We Shall Keep The Faith – Remembrance Day 2016
A moment of silence to remember those who have fallen, served and made our lives possible.
How to Organize Your Kitchen: Part 2 – Kitchen Storage
Howdy folks! How’s the kitchen organization coming along? Last week in part 1 we talked about the first task in organizing your kitchen: decluttering. It’s understandably a massive undertaking for most of us but a necessary one before you even start looking at kitchen storage. To be honest, we ourselves haven’t been able to set aside a big enough block of time to completely declutter our kitchen yet either. The truth is, we haven’t had the chance to ship the kids off to their grandparents.
What we have been doing is decluttering for 15 minutes every day–a tip you might know from our article on beating back-to-school clutter. It’s been pretty successful so far and we love how we’re finally able to use a cutting board on the countertop without relocating half the kitchen.
Give these timed sessions a try if you find yourselves short on time or babysitters. It’ll allow you to start putting some of these kitchen storage tips to use even if you haven’t completed decluttering yet.
Weekly Link Roundup – November 7, 2016
Did you all remember to set your clocks back this weekend? It’s so much harder to forget now that we’ve all got phones that automatically update themselves.
Boy, could I tell you funny stories about the times when we had to adjust our clocks ourselves and forgot. Back when we had to walk 100 miles to school in the snow, over mountains and valleys, and well, you get the idea. I’m sure you’d much rather get to this week’s link love though, so let’s get to it and save the trip down memory lane for another time.
How to Organize Your Kitchen: Part 1 – Decluttering
Are you finding yourself practicing your Jenga skills every time you’re cleaning up leftovers and need a Tupperware container? Have you opened up your pantry cupboard door in the morning and been knocked square in the nose by the box of Fruit Rollups that was precariously perched on top of your box of cereal? We know you can answer yes to both of these, because we certainly can.
Because the kitchen is the most often used room in our homes, it’s usually also the most cluttered and disorganized. Our house is no exception. Every evening, we spend a considerable amount of time cleaning up the kitchen after dinner but every morning, the hurricane of breakfast prep and morning rituals take their toll.
You remember when you were young and watched people in sci-fi movies using cool handheld computers? They were from a time in the distant future that could look up anything and have the information immediately right in the palm of their hand. Well, that time is now and those people are us.
For us, the main reason this happens is probably because we spend a significant portion of our time clearing tiny weapons of mass destruction off our floors and don’t have enough time to clean the kitchen and the rest of the house. Other reasons are more typical ones, independent of whether there are little people booby trapping your every step. The first is simply having too much stuff in our kitchen, and the second is the lack of good kitchen organization.
To tackle the first problem, we know we’re going to have to declutter and get rid of all the stuff that’s collected in our kitchen over the years. If you’re going to do the same and need some help on how to organize your kitchen, read on. This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Next week we’ll be taking on our second problem: kitchen organization.
Weekly Link Roundup – October 31, 2016
Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend full of Halloween parties.
If your weekend was anything like ours, you’ll just want to skip to the good stuff, so without further ado, here are our favourite links from this past week.
How to Get Your Kids to Clean Up Without Losing Your Mind
It was another typical weekend at our house. Outside, the birds are chirping and lawnmowers are humming. Inside, one kid’s screaming and the other’s running in circles, bumping into the other one each time he passes her. Mommy’s making a much needed coffee in the kitchen while I navigate the landmine-like field of toys strewn across our floors towards her.
“Good morning” she says, a smile about to creep across her face when all of a sudden her eyes go wide. “FFFF—udggggsicle!“, I blurt out, as I connect the reason for her expression with the stabbing pain in my foot. I look down to see that a plastic star shaped toy has forcefully mated with it. I hop around awkwardly as I continue to silently mouth words that no child under 25 should hear.
Young children are mostly destroyers, happiest when they’re sitting in the centre of a makeshift ball pit of their own creation using all the toys you’ve just put away.
When I’m finally able to speak again, I tell the kids to clean up their toys. I even throw in an “or else!” at the end. You can imagine how thrilled I was then, that after my command, I watched as my daughter continued screaming and my son kept on running. My words had no effect, maybe because my daughter’s perfectly pitched screaming was the best white noise machine ever. Or, more likely, because we’d never actually taught them to clean up and they thought Daddy was excitedly cheering them on.
Deciding it was time to put my foot down–without the fear of stepping on tiny weapons of mass destruction–I turned to Google for help. I typed “How to Get Your Kids to Clean Up Without Killing Them”, the end of which I quickly changed to “Without Losing Your Mind” as my wife walked over. A tap of the enter key and there were the tips and tricks I hoped to tattoo on my children’s foreheads–just kidding, of course.
Weekly Link Roundup – October 24, 2016
Are you ready for Halloween? There’s only a week left before you have to take the kids trick-or-treating, or if you’re staying in, to give out treats to the little ones knocking at your door. There’s even less time for those of you attending Halloween parties this weekend.
If you’re not completely prepared yet and still have purchases to make, consider going green this Halloween. And even if you’ve been prepared for weeks, have a look at our first couple of links and shelve the ideas for next year.
10 Recycling Mistakes You’re Probably Making
The scene is a familiar one. You’ve just finished your super-sized lunch at the local mall’s food court, the early stages of a food coma setting in, when all of a sudden you’re confronted by an overwhelming array of waste receptacles as you attempt to empty your food tray.
Food waste. Paper waste. Glass waste. Aluminum Waste. Waste waste. You stare blankly at the wall of options and find yourself completely discombobulated by the amount of disposal choices you have.
And you’re not alone. Even though recycling is so common and accessible (92% of Canadians had access to recycling in 2007) many people are often confused as to what cannot be recycled and whether an item should be composted, recycled, or trashed.
There was a time when mullets were on trend and in style. There was also a time when glossy paper wasn’t recyclable. Thankfully, the time of non-recyclable glossy magazines is gone, and along with it the era of the mullet.
Toronto waste audits in 2012 & 2013 found that 15 percent of the contents of homeowners’ curbside garbage bins was recyclable. And a look at recycling numbers in 2015 was even more disconcerting as the city of Toronto found an estimated 45,000 tonnes of garbage mistakenly put into recycling. This garbage can damage equipment, cause injuries at recycling facilities and can ruin other recyclables.
Toronto’s recently launched campaign, Bad Things Happen, was born from the need to educate the public about proper recycling procedures.
(via City of Toronto)
Weekly Link Roundup – October 17, 2016
Waste reduction week has officially started! It should be no surprise then, that this week’s links are all dedicated to waste reduction.
First we’ll feature a parody created by Kill The K-Cup, a movement to help raise public awareness about the incredible amount of waste generated by single-use coffee pods. It’s almost unbelievable to think that in 2013 there were enough coffee pods produced to wrap around the equator 10.5 times.
(via Kill The K-Cup)
Top 10 Tips for Reducing Food Waste
“Finish your food! There are children starving in Africa!”
Does this sound familiar? The sound of our parents trying to guilt us into finishing all the food off our plates is one we’re sure you heard from yours as well. The irony is that it’s a statement that’s probably more effective now on us as adults than it was when we were children. And it’s even more applicable in today’s culture of excessive portion sizes and super-sized menu options, resulting in enormous amounts of food waste.
Throw in some mind-boggling, guilt-inducing statistics like the fact that the 1.3 billion tons of food wasted annually worldwide could feed the almost 1 billion hungry people on the planet, and it’s no longer just an innocent statement from a mother scolding their child. It’s a statement describing a global problem, one that we all need to help solve. Even in Canada, almost 850,000 people needed help from a food bank in just the month of March, 2014. Meanwhile, the amount of food Canadians wasted in the same year totaled $31 billion.
(via Food Banks Canada)