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Shortcut: 5 minutes of tidying

February 25, 2016 by Leslie Leave a Comment

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TIDY UP (1)

Shortcuts are life hacks for busy adults, quick tips to make life easier, and solutions we’ve found to eliminate (or at least reduce) frustrating tasks. Take ’em or leave ’em, but they work for some of us! If you’d like to share your own tip, email thesmartdomestic@gmail.com with the subject line “Shortcut idea.” 

While hanging out with a friend who is expecting a bundle of joy this summer, we were discussing how to get a handle on the clutter at our homes. I put all my blame on my husband and dog, as usual. (I mean, that sand isn’t tracking itself onto the floors!)

My friend told me about a brilliant way she was starting to save on the time it took to clean house. She and her husband spend 5 minutes a day on one room. They just do as much as they can in that 5 minutes and then leave it for later. That’s a tactic my husband and I could probably stick to.

Here’s my plan: Go to a room, get supplies, set a timer, and go! With baby toys, a shaggy dog, and a husband who has a million hobbies, things can get messy quick. But with a few minutes of work each night, we can keep things in slightly better shape.

 

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Filed Under: Shortcuts Tagged With: cleaning, clutter, housework, organization

Decisions: Why I’m headed home after seven months on the road

February 24, 2016 by Suzanne 19 Comments

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katie pic 1 Decisions is a series dedicated to the choices we make in our lives and the factors that led us to our given resolutions. We welcome guest posts to this series to hear about how you’ve tackled a life decision. Email your story ideas to thesmartdomestic@gmail.com.

In today’s post, my friend Katie shares the story of how she and her husband decided whether nomadic life (with freelance careers and two goofy dogs) was the right fit for them. 

Nomad No More

by Katie Scarlett Brandt

Sometimes as we drove across the desert or pulled into an eerie part of an unknown town late at night, I asked myself if I would have traded our home for life on the road, knowing what I know now. Would I have bought the brand-new travel trailer, packed our apartment into storage, said goodbye to my friends and family, and told my freelance clients that I’d be working remotely?…

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Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: Chicago, decisions, marriage, road trip, travel

The problem with online mommy-groups

February 22, 2016 by Suzanne 7 Comments

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If you had created a Facebook group that morphed into an 18,000-person support group for moms, would you kill it after it became too much work? Or if some of the posts veered into controversial territory with heated discussion threads? If the mindless mommy chatter veered too far away from the judgment-free, discussion-rich environment you’d hoped to create?

Such is the case for Longest Shortest Time Mamas, a Facebook group that (as of last Friday) is no longer posting members’ content.

Farewell, Longest Shortest Time Mamas 

Some background: The Longest Shortest Time is a podcast that calls itself “a parenting show for everyone.” On iTunes, it’s got 1,800 reviews and a five-star rating (which puts it at the top of the “Kids and Family” category). The creator of the podcast, Hillary Frank, also started a Facebook group. In her farewell post, she writes: “I started this group two years ago for two reasons: 1) to give listeners a safe space to support each other in non-judgy ways; and 2) to create a place where we could reach out directly to listeners for potential show content.”

But the Facebook group is shutting down….

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Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With: facebook, internet, motherhood, parenting

Creating a diaper bank for babies in need

February 18, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

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sweet cheeks

Today, we’re kicking off the first in an ongoing series about people doing wonderful, interesting, unusual things with their lives. The first person we’re featuring is a co-worker I’m lucky to know, Megan Fischer. When she mentioned that she was starting a diaper bank a few months ago, I was curious: How do you start a diaper bank? And what, exactly, does that entail? How does she balance working a full-time job, raising two kids and running a nonprofit organization? So I invited her to lunch, and she told me all about it.

Megan Fischer, Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank

Smart facts:

  • Passion project: Founder and executive director of Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank
  • Day job: Content developer for an educational technology/publishing company
  • Social Media: Website Twitter Facebook

Domestic facts:

  • Married for six-and-a-half years
  • Two kids, ages 1.5 and 3
  • Lives in Cincinnati, Ohio

When she was researching cloth diapers a few years ago, Megan Fischer stumbled on the term “diaper bank.” She was pregnant with her second child and was shocked to learn that formal support systems, including the government-funded Women, Infants and Children (WIC) or food stamps, don’t cover diaper purchases for low-income families.

“How would that feel as a parent, if I couldn’t afford diapers for my kids?” she asked herself. Her heart tugged at her to investigate, and she learned her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, didn’t have any regional diaper banks for local families. “I was in my cube at work crying, thinking about it,” she said….

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Filed Under: Features Tagged With: boss mom, diapers, entrepreneur, nonprofit

In real life: Who does the laundry in your house?

February 18, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

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laundry 1

An epic change is happening inside American homes: Men are doing more laundry.

The younger the man, the more laundry he’s doing, according to The Wall Street Journal. In fact, among men ages 18 to 34, a full 67 percent claim they are “mainly responsible” for laundry. Big Business is taking note, so they can make More Money.

Detergent and washing machine makers are taking aim at this growing group. While women still report doing most of the clothes washing, men now share more of the load.

Tide is trying new scents it considers more masculine. Whirlpool added a cycle to keep colors from mixing because men don’t sort the laundry. Hero Clean detergent is geared for days-old stains because men tend to let dirty clothes sit around. Doing laundry, marketers say, involves more decisions than many other household chores and men and women do it differently.

But I had a sneaking hunch that my friends might have a different take on this laundry-related gender equality. After consulting with some ladies (all of whom cohabitate with gentlemen), I call shenanigans on this market research! The good news is, about half of our survey respondents share the duties OR their men take on the task. So maybe the dudes aren’t “mainly” responsible, but they are shouldering a (bigger) portion of the dirties than previous generations.

Here’s what our friends said when we asked, “Who does the laundry for your household?”

laundry 2 (1)

As you can see: Two men are primary laundry-doers, four couples split the work, and five women said they’re the primary.*

Let’s give three cheers for the couples that split the work! Here’s what they said:

  • My husband and I do the laundry together and divide up the tasks. Usually I fold, and he irons.
  • I do mine, my husband does his, and one of us does our kid’s (me, 80 percent of the time). My husband is the type who immediately puts his clothes away. I live out of baskets.
  • Well, I used to and my husband would do the dishes, but we both sucked at our respective tasks, so we switched. That was 2 weeks ago.**
  • We don’t have a washer/dryer (there could be worse problems, but some days with a toddler I have a hard time believing that) so I get lazy and send the laundry out. A lovely gentleman by the name of Mario comes and picks it up for us.  However, if Mario wasn’t helping me out I would venture a guess that it would definitely be me.***

*Do you think the responses would be different if we asked the men in these relationships? Every time I bring down a load of laundry, my husband says, “I could’ve done that,” and I’m like, UNAMUSED FACE EMOJI.
**We should probably follow up to see how things are going in a few weeks. But I’ll call this a “split” for now.
***OK, that last one I’m calling “shared,” since technically the household is paying for a service. But our survey respondent would probably get the task if circumstances were different…

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Filed Under: Real Talk Tagged With: chores, equality, gender, housework, irl, laundry

Decisions: I gave myself shots to make a baby

February 16, 2016 by Suzanne 2 Comments

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photo 2

Decisions is a series dedicated to the choices we make in our lives and the factors that led us to our given resolutions. We welcome guest posts to this series to hear about how you’ve tackled a life decision. Email your story ideas to thesmartdomestic@gmail.com.

In today’s post, I talk about how my husband and I decided to move forward with fertility treatments so we could have a kid. 

Making a baby should have been easy. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it! Teenagers do it all the time, according to MTV reality shows. And yet, this nice married lady with a stable job, common sense and a great husband COULD NOT DO IT.

I was relatively young (under 30) and otherwise healthy when I was diagnosed as infertile. But the facts are clear: My ovaries didn’t (and don’t) produce mature eggs without pharmaceutical help, and those eggs are essential to creating babies. I wasn’t going to get pregnant naturally, no matter how excellent my husband’s sperm nor how frequently we, ahem, practiced.

So my doctors prescribed pills, which were easy enough. 

No response.

>A larger dose of pills followed. Then another dose, above the FDA-recommended amount. Still no results. As a last-ditch effort to try “the easy way,” my doctor agreed to try a different type of pill (typically prescribed to postmenopausal breast cancer patients but could also be used stimulate ovaries in younger women).

Nothing.

…

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Filed Under: Decisions Tagged With: babies, infertility, IVF, motherhood, parenthood

Welcome to The Smart Domestic

February 12, 2016 by Suzanne Leave a Comment

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EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FEAR

Hi!

Thanks for stopping by The Smart Domestic, a place for two friends and occasional special guests to talk about adulthood. We’re here to tell true stories of modern life: how we made tough decisions; how successful and creative people are making their professional and personal lives work; and how we ate delivery for dinner three times this week. (Just us?)

The founders of this blog are two women with kids, husbands, careers, and homes. But we’re also friends, feminists, readers, crafters, chronically curious, food-loving citizens of the world. We think life is a complicated mix of decision-making, dirty dishes, and small pleasures. (You can read more about us here.)

Why call it The Smart Domestic?

Because we want to be witty, reasoned, and sharp while talking about home, household, and life as American parents. We’ll be sharing domestic anxiety, intellectual curiosity, and measured discussions about life’s big and little choices. We’re not here to preach or tell you that you’re doing it wrong. But we will share what works for us (and for others) as we search for health, happiness, sanity, success, and that one sock that gets lost after every load of laundry.

We hope you join the conversation. And you can find us on Facebook, of course!

 

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Filed Under: Miscellany

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