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After making my photo collages for my walls, I was inspired with this Modge Podge stuff.  I did some Google searching with images and saw that people were making coasters out of photos and bathroom tiles.  We don’t have a need around our home for coasters, you don’t dare leave a drink unattended with 10 children!!  But I did have empty space in my kitchen that I was looking to fill inexpensively.

Since I enjoy chickens, I decided to use the photos of our chickens and ducks and cut them to fit my bathroom tile squares.  They were something ridiculously cheap like under 10 cents.  I then brushed Modge Podge over top of these photos.
 019 I let them dry and was impressed.  I thought how cute to make a set of coasters for family members out of your children’s photos.  A great Christmas idea.  Since photos are like 9 cents a picture at Walmart and the tiles are under 10 cents.  Your gift could technically be under $1 or $2 depending upon the number of children that you have.  Or maybe you could print off some photos of different objects for special people.  A teenage boy might enjoy pictures of motorcycles, guitars, video games, etc.  A Christian might enjoy tiles with the names of God,or some favorite bible truths, printed on them. You could customize them for different seasons.  Making an autumn set out of pictures of fall things, leaves, pumpkin pie, corn husks, etc.  Summer out of beaches, sun, picnics, etc.  The possiblilities are endless.  Just brainstorm some ideas and Google some images, if you don’t have any yourself.

020I hung them up with my favorite item—-Velcro.

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Posted in decorating, Household

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How to make an inexpensive photo collage

Posted on 09/11/2013 | 23 comments


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This is a great inexpensive way to hang a multitude of pictures without breaking the bank.  I told you we have had years of taking many photos and then they just end up sitting on a bunch of discs–what good is that going to do??  So I decided to get some printed off.  Walmart had a great deal $.09 a photo and free shipping to home, at that time.  I chose all the pictures I wanted and got some black and white and some colors printed off on matte paper.

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I then headed to the dollar store and bought some foam core board—One board will hold 54 pictures.  I originally bought some foam core at Hobby Lobby they were $6 a board.  Then I realized that the Dollar Store had them for $1.  After using these from the Dollar Store, they seem to be sturdier.  The only difference is that the Dollar Store ones have a white edge where you can see the foam.  I thought of using permanent black marker to color it in, but I will wait and see if I really even notice it on the walls.

Grab some Modge Podge–the larger bottle (16oz) about $8 and a foam brush.

.  One big bottle did  5 foam core boards full of pictures.

Pick up some double sided tape as well, which will help in placing your pictures, I ran out halfway through the project and ended up using glue stick to hold the photos on and that worked just as fine.

 

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First thing I did was make a cardstock template of a 3×3 inch square.  I used that and cut out over 500 photos for my home. Did I tell you that I haven’t done anything with our family pictures for the last 8 years???

If you have some sort of photo cutter that would be easier to cut, then by all means do that.  Your photos need to be a 3×3 inch square.

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Once you have them cut out, now it is time to place them on your foam core.  You can use the double sided sticky tape or use a glue stick, if you work quickly.  I set out my whole first row and got 9 across.  I made sure that they were somewhat evenly spaced.  Then I went down and did a row of 6, making sure they were evenly spaced.  Once I had those two done then it was time to fill in the gaps.

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Next you take your Modge Podge and brush on a thin layer covering completely all of your photos.  I know what you are thinking—“Its going to ruin my photos!”  Trust me it won’t.DSCN2679

Try and brush your strokes in the same direction.  When it is dry you will be able to see the brush strokes, it looks more uniform if they are all going in the same direction.
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You can let it dry,  takes about 1/2 hour to 1 hour to dry.  Then do another layer over top of it.

When it is completely dry, you are ready to hang.  I used velcro pieces to hang on my walls.  It is my favorite new way to hang things.  It doesn’t leave a mark on the wall wen you remove them.


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Yes lots of pictures, but what good are those pictures going to do sitting on a disc??? .008003

It would probably be neat to mix up some of the photos and do mostly black and white with a few color ones in it.  I personally think the black and white look more uniform, but I really do like the look of the colors as well.  Won’t have to make any more until next years photo discs are full.  Probably going to need some more wall space as well:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23 Comments

Posted in decorating, Household