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The Household Manager brings you the latest information, ideas, and resources for your own household, from Household Management 101.

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Taylor

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In this Issue of The Household Manager:

1. What's New At Household Management 101
2. Celebrate Mother's Day With A New Planner From MomAgenda
3. May Is National Electrical Safety Month - Safety Tip About GFCIs
4. Checklists And Printables For Your Household Notebook
5. Have You Made The Switch? Switching Your Family's Winter Clothes To Spring And Summer Ones

What's New at Household Management 101?

Homemade cleaners can save you money, can be quite effective, and many are also better for the environment because there are more natural ingredients and less chemicals.

Here is a list of some of the most recently added recipes for use all around your house.

• Homemade All Purpose Cleaner
• Homemade Disinfectant
• Homemade Citrus Cleaner
• Homemade Furniture Polish
• Homemade Toilet Bowl Cleaner
• Homemade Drain Cleaners
• Homemade Glass Cleaner
• Homemade Carpet Deodorizer
• Homemade Wood Floor Cleaner
• Homemade Silver Cleaner
• Homemade Copper Cleaner
• Homemade Chrome Cleaner And Polish
• Homemade Brass Cleaner
• Natural Air Freshener
• Homemade Mildew Cleaner For Tile And Walls

Celebrate Mother's Day With A New Planner From MomAgenda

What are you going to be doing with your family to celebrate?

Here at my house I'm not in charge of Mother's Day so I can't tell you exactly what we'll be doing, but we generally have a nice meal which my husband cooks, and we all just hang out as a family doing fun things together.

Something else I like to do for Mother's Day is get something for myself, that I have been wanting or needing.

If you are like me, and like to do a little something special for yourself in honor of Mother's Day, I would suggest you get a new planner from MomAgenda if your current planner doesn't have all the features you really need or want.

I love the MomAgenda planners because they are designed with us Moms in mind. My personal favorite is the momAgenda Mini Daily planner. The features I like about it include:

• It is small enough to fit into most Mom purses (5"x7"x1") so it can serve as your family's traveling family calendar./li>

• It has both a daily page view, and a monthly view, so you can keep track of the daily details and not lose sight of the big picture.
• For the daily view it shows one page for each day, so there is more than enough room on each page to write your schedule and even a daily to do list and other notes.
• Each of the daily view pages also is set up to keep track of up to four kid's schedules (or a husband's), along with your own. That's what I mean by saying it is made with us Mom's in mind, since we are generally the keepers of the family calendar.
• The cover is sturdy and stain proof, so it doesn't get too beat up from carrying it in your purse, and the covers come in several fun colors.
• The planner is designed for a school year, from August 2010-2011 (13 months), meaning you haven't missed any months of use even though its already May, and it makes sense for us Moms of school age kids to have a school year calendar anyway.

Check out the MomAgenda Mini Daily Planner today!

MomAgenda also has lots of other types of planners, organizers, and notepads which household manager Moms would find useful, functional, and that look great if this one isn't to your liking.

May Is National Electrical Safety Month - Safety Tip About GFCIs

I have to admit that I don't think about electrical safety that often, and my guess is you don't either.

So here's a safety tip I just learned, courtesy of my electric co-op's monthly newsletter:

Test Your Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters Once A Month

What is a ground fault circuit interrupter? Known in the industry as a GFCI, they are the electrical outlets you typically see in bathrooms and kitchens which have that little red "reset" and black "test" buttons on them.

What these GFCI electrical outlets do is act as a safety device to shut off the power to the circuit if the electricity flowing into the circuit is different than the amount returning. They have drastically reduced the number of home electrocutions in this country since the 1970s.

If your home does not have them, such as if it is an older home, you should definitely get them installed in all areas of your home, indoors and outdoors, where water may come into contact with electrical products (hence why you typically see them in kitchens and bathrooms).

Once you have them in your home you should also test them once a month to make sure they are working properly. To do this do the following four steps:

1. Push the red "reset" button on the GFCI electrical outlet.

2. Plug in a nightlight into one of the outlets and turn on the night light. Assuming the bulb is not burned out the light should come on.

3. Push the black "test" button on the GFCI electrical outlet and the nightlight should go off.

4. Finally, push the red "reset" button on the GFCI electrical outlet again and the nightlight should come back on.

Keep your family safe this May by testing your GFCIs, and make sure to call a professional for repairs if one of them is not working properly.

Checklists And Printables For Your Household Notebook

One of the biggest stumbling blocks I have had when making my household notebook is trying to create all the pages for it, trying to make them look perfect and pretty, or trying to make everything all at once.

Slow and steady wins the race in making your home management binder, and you don't have to (and shouldn't try to) do it all at once.

But I want everyone to be able to benefit from using a notebook, so I have begun the process of creating some checklists and printables you can print off and just stick straight into your notebook.

Here are some of the ones I've created so far. (Note the links are to the website pages, and each of these pages then has a link where you can download a PDF version of the checklist).

Check them out and print off what you need! They're free!

• House Cleaning Checklist
• Daily House Cleaning Schedule
• Weekly Checklist For House Cleaning
• Kitchen Cleaning Checklist
• Bathroom Cleaning Checklist
• Spring Cleaning Checklist
• Cleaning Supplies Checklist
• First Aid Kit Checklist
• Diaper Bag Checklist

Have You Made The Switch? Switching Your Family's Winter Clothes To Spring And Summer Ones

That means it's time to switch all the fall and winter clothes out of your closet and switch to your spring and summer wardrobe.

This time of year, if you are a Mom like me, you not only need to do this for yourself but also for your kids.

Here are some helpful tips and advice for switching out you and your kids' clothes for the warmer seasons:

1. Switch out clothes for one child at a time, if possible, so you can focus on one wardrobe at a time and get a better sense of how much stuff they already have, or that you need to get.

As you look through the clothing make a list of what you need to buy or acquire for each child now, so you can do that over the next couple of weeks.

2. If you have younger kids of the same sex as an older one who is having their clothes switched out, take the time to place the clean clothes in a clearly labeled plastic bin or tub with the size of outfits listed on the outside. That way you can easily find the clothing again later.

You may also want to write yourself a note to put in the bin reminding yourself of anything else you know you will need to buy or acquire later, when the younger one grows into that size.

3. Create a sell or donate pile for clothing that you know no one in your home will use again, because there is no need to have all that stuff just taking up space. (Exceptions, obviously, for sentimental items, but remember not everything is sentimental.)

Once the sorting is complete don't think of your task as done until you actually get those old clothes out of your house, to donate or sell to a consignment shop.

4. Don't forget the shoes and coats. When dealing with all of the clothes in your kids' rooms, don't forget about other items around the house which are seasonal too, and should be stored or gotten out at the same time.

You can put your kids used, but still good for another wearing shoes, into a plastic tub so that the younger kids can "shop" for new shoes as their feet grow. My youngest loves to shoe shop in our house.

5. If the task is overwhelming just do a little at a time. Don't get more out than you can sort through in the amount of time you actually have so everything is not in disarray for days.

Hope these tips help! I feel your pain about this seasonal project because I need to start this process for my kids! Just think, I'll be doing it right along with you. :)

Thanks for joining me for
The Household Manager!

~ Learning Everyday How To Enjoy Your Home And Family ~