One of my most favorite things about being a mom is carrying my baby girl. Now that she is 11 months old (that can’t be right!) and squirmy, I rarely get the chance to carry her. However, since the time she was one month old, I carried her constantly in the Moby wrap, and then moved up to the Ergo wrap once she hit eight months.

If you have ever worn a baby for more than an hour, then you have probably thought to yourself, “I wonder how many calories I am burning?” It was through my curiosity that brought me to the Babywearing Workout.

There are so many things I love about the Babywearing Workout. Here is just a small list:

• The instructor is personable, and it is fun to workout with her and her baby.
• The instructor knows what it is like to go from a bigger size to being fit. Her story is inspiring. I had my fill of workouts created by other moms who never struggled with weight – it can be disheartening to workout with them. Kelli is very motivational!
• I don’t want you to think I am obsessed with Kelli or anything, but how awesome is it that a real mom created this workout and has made a business out of it. I don’t know about you, but I love investing my money into other moms instead of corporations. Really, does Jillian Michaels need more money?
• You can workout while putting the baby to sleep. Do you know how many times I would start a workout only to pause it when the baby was crying inconsolably? Who wants to resume their workout after that?
• It is short and effective. I am sorry, but I have a short attention span, and I do not care for working out. Therefore, I need a workout that gets the job done as quick as possible.
• The workout is affordable and available as as download.
• Finally, you get to bond with your baby. Doing this workout with Ellie helped me love her, whereas doing Turbofire by myself made me have some hard feelings against her for leaving me with this mom belly (I know it is not Ellie’s fault for me consuming a little too many calories during pregnancy )

I encourage all new moms to check out this workout for a fun way to ease back into exercise after pregnancy. Kelli is always having fun challenges for weight loss while doing the workout. In fact, she is hosting one right now which has some pretty amazing prizes.

*I received a free download of this workout, but all opinions are my own.

Read the rest here.

This cuteness has nothing to do with the garage sale…

I have been decluttering my house for a few months now. I would just find things I wasn’t using or needing anymore and throw them in the garage. When I started the declutter prompts, I got rid of even more stuff. Honestly, I didn’t feel that any of my stuff was worth anything and was planning on donating majority of it. However, before I did, a friend asked me if she could have a yard sale at my home.

In the end, I pulled out all of my junk on Friday morning at seven. And can you believe that it was just as successful as a Saturday sale, if not more so? I started at 8 am and by 12 pm, my sale looked kind of sad. It had barley anything left!

Even though I was selling my little things left and right, I still didn’t think I had sold a great amount. To be honest, money wasn’t the driving factor. I just really wanted a cleaner garage!

After five hours of having the garage sale, I packed up the rest and counted my profit. $300! For some, that may not seem like a lot, but if you had seen my sale, you would have probably laughed to yourself thinking I would be lucky to break $100.

So my encouragement to you is to try having a garage sale on Friday morning even if you don’t have a lot of big things to sell. I must have sold more than 100 items to get my profit to where it was, and I sold my stuff for dirt cheap!

As far as advertising goes, I paid a few bucks for bright poster boards and made huge signs. We live off of a busy street, so that helped. I think my wording of “FRIDAY ONLY” also helped. I also posted on Craigslist and on several selling groups and community groups on Facebook.

And having the sale only Friday made for a very relaxing weekend!

5×7 Folded Card

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I haven’t read her book yet, but I love what she shared.

Living in the Now:

She said that you have to live in the now and making your home work for you. Your home is bound to get messy during the day, but an organized home is one that can be easily put back at the end of the day. We shouldn’t hold on to items that don’t have designated spaces. We need to stop holding on to the future – i.e. building materials for a home we hope to build sometime in the future.

The Cost of Clutter:

Society makes us feel that the more stuff we have the better/wealthier we are. When we have things, it takes energy from us to maintain things and clean them. It can make us depressed to be stuck with clutter. Clutter makes it hard to think straight, and it can also cost us money when we are continually replacing things we lose. The worst part is when clutter affects our relationship with others, such as fighting within the household or not having guests over due to it. Clutter can make us so negative!

About Letting Things Go:

One of the most common reasons for holding onto clutter is due to emotional attachment. So many times we hang onto things as if we are hanging on to their memories. However, it is our brains that store the memory, not the item.

Another reason we hold on to items is due to status and security. We hold on to items because they may be reminders that we can afford them.

One more reason it is hard to get rid of items is because we want to get our money’s worth. However, we are not getting the full value out of it just by keeping it around. In fact, it could be costing us money to keep it around – either by adding more stress or maintenance to our already long to-do lists.

What you need to ask yourself is if the item will add or detract from your life.

I thought these were very important lessons to learn since I know many of us are decluttering this spring. Jennifer also made a good point in saying that you can’t expect to declutter your home overnight. It is a process that will take small baby steps.

Image Credit via Flickr.

Mission: I truly believe that subconsciously we cannot have a good night’s rest when our rooms are cluttered and messy. It is just a theory in my mind, but if the last thing we see is chaos and clutter before we close our eyes, our sleep can mirror that. Like I said – just a theory, no science to back it. So today, let’s tackle our bedrooms. For parents, I know that the master bedroom seems to find everyone’s odds and ends.

Whenever I clean out the master bedroom, I am always surprised by what I will find in there, though I am usually the one that put it in there in the first place.

Here’s the To-Do List:

• If you have help, start off by flipping your mattress. If not, just change the sheets and make the bed with fresh sheets.
• Clear the floor. I am a “piler” when it comes to cleaning. So perhaps this technique will help you. I just shove everything in a big pile and then sort through it. I try to have a trash can near by and some boxes so I can easily move items that do not belong in my room out. Most of the time for my room, it means I just need to hang up clothes that aren’t dirty, remove Ellie’s stuff, and put the dirty clothes in the hamper.
• Next pull out anything that is underneath the bed. What’s under there? Do you need it? If you are storing your summer and spring wardrobe under there, it may be the time to pull it out and replace it with winter wear. Get rid of anything that didn’t get purged in on the day you did your closet.
• Go through your drawers. Start with the dresser and fold everything nicely. Try to get rid of at least 1-2 clothing items that don’t fit or that you don’t wear. Next, move to the nightstand. Remove anything that doesn’t need to be there. Keep your nightstand simplified and clean.
• Once you clean out the drawers, then clean on top of them. Why are these places always a catchall for everything?
• Dust any surfaces that need dusting.
• Clean the window and window sill.
• Now it is time to vacuum. Be sure to vacuum the curtains too with one of the attachments your vacuum came with. Don’t forget to vacuum underneath the bed and along the baseboards with a hose.
• Now you need a big glass of lemonade – Phew!

How Did I Do?

Please forgive me, our room does not get a lot of light, so the picts are not the best. Also, please admire the last photo where the gun in the corner of the room looks as if it is shooting off explosive shots.

I made it about half way through the list. I found ten items to get rid of from underneath the bed (the boxes underneath the bed). I still need to go through the nightstand and dressers and dust and clean the window. Hopefully I will be able to finish up after Ellie goes to bed tonight.

Share with me – how did you do? I would love to see pictures!

Not only is the idea gross and unsanitary – your mouth has bacteria in it which the dental floss can help control, which means the dental floss gets bacteria on it too. Adding water and letting it air dry makes the dental floss a breeding ground for bacteria (this is why it is important to invest in a sanitizer for toothbrushes). The idea of reusing dental floss is not frugal at all. In fact, when you compare it to the time taken to wash a piece of floss each day and the small amount of water used, the savings is minimal. Let me show you the math:

A Regular Flosser buys a new roll of floss 1X month at $1 = $12/yr
A Frugal Flosser buys a new roll of floss 1x a year and reuses it = $1/yr

So the frugal flosser saves $11/yr. Great, now let’s factor in time. Say the frugal flosser takes 15 seconds each day to rinse off his floss and hang it up every day. Doing this every day for a year would add up to about an hour and a half of work. This means he is basically earning himself $7.33 an hour at this rate. For many states that is minimum wage or below minimum wage. I was nice and didn’t count the dollar or two in water he wasted over the course of a year.

Now here is the real kicker. I, along with many other couponers get their floss for free or even make money off of it. Most people get it free from the dentist anyways! In fact, two years ago, I saw a coupon for $1/1 and $3/2 Reach floss/product both printable and in the newspaper subscription that I was receiving at the time. It took me at the most 30 minutes to collect all of my coupons and then I just held on to them for when I was going to Walmart next. It took another 5 minutes to go to the floss aisle and pick up about 12 flosses. We won’t count how long it took to stand in line (why I hate Walmart). I made .08 off of each floss, which then rolled over into my groceries. So my time and savings would come out to about $12.96 for 35 min – or $22.22/hr.

I know some of your head’s are spinning right now, thinking, why in the world did she take the time to do all of this math. The point is that if you are going to be frugal, make sure it is worth your time and effort (and good for your health).

I was amazed that the frugal floss guy won the contest because the other contestants where much more frugal when you figured out their time vs savings. For example, cloth diapers and cloth wipes saves me about $850 a year (that’s minus the cost for detergent, water, and energy), and I rarely spend more than an hour per week laundering them and putting them away. By using cloth diapers and wipes, it is as if I am making $16.34/hr, double what the frugal guy was making.

Does that make sense? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Read the rest of the article here.

Mission: When’s the last time you cleaned your base boards? What about the track of your sliding door or light switches? These little things usually go unnoticed. Plus, they can be a big pain in the rear to do. If you have kids, give them each a job on this to-do list and get ice cream after. That will make it better.

Your mission today is to clean all of those little things that never get cleaned.

Here’s the To-Do List:

• Take a fresh dryer sheet and go over the baseboards. You can use a rag and spray too, but I thought the dryer wipes worked nicely.
• If you have a sliding glass door that has a metal track, vacuum it out. Then, with cleaning spray and Q-tips get the little spots that are hard to reach.
• Wipe down the window sills.
• Wipe down light switches and outlet plates. Use an old toothbrush if you need to.
• Pull the fridge out and vacuum/sweep behind it. Vacuum the coils too if needed.

How Did I Do?

Hands down this was my least favorite day of cleaning, but I knew it had to get done. We moved into our home last August, and I was pretty convinced that our baseboards were not bad. I took dryer sheets and wiped them down. Oh my word! Horrible! Gross! How do those things get so dirty? I’ll spare you the picture.

To be honest, I don’t really notice a huge difference from cleaning these things today, but I know it is good to do. Plus, have you ever seen light switch plates and base boards gone unclean for many years. It is pretty noticeable then!

Share with me – how did you do? I would love to see pictures!

Usually it is the little moments that make a difference for a child. So consistently eating dinner together and enjoying each other’s company each night will be more remembered than a trip to Disneyland. This devotional book helps encourage conversation and Bible thinking.

I loved reading it by myself the first time through, and I am very excited to use it in about 2-3 years when my little one can understand.

This book was sent to me complimentary through Tyndale. All opinions are my own. This post may contain affiliate links.