My 100th Post

I started this blog 18 months ago and I am finally at my 100th post. That averages out to about 5 posts a month. That sounds about right. I started this blog after reading many homeschool blogs in an attempt to figure out what I am doing with this whole homeschooling thing. And this blog started out as mostly a homeschool blog where I tried to share ideas and a place to vent when homeschooling was tough.

Lately I have been posting more about life in general. I don't know whether that is because I am more confident in my homeschooling ( I doubt it...). Or because we haven't been doing much formal schooling with moving and summer (that might be it). Or because more family members have been visiting my blog and blogging is a good way to keep them informed about what is going on in our life.

In any case, I think this has become a hybrid blog. I am sure I will post more about our homeschooling when we get back to more formal schooling in the Fall and I will continue to post interesting happenings in our life. Something for everyone to enjoy :) If you are a frequent visitor, leave comment. I'd love to know who is enjoying my rambling on homeschooling and life in general.

I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie

Last Fall I signed up for Project Feeder Watch. It seemed like a great home school project and my oldest daughter loves birds. So I paid my $15 registration fee and went out an bought a bird feeder and seeds. You are supposed to record the number of birds at the feeder for 2 days in a row each week throughout the winter. I never did. Not once. Never. At first there were no birds at the feeder each time I looked and then I could never find 2 days in a row to take the time to look. I know, seriously sad that I couldn't schedule 5 minutes 2 days in a row to look out the window, but I couldn't. I finally just gave up. I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie. I am sure it would be a great project for some homeschool family out there, but not ours. My husband even made fun of me for paying $15 for the opportunity to do research for someone else :P

I Love my Mop

You know you have sunk (risen?) to a new level of housewifedom when you start proclaiming your affection for a cleaning product. But I just love this mop. It is the Clorox large area mop with the terry cloth cover.

You see, my husband hates when I mop. He doesn't like the smell of the cleaning solution and he doesn't like that the floor stays wet for 20 minutes and he can't go in the kitchen. Now it would make sense for me to mop when he is not home, but I prefer to mop the kitchen at night when the kids are in bed, so I don't have to deal with keeping them out of the kitchen.

The floor in our old kitchen was white and always looked dirty, so it needed mopped rather frequently. I thought about getting a swifter mop after I saw someone mopping with one and noticed that the floor seemed to be dry almost immediately, but I really didn't like the idea of constantly having to buy the replacement pads.

Then a friend mentioned terry cloth mops. I had never heard of them and thought I might have to order one online. But one day I went to Target and there they were - a whole selection of them. I have to say now that I am so glad I got the large area one.

At first I tried to use the mop swifter style. I put cleaner and water into a spray bottle and sprayed the floor and then mopped the sprayed area. It didn't take me long to figure out that the dry terry cloth made too much friction and was difficult to push across that floor. So I tried wetting terry cloth and using the spray. This was still kind of a pain, but better that the ol' sponge mop and bucket routine. Then brilliance struck. I wet the terry cloth and put the floor soap on the terry cloth and squish it around, put the Terry cloth on the mop, and go. Swish Swish, Swish and I am done. The floor is dry in less than 5 minutes and I have no bucket of yucky water to deal with. I pull the terry cloth off and throw it in with the dirty laundry. And you can buy extra terry cloths (which I did), in case one is still dirty and you need to mop.

I wouldn't recommend using this mop for a gross - o mopping jobs, but for regular floor cleaning, it is great! Also, if you have crusty stuff stuck on the floor, you may to to keep a scrubber sponge (another one of my favorite cleaning products) handy. You know, the one with the yellow sponge on one side and the green scrubber on the other. The terry cloth isn't so good at the crusties, but still better than the bucket and mop... You can get terry cloth mops with their own scrubbers build it, but the large area one didn't have that feature.

Go, buy yourself a terry cloth mop. I highly recommend it.

...end commercial...