Traditions are the BEST. You've figured out by now how much I love routines. I love knowing when things are going to happen or when I should do them. And traditions are routines, they're just happy little routines all dressed up! Traditions have a way of brightening up your day/week/month. For our family, traditions typically fall under two umbrellas: casual traditions and holiday traditions. Casual Traditions These are those traditions that happen separately from a major holiday. Some things may fall more under routine in this category, but since it's something that usually brings joy, I think of them as traditions. Choosing traditions doesn't have to be a big elaborate thing. Two traditions stand out in my childhood, right off the bat. One is pizza and movie night on Friday nights. I promise you, it's exactly as it sounds. We'd order pizza, eat in the living room, and alway watch a movie. It was something special because every other night, dinner was eaten in the kitchen or dining room. We had a special treat to look forward to after a long week. The other childhood tradition is something so small, I don't know if it was done intentionally or if it's remembered by anyone other than me. Every Sunday morning, right before we pulled out of the garage to leave for church, my sister and I would each get a wintergreen Tic Tac. Every. Single. Sunday. Just one. I would take my itty bitty Tic Tac, hold it in my mouth, and savor it as long as I could, competing with my previous records to see how long I could make it last before it dissolved completely on my tongue. Usually by the time we passed the cemetery, it was gone. It was such a tiny thing, but every time I see wintergreen Tic Tacs in the store, I think about those Sunday mornings of my childhood. As our daughter grows older and more aware, there are traditions that we are beginning to implement for our family, both big and small. Some of these include:
Holiday/Seasonal Traditions
I place a high value on literacy in our home. We have themed books for all holidays/seasons that I rotate through Addy's bookshelves. To me, this is much more important than holiday decor or seasonal food, because it is a contribution to her love of reading.
You might notice not all of the holidays are represented. We've never tried to force a tradition just for the sake of having a tradition. Austen and I have celebrate the 4th of July differently for the past 7 years. We've gone kayaking, watched Star Wars, spent the day in Bardstown with friends.. We've yet to hold onto a specific tradition, and that's okay with us!
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CategoriesYou read the title and laughed, right? Tidy travel with a toddler sound ridiculous, I agree. Toddlers are little tornadoes that destroy everything in their pathway. So I'm not here to tell you how to neatly travel with a toddler, or baby, or preschooler, or big kid. I want to share what I've learned about traveling with our daughter in keeping a tidy mindset. With that mindset we anticipate problems ahead of time and prepare for them, big and small. Last week, my little family just took a very short vacation to Nashville with some close friends. We left Wednesday morning and came back Friday night. Nashville is just an hour away from us, so it was also a pretty easy drive, minus the awful traffic on the way home. We haven't traveled further than 4 hours or over 4 days yet, but everytime we take Addy on a trip, I realize something else we can do to make life easier. 1. Overpack
There are plenty of resources out there about traveling for a month with your carry on. I fear those people. I am not one of those people. Especially with a one year old. If you're driving, it's much easier to pack more than you'll probably need, and avoid trips to the store or borrowing from someone else on the trip. We ended up borrowing a silicone bib from our friends we traveled with since they brought 2 and we brought 0. It definitely came in handy when we were out to eat and couldn't strip Addy to feed her! Next time I'll remember to pack one, but this trip I was trying to avoid overpacking. Never. Again. I am also team overpack your clothes. Pack for all sorts of weather and any chance of rain. The day we went to the zoo, the weather swung from chilly and overcast to warm and sunny. We could at least wrap Addy up in the stroller but I froze in my shorts. Unfortunately, Addy also had a blowout which she was kind enough to share with me. Of course I had extra clothes in the diaper bag for her, but none for me. At least now I understand why people wear zoo shirts at the zoo. Thank you, gift shop, for coming to the rescue! Of course you pack extra clothes for your kiddo(s), but don't forget to pack extra clothes for yourself and keep them accessible wherever you go! If not in the diaper bag, then at least in the car. It's annoying, and it's time consuming, but remember to pack any necessary medicine. Toddlers aren't the best at waiting for a pharmacy run or working through any sort of pain. You can even keep a small bag of often used medications in the diaper bag for both short and long trips. While you're in the overpacking mode, overpack your car and leave it overpacked. Leave extra diaper items in there (diapers, wipes, and changing pads). Keep an extra set of clothes for everyone. Pack snacks, toys, and a blanket. Follow the boy scout motto! 2. Use Packing Cubes Packing cubes are the bomb.com. I have a set for Addy and a set for myself. None for Austen, since his packing style is to throw whatever he can find into his bag 10 minutes before we leave (help!!). Packing cubes do tend to take up more space. However, they make it MUCH easier to keep your bag organized during the entire trip. Far too often I'll sort my clothes out when I pack, then by day 2 they're a jumbled mess because I have to look through my bag to find certain things. Packing cubes help keep items separated so you're not searching through your entire bag to find a pair of socks. Plus they come in all sorts of fun colors and patterns! 3. Underplan Activities, Plan Downtime We had a whole shared note going about all the possible things to do in Nashville. Cool restaurants and shops and bakeries. Places to take your kids. Fun outings we wanted to do. We barely touched that sucker. Don't get me wrong. It's important to have an idea of what you want to do while you're traveling. But always anticipate a lot of time getting started in the morning and wrapped up at dinner and bedtime. Just like at home, everything takes so much longer with a little one in tow. We didn't eat at a single restaurant on our trip. We ate lunch at the day's attraction and then picked up dinner to eat at our hotel each night. Toddlers need time in a familiar environment. While the hotel isn't home, it's a place your kid can dump out toys, walk around barefoot, and avoid constant mental stimulation. That gives you some downtime to rest as well. General Toddler Travel Tips -Pack puppy training pads for diaper changes in public spaces. I also keep a roll of dog poo bags to store dirty clothes and diapers if we're without a place to throw them away. -Keep a change of clothes for everyone in the car (at all times!) -Pack a basket of toys to enjoy at the hotel/condo/house -Bring a big cooler for the car and small travel cooler for daily outings -Plan drives around naps. We usually try to leave right before naps. This gives us time in the morning to get packed up and helps the drive go by faster for Addy. I don't recommend driving through the night. It's statistically unsafe to do so, unless you're used to being awake all night. Plus, everyone needs to get out of the car and stretch every few hours, especially your toddlers strapped into those carseats. If it's a long drive, try to budget stopping for the night halfway through. We are already planning halfway stops for our beach trip this fall! When it comes to toddler travel, anticipate and prepare for the worst, then enjoy the best! What a joy it is to watch our children explore the world around us. If you're longing for a truly tidy home, one fell swoop of decluttering isn't going to make that happen. Neither is a marathon of cleaning. Both of those feel feel either thrilling or horrifying, depending on who you ask. (I am obviously deeply in the thrilling club). I love the joy of loading my car with donations, knowing that's less stuff in my home. I relish in a clean home after hours of scrubbing and polishing and dusting. But without commitment, none of that is sustainable. The clutter will return and the dishes will pile and the dust will gather. Let me preface this by saying that for some people, that's okay. Maybe more than okay, but the desired normal. They may want to focus their time on their family or be exhausted after working 80 hours a week or battling depression or just not care so much about a squeaky clean home. If that's where you are, then I'm probably not your kinda person, at least not in this season of life. I belong to the critically clean club. The club where I try not to go to sleep with dirty dishes in the sink and don't let the laundry piles explode. I like my home clean, and I like my home in order. It's easier to think and live and breathe and just enjoy life in a home that's tidy. Unfortunately for my husband, I become a monster of a person when the house is a mess. The time we spent two weeks living out of half our house because we were replacing the kitchen floor? A nightmare. To spend less time on the house and more time on things that matter, and to automate things that need to get done, we have certain routines that are followed in our home. Routines are at the heart of my sanity. A routine saves my mental energy because I don't have to remember the last time I did something, or when I need to do it again. I have a designated day or month to complete tasks. Boom. The end. No stress. Your routines might not focus on tidiness or cleanliness. My sister prioritizes her health and fitness, so she has specific routines about exercise and healthy eating. While I consider those things important, I don't give them as much mental energy or time as she does. My routines before becoming a mother looked different than they do now. We are all constantly adapting to the season of life we are in, just as we should. Our habits have been greatly shaped by our daughter, and making sure her needs are met. I've learned to not worry so much about a schedule and instead focus on a routine. Things may not get done at the same time every day, but they will get done and in the same general order. Mornings No matter how early I get up, there is never enough time before I need to leave for work during the week. My morning must-do list is short, because I never want to overwhelm myself.
"[Making your bed] will give you a small sense of pride. And it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed." -Admiral William McRaven
Afternoon/Evenings My family tends to accomplish much more when there's not a time crunch of needing to get out of the house.
Weekly Tasks
All these routines, big and small, help our home run more smoothly and give us time to focus our energy elsewhere. Keeping track of all of the routines, however, requires some extra tech help. Daily and weekly tasks can be stored mentally. For things that get done less often, I use Google Keep to track when to do things. I have monthly and annual lists that I just make copies of everytime I need a fresh template. I've learned to embrace the digital calendar. For a long time I resisted the calendar app on my phone. I wanted to just remember things, or use a paper calendar. Then I got pregnant. I never realized until then that pregnancy brain is real. And for someone like me, who strives to be on-time and dependable, pregnancy brain was a killer. Raising a child makes it even worse. Pretty sure my brain peaked at age 25, you all. I was late for two different children's ministry meetings when I realized my system no longer worked, and I needed help. Enter phone calendar. All my events go in my calendar, with a reminder days or hours before. My phone is always nearby, so it's easy to check and see when that meeting or doctor's appointment is. My hairdresser has even started using the calendar to schedule appointments and invite clients, so it comes up on both our calendars. Love! I also use my calendar to set reminders for things that need to get done but I typically don't remember. For a while, Addy's morning nap fell in the hour before church, and since Austen's clothes are stored in a closet in her room, he sometimes had to go in to get church clothes. Cue crying baby and frustrated momma. So, I set a reminder on Saturday nights so I would remind him to get his church clothes out. Austen is always happy to take Jersey to the vet for her nail trim, but doesn't always remember when it's time. Now he has a reminder in his phone every two months. And when Austen was working in Indiana for three months, I got a reminder to take the trash on Wednesday afternoons so I'd do it soon as I got home from work, since he wasn't there to do it. Making your calendar work for your needs removes the stress of feeling like you *should* remember XYZ, because you have the routine of being reminded when it's time. I'll preach the greatness of routines until the day I die. Find your routine, write it down, and change it when you need to. We shape our routines to fit our day and rest easy at night knowing we accomplished what needed to get done.
The air in my house is dirty. The air in your house is dirty. The air in the White House is dirty. The air in the Big Blue House is dirty. Are you seeing a pattern yet? The EPA says that the air in our homes can be 2 to 5 times more polluted than the air outside. Most of us worry about the air circulation on a plane. The air is being sucked up and pushed right back out, spreading through all the passengers. The same concept applies in your home, just on a slightly larger scale. Most HVAC systems aren't pulling in outdoor air, they're recycling the air already in your home. We can unknowingly pollute our home's air with cleaning chemicals, personal care products, and synthetic materials. Our pets produce dander which clings to items in our homes. First, this is a vital reminder to be mindful of what products we choose to bring into our homes. Second, open allllll the windows!! My little family consistently follows a few guidelines in keeping pollutants out of our home. There is always more we can do, but these are easy steps we hold ourselves accountable to in our home. 1. Shoes OFF at the door I won't lie, I never thought about this a ton until we had a baby. And then our days were spent lying on the floor a LOT. I started thinking about the things we could step in and carry into our home and on our floors, where our daughter was playing, and crawling, and rubbing her face. On top of that, our home came with carpet that is currently 23 years old and hopefully soon to be replaced. No need for any extra crud in that carpet! The University of Arizona completed a study looking at bacteria on shoes and found that, there was an average of "421,000 units of bacteria on the outside of the shoe and 2,887 on the inside. Some of the bacteria found on the shoes included: Escherichia coli, known to cause intestinal and urinary tract infections, meningitis and diarrheal disease; Klebsiella pneumonia, a common source for wound and bloodstream infections as well as pneumonia; and Serratia ficaria, a rare cause of infections in the respiratory tract and wounds." (PS, washing the shoes got rid of all fecal bacteria & 90% of other bacteria, so wash your shoes!!) (PPS, don't put your purse or backpack on the public restroom floor.) Our guests are always considerate and understanding when asked to take their shoes off, and at this point it's second nature to us. I feel better knowing whatever we stepped on outside is not being tracked through our home. 2. Natural cleaning products First off, we are being kind to the environment outside our home by using products that last longer and use less packaging as a result, and that don't pollute waterways with chemicals. This page from the EPA discusses environmental and health concerns. They are transparent in saying that "the actual risks from these chemicals at typical exposure levels are often uncertain, and in many cases are probably low. Regardless of the expected risk levels, however, reducing the intrinsic hazard of a product is a desirable pollution prevention objective as part of decisions that also take into account other important product attributes." Some concerns the EPA lists include:
In addition, I feel safer using natural products around my daughter. I have fewer cleaning products cluttering up my home. We use vinegar, Thieves cleaner, and Norwex products to handle almost all of the cleaning in our home. 3. Essential oils, no candles Meik Wiking shares in the Little Book of Hygge that "studies have shown that lighting just one candle fills the air with more microparticles than traffic in a busy street. A study undertaken by the Danish Building Research Institute showed that candles shed more particles indoors than either cigarettes or cooking." This study in Florida found that, "Scented candle usage indoors may cause high levels of respirable soot, with risks to occupants for both acute and chronic health effects, including an increased risk of cancer." Even if you don't use essential oils to combat health problems such as trouble sleeping, stress, or an upset stomach, you can probably agree that they smell good. Even great. You've got options for however you're feeling. I diffuse a relax blend before bed, an orange oil in the mornings, and a sugar cookie scent when I'm cozying up during winter. I'm not worried about any sort of open flame, and I know I'm keeping the air in our home just a little bit cleaner. I am very wary in choosing oils that are pregnancy safe, nursing safe, and kid safe. We use Plant Therapy, and their company is very transparent and very adamant about using oils wisely. 4. Replacing air filters often Air filters are vital in keeping higher air quality in your home. Consider who is in your home. Pets? Children? People with allergies? Any of these factors- or any sort of combination- increases how often you should change your filters. Pets come with dander and fur, and more pets produce more allergens, so replace more often. Children have respiratory systems that are still developing, so replace more often. People with allergies need allergens and pollutants removed from the air, so replace more often. We get new filters in our Amazon subscribe and save order, so I'm never concerned about not having enough when it's time to change them. I also make sure keep 'replacing air filters' on my Google Keep to do list, and every two months I'm reminder to take care of it. I know some people write the date when a new filter is put in, but be honest, how often are you opening up the vent cover to see if it's time to replace your filter? Just these two quick steps make it much simpler in keeping the air in our home cleaner. 5. Opening windows By now I bet you're getting the feeling of just how dirty the air in your house is. Even with all our good efforts, contaminants are still coming into our homes. I'll be honest, only that giant bottle of Treseme hairspray can tame these post-baby flyaways. We shed skin, our pets shed dander, our products release gases. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that "In the last several years, a growing body of scientific evidence has indicated that the air within homes and other buildings can be more seriously polluted than the outdoor air in even the largest and most industrialized cities." Opening your home's windows allows outdoor air to circulate and move some of those pollutants outside, so they're not at such high levels in your home. 5 minutes a day is a good minimum, but if the weather allows, shoot for 15-20 minutes. On those gorgeous spring and fall days, our windows stay open during most daylight hours! There is always more work to be done in reducing the pollutants & toxins in our home. However, starting here gives me peace of mind and a stepping stone for the next choices we can make in simplifying the chemicals and pollutants that are in our house.
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December 2021
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