Laundry Tips

Do you know what this means??

Spring is finally here! I love that I can hang my laundry out to dry now! I love the smell of freshly air-dried laundry, it reminds me of home and childhood.

My mom always dried our laundry outside, except for in the winter of course. It saved (and still does) energy and money too. Sure, our towels were a little rougher and our jeans a little crinklier, but we grew up with that and didn't know any different.

Now I love that I am helping the environment just a little bit more, and saving my energy costs. I don't like bugs landing on my laundry, but it comes with the territory unfortunately.

If you are looking at getting an outdoor clothesline, I thought I'd give you some tips on drying your clothes outside. (Yes, I'm totally out of blogging ideas!!)

1. Start your laundry early in the morning. I try to have my wash finished by at the latest 10 a.m. If it's really hot in the middle of summer, this doesn't matter as much, as I've hung my laundry out at 1:00 or 2:00 and still had it dry by the end of the day.
2. Don't use Oxy-Clean in the laundry. One year I was throwing in a scoop-ful with each load to help get out all the stains the boys seem to always get. Once that laundry got in the sun, the colours in the clothes started to fade more and more. It wasn't until my sister pointed it out to me that I realized the culprit behind my not-so-colourful t-shirts.
   
3. If you're doing a load of whites, I find you don't need to add bleach. You can add some Oxy-Clean in then, and the sun will do the rest of the brightening for you.
   
4. I put in a little extra liquid fabric softener. It helps with the crunchiness.
   
5. Watch the forecast. If it's going to rain later in the day, get your laundry out earlier.
6. Shake the clothes out as you take them off the line!! Sometimes bugs hide!
7. If you decided to hang your wet clothes out late and leave them all night, you could end up with earwigs inside.
   

That's all the tips I have for you. As you can see, I have an umbrella style clothes dryer. It sits in the ground in a post-holder. I take it down every winter and store it in the garage. These types of lines can be expensive, but I've had mine for at least 8 years now, and it's still going strong. It's well worth the cost.

Filth (And Why I Hate Spring)

This is my front entryway, and it's disgusting. It drives me crazy because of all the dirt and grit that gets tracked in at this time of year.
You may look at this picture and think, doesn't that woman EVER clean?? How could parents even consider dropping their kids off in a cesspool like that? ?Aren't they worried their children will contract cholera or something equally horrifying?

You can see the amount of grit and dirt here in this close-up. I know, gross.

Here's another shot. Go ahead and click it and make it bigger. Ew.

And this mess extends down the hallway, all the way to the carpeted area. Of course the kids walk through it, then they track it down the hall, and onto the carpet, and into the kitchen. They don't bother to brush their socks off before going any further down the hallway, or even try to avoid the worst of it. So every time you walk around my house in socks or especially in bare feet, its all you can feel grinding against your soles.

God I hate this time of year.

Oh, and to answer your question, I do clean! This is only a couple of days' worth. But considering about 15 or so people are coming in and out of my house multiple times a day, this mess is inevitable.

Ugh.

Early Spring?

This week has been cold, cold, cold. But there has been quite a bit of sun, so that evens it out in my book. I used to hate winter. I dreaded and loathed every minute of it. But these days, I am finding I like it, maybe even love it a little bit.

Of course I do hate what winter brings, the never-ending viruses and various bacteria infecting our household. But on the plus side, the allergies are at the low end of the spectrum. However I am finding that as the boys get older, they seem to picking up fewer bugs than they did the year before. Geez I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that! Perhaps their immune systems are getting stronger? Man I hope so! Don't get me wrong, we still get sick PLENTY around here! It's just that instead of 10 colds per year, we might be down to 3 or 4. So that's good, right?

But back to winter and all it brings.

Snow.

I am loving the snow. I know, I don't have to shovel it (DH does that as I insist I don't know how to use the snowblower and it scares the heck out of me!) or drive in it but it's pretty and above all, fun. The boys have had a blast this year tunneling out caves and forts in our giant snowbanks framing the driveway. And of course there's the skiing.

Ah, skiing.

've only been twice this year, but I love it. And so does the rest of the family.
We would go more often but here are the problems:

1. It's expensive even just for lift tickets.
2. We really only have weekends to go as I work until 5 every weekday and DH is in school sometimes until 5 or 6 o'clock. We could night ski but if we couldn't leave until 5 at the very earliest, that puts us at the slopes at 5:30, on the hill around 5:45 and would only give us an hour, hour and a half of skiing time before we had to go home to bed! And, where would dinner fit in?
3. Only having weekends is difficult as some weekends have been way too cold (in -20's with wind chill!), some we have been sick, and some we have other commitments.
   

So that's why I am hoping that winter lasts a long, long time this year!! We may only have one or two more opportunities to ski in ideal conditions before spring hits us. This coming week the temperature is supposed to go above zero! Yikes! Not good for snow! And that's when things get ugly too, as in dirty and sloppy and just gross outside. It makes it difficult for me to get to school and back with babies, as I can't pull the sled over the many bare patches, but I also can't push a stroller or easily pull a wagon through all the still snowy/slushy patches.

Then there is the clothing. I do love winter clothing, indoor and above all, outdoor. I love that I can hide my body through all the layers. There's no showing off rolls or love handles when you have about four thick layers of cotton/polyester/wool/various materials on top of it! And I don't have to worry about shaving, or the fact that my veins are popping out extra nicely on my legs today, or that my skin is as white as a vampire's.

And as much as I hate being cold, I DESPISE being hot! I can't stand it. It makes me grumpy and short-tempered and very uncomfortable. I can find ways to easily warm up, but cooling off is always harder. So the winter cold is ok by me. Preferable at least to the sticky summer heat.

So don't hate me, but I am NOT hoping for an early spring!

Roll on, winter!

Random Rambles

I just felt like writing something today, but I don't have any one specific thing to talk about. So here are a few random, unrelated things.

Isn't the weather beautiful? Here in Ontario it has been sunny, warm(ish) (around 9 or 10C) and the snow is melting!! God I could live outside right now. This weather makes me feel so upbeat and positive. Only I'm not outside right now, which is sad. But I will take the kids back outside soon. It still involves much dressing, but, oh well it's worth it for some fresh air. This weather also makes me want to go out shopping and spend money for some reason. Which leads to my next random thought...

I am low on kids this week. Which doesn't do anything good for my paycheque. Sigh.

My sister is maybe coming over today. I don't want to get too excited, in case things don't go her way this morning with baby A, my new niece. I fully remember the planning and undertaking trying to get out the door to go somewhere for the day with a newborn! So I won't hold my breath, but I really really hope she can make it!

Despite my good mood about the weather, I am sooooooo tired today! Ok, I hate listening to people who complain a lot about how tired they are, so I consciously try not to do it too often, especially now that I really have no more excuses to be tired! I no longer have kids that get me up in the night (unless they have a bad dream or are sick), and I am a mature adult who knows what time I need to go to bed to be well rested for my 6:00 a.m. alarm. So I really have no idea why I am feeling this lethargic and sleepy. It could be because my Aunt is here, or perhaps it's the crappy diet I've been consuming lately...

Last night I attempted to make homemade fish fry (you know, like fish&chips). I used frozen tilapia, which I've never tried before, and Bisquick mix with some beer added. I floured the fish first, then dipped it into the (pancake, basically) batter and fried it in about a half inch of oil. And then, because I'm totally paranoid all the time about undercooked meat, I put it in the oven for a few minutes with the totally disgusting homemade sweet potato fries, as well as some store-bought french fries. This was topped off with some frozen corn.
Well, the fish was just ok. The kids didn't like it too much, and L is usually good with fish & chips. I think it was the fish mostly. I won't use tilapia again. They had the regular french fries, and I had some of the sweet potato ones, trying to be more health conscious even though I really don't care for sweet potatoes. They weren't very good. And corn is just corn. The only one that enjoyed the meal was DH, so the boys and I ate some, and then topped ourselves up with ice cream bars. I know, real healthy!

A Visitor

Ok, I'm going to try this again. Yesterday, I wrote a whole blog entry only to have it NOT save, and then of course was gone. Frustrating.

So here is our little visitor. Our little friend named Stumpy, due to his lack of tail. We don't know what happened to him, perhaps he was even born that way. At any rate, it doesn't seem to affect his balance at all; he is just as nimble as any other squirrel I've seen.

Last year, Stumpy got bolder and bolder as we fed him peanuts, and eventually came up to the back sliding door to receive his treats, even taking them from my hand. I won't let the kids feed him by hand, as once he accidentally bit my finger (didn't make a mark or even hurt) and then I was thinking about rabies. I know, paranoid, but he might have another even more exotic disease he's ready to pass on.

So over the long cold winter we had, I wondered frequently about how he was doing. When spring came, I looked for him, and feared that he didn't make it through. But then suddenly, one day he came back, although it seemed that he didn't remember our "friendship". He would bolt when I'd open the back door.

Yesterday, however, he didn't run. I threw him a peanut, and then he came up on the deck to get another. After about four peanuts, he grew brave enough to come and get one from my hand again. Now he stands at the back door, peering into our kitchen as if to say, "Well, what have you got for me today?"

What have I started? LOL

Welcome back Stumpy.