Monday, March 1, 2010

Ideas from Across the Ocean...



My sister and her family are missionaries in Africa. She is an amazing woman. Not only is she beautiful, godly, an amazing mom and homeschooling housewife, but she in incredibly organized. She takes "organization" to a new level. I talked about her in my post on my past/current relationship with being organized. Recently I asked her if she would guest blog and she said she had nothing to contribute! Boy was she ever wrong! In the next few weeks I will be sharing with you her tips for cutting down on the tedious task of folding laundry, as well as keeping your kids toys orderly!


For now though I thought I would share with you what she sent me via email the other day,

"While we were in the States I bought several of WalMart's cheap plastic dishes. They come in four different colors, so I have assigned each of my kids a color. I made a little paper with three circles each colored with the child's assigned color. Then I covered it with contact paper and this is their assigned spot to put their cup. Of course we keep it by the water filter so they can get a drink any time they want. This cuts down on the dishes and also me having to help them get drinks all the time. This idea could also be used outside with an igloo cooler (like the ones they use at ball games!)"


Along those same ideas, a dear friend of ours was a stickler for organization, and used a dry erase marker to write his children's names on a tile of the counter top... They were to put their cup on their tile to be used throughout the day. Brilliant!


After all, couldn't we all stand to do a few less dishes each day, while at the same time teaching our children the responsibility of keeping track of their own items? Hmmm, seems like she's got a lot to contribute after all...
Post time: 20 minutes

6 comments:

Marcia (123 blog) said...

I love your blog - it's soooo pretty!

over from steadymom and also a stickler for anything organising :)

love the idea of each child having a colour

Kim & Dave said...

That is a great idea! I love simple things like that to help keep my kids' stuff in order!

For the Love of Naps - Sarah said...

I have heard about this one cup a day thing and I am going to give it a go today. We normally use water bottles but then I can't find them when we want to leave the house! So the cup thing would solve that issue too!

Thanks for stopping by my blog!
Have a "get to" kind of day!

Leslie said...

great ideas!!!

Kathi Lipp said...

What a great idea - I would love to include this in a dinner book I will be working on. Could you let me know if your sis would be ok with this - my e-mail is kathi at kathilipp.com

Kelly Miller said...

Very nice idea. Thanks for sharing!