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Tag: tuesday tips

DIY Quick Window Defroster and Other Winter Car Tips
With winter upon us, and many places covered in snow already, I felt today would be a good time to share a tip on how to keep ice off your car windows, without freezing your hands off. Check out this DIY window defroster I found on Pinterest! This post contains affiliate links and I will receive compensation if you click through and make a purchase. Related Post: Winter Car Emergency Kit

I find myself often scraping the car windows, gloveless, because I was in a rush, forgot the gloves, couldn’t find the gloves or wasn’t expecting a frosty car. My poor fingers on those days really don’t like me, and I don’t blame them. While browsing Pinterest, I came across a photo with a tip below it for de-icing car windows in a rush. Keep reading for more tips on dealing with icy windows.

DIY Window Defroster
- 3 parts Vinegar
- 1 part Water
- Mix together. Spray on the windshield before nightfall as a pretreatment, or after ice forms. Either way should work.
I was thrilled and immediately told Mark about it. I always worry about putting anything on the car. Mark takes care of our vehicles, and he knows what is good or bad for the car. I didn’t think vinegar would be bad, especially just on the windows, but had to make sure from the boss. He says it’s ok to use.

So next I went to the source of the picture – Coffee Break with Liz and Kate. I’m so glad I did too because they answered my next question, how/why does this work? In their words:

“Vinegar contains acetic acid, which raises the melting point of water – preventing water from freezing.”

Alternative Window Defrosters

I’ve been reading up on this tip lately, before winter hits again, and have found many of you tried it over on Pinterest. Some found it worked, others were not impressed. Overall it seems the vinegar can leave your car smelling, well, vinegary. Some found the spray would just refreeze on the windshield. Here are some alternatives to try.

Replace the vinegar with Isopropyl Alcohol. Mix with water in same proportions.

Replace the water with Dish Soap. Mix with vinegar in same proportions.

Replace the vinegar with Isopropyl Alcohol and the water with Dish Soap. Keep the 3:1 ratio.

I would also suggest after spraying the mixture turn on the car wipers before anything has a chance to refreeze to the windshield.

Other Winter Car Tips

Use this spray on the door handles and key lock to open frozen doors.

Keep hand warmers in the glove compartment.

Check your oil and air filter before the cold hits.

Keep an ice scraper in the car, however, if it breaks or you’ve left it somewhere, credit cards work wonders on the windshield!

Store a shovel in the trunk for digging out of a snowbank (hopefully you never need it).

Did this Window Defroster solution work for you?
November 2, 2017
Chargiing Station {Guest Post}

Can you even believe how many devices in our homes have to be charged? Kindles, razors, Dongles (yes, Grandma has a Dongle!), iPods, mp3 players, and even our vacuum cleaner all run on cordless power that needs to be recharged.

I have been trying for several months to come up with a solution for the growing jumble of charging cords that we need to keep things running at our house. At first I had all of our cords wrapped neatly and stored in a basket with a lid. That created a problem, since I had to empty the basket every time I needed to charge something.

The other problem was that I didn’t have a specific place for plugging the devices in to be charged. One time when I was preparing to go away for a few days with my sisters, I had devices charging in three different rooms in the house. But that was then, and this is now.

This is a bird’s eye view of my new charging station that I set up in our den. I plugged in a power strip, and I organized and labeled all of our cords and put them in two drawers beside the power strip. This all lives on one small corner of Grandpa’s table/desk in the den.

The part of the process that took the most time was sorting and labeling the cords. When they were labeled, I wrapped them with small pony tail holders. (I keep these on hand to use in place of rubberbands.)

For labeling, I used two different sizes of white labels and a Sharpie marker.

Any cord that had a large plug that fit an electrical outlet is labeled on the plug end.
< ——————–

For the cords with a USB plug, I folded a larger label, sticking it to itself and labeled them like this. —————–>

Now I have all of the cords in one plastic drawer right next to the power strip. This works well with my organizational rule to store all like items together.
Grandpa was so impressed with my charging station that he labeled his two device cords and put them in the drawer above mine

We really like the way this is working for us. Whenever we need to charge anything, we know that the cord is in the den. Whenever something is charging, we know that the device is in the den. The power strip should protect us from power surges, and the light on the power strip lets us know when it is on.

I have high hopes of being able to stay organized with this new charging station set up. If you are tired of tangled or mystery cords, I recommend this method heartily!

How do you keep your cords and devices organized at your house?

I am a follower of Christ, a wife, a homemaker, a seamstress, a teacher, a writer, and a grandma. I enjoy the frugal, simple lifestyle that my husband and I share with each other, our two dogs, and our extended family members. I love learning from others, and I enjoy sharing my life lessons with my blog readers. Please visit my blog, My Grandma Knows, at http://www.mygrandmaknows.com/ where I share wisdom and advice with humor and grace.

August 7, 2012
How to Prep Your Home for Sale

As we continue our search for a new job, we are also prepping the house for sale. Although we haven’t listed it on the market yet, we want it ready to go up as soon as we know where we’ll be moving. By having the home in top condition before listing it, we should be able to sell it in a short time period, without too much back and forth with a potential buyer.
Also once we move, we will not be able to take care of anything in the home, so it needs to be looking good, in case we have to move before it sells.

So before you list your home for sale, I suggest going through room by room and making a list of anything that needs updated, painted, or repaired. Mark has gone through the home and made this list for us. It’s going to take a lot of work, but we don’t have much else to do.

Master Room
– Clean walls. Possibly repaint
– Fix the broken blinds

Bedroom #1
– Touch up Paint
– Reattach closet door

Bedroom #2
– replace flooring in walk in closet
– scrub walls. Possibly paint

Bedroom #3
– Scrub walls

Bathroom
– Touch up paint
– Fix door jam
– Fix cupboard door
Hallway
– Touch up paint
Front Room
– Retrim doorway
– Repaint
– fill screw holes

Kitchen
– Touch up paint around window and ceiling
– Spacer between cupboard and wall
– Ceilling edge above stove
– Caulk around attic entrance
– Conceal the back of the cupboard showing
– Trim around pantry doors
– Sand, caulk and paint trim

Family Room
– Paint trim and ceiling
– Paint fireplace top piece
– clean paint off doorknobs

Stairway
– fill cracks
– paint
– clean doorknob
– Stain hand rail

After you’ve gone through the inside of your home, take a walk around the outside. List any repairs. Make sure the sprinklers are working, the lawn is trim, and weeds are pulled. As a buyer, the lawn is the first thing we see. Make it look good, but don’t invest too much money into it. I enjoy having a lawn to make my own, rather then redo what the previous owner had done. I would say stick to daily upkeep of the yard, and don’t try and do any large projects unless it really needs it.

June 26, 2012
Tuesday Tip from My Memories Suite

Are you a digital scrapbooker? I’m really just getting into it. I’ve always been a hands on person, so the digital scrapbooking sometimes feels overwhelming to me. Thankfully, My Memories Suite (the software I use) has tons of great video tutorials to help answer my many questions and problems I run into.
Apparently you can use any online scrapbooking material with the My Memories Suite Software. It doesn’t have to come from My Memories. I think it’s pretty cool when companies make their software so universal like this. The question then boils down to, how? How do you use the other scrapbook pages, embelishments, etc with My Memories?
Easy! Watch the video and then have fun finding the best digital scrapbook deals to use!

Did you know My Memories also has a Design Club? As a member of the club you get 5 kits a full month before they’re available to anyone else on the My Memories site. The membership is only $5.99 a month too. Seems like a good deal to me.

PLUS right now when you sign up for a membership you’ll get the Sun-sational kit for free! Cool beans.

If you haven’t gotten into digital scrapbooking yet, but want to, I suggest checking out the My Memories Suite software. It’s really easy to use, and the customer service people are pretty nice helping you figure everything out.

If you decide to buy the software, use this code to get $10 OFF

STMMMS37783

*This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are my own. I only promote products I use and/or feel will benefit my readers.

May 15, 2012
Tuesday Tips – Plumbing

Tuesday Tips

Have you ever worked with plumbing? Has your spouse?

When it comes down to electricity and plumbing, I get very nervous doing our own remodeling. To me those should be left to a trained professional. Sadly, they also cost a lot of money to update as well.

We’ve come down to the last few steps of our kitchen remodel. We could’ve been done last week actually, except that the plumbing to the kitchen sink was giving us a pretty hard time. I wish I’d taken a before picture, but I of course didn’t think we’d hit that many problems.

Every time we turned the water back on, the tubes would pop out and spray water everywhere. It was quite the mess really. Finally, after 3 days and a lot of white tape, we had it! We had one small leak, but it was just a drip.

Or so we thought. Sunday night, I found the Princesses dresses pretty wet. I thought as my mom had done laundry that maybe she just hung them up to dry, so I just moved them from the closet to my line dryer.

I should’ve used my brain a little better. Monday morning when I went to get clothes for Princess R, I found a sopping wet carpet, and ALL the girls dresses soaked. Plus, Scattergories and Trivial Pursuit (my two favorite games) completely ruined. Of course at this point Mark was gone to work and couldn’t come home. I found every dry towel we had, and made a facebook plea for fans. I hauled our massive shop vac down the stairs and started sucking the water up the best I could as well.

Thankfully, a neighbor came over and was kind enough to spend 5hours working on our plumbing. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to stop all the leaks either.

Finally, a certified, licensed plumber was called in. After another 1-2 hours the plumbing under our sink was completely replaced and brought up to code.

Now our problem is fixing the carpet in the basement….again….I feel like we’re back to last year and the flood we had from a frozen pipe.

So my dear readers, all this to bring you today’s Tuesday Tip.

If you’ve never worked with plumbing, or your plumbing is many years old, don’t touch it. If you think you can figure it out, give it a try, but after 24 hours, I suggest you stop and bring in the professionals. Most importantly though, if you think it’s just a drip, think again. Turn off the water, and get it taken care of before you find a flood elsewhere in your house.

April 17, 2012
Tuesday tips – pinterest edition

The following ideas I found on pinterest. Follow the picture links for full details on how to accomplish these in your home.

Source: bakedbree.com via Adelina on Pinterest

Keep top of cakes from ecoming stale over night.

Source: craftster.org via Adelina on Pinterest

DIY chip clips!

Source: Uploaded by user via Adelina on Pinterest

Clean up all those cords around your computer!

Source: beeinourbonnet.com via Adelina on Pinterest

Use less cups with a family cup coaster

April 10, 2012
Tuesday tip – Making time for Family

One of the biggest things we can do to make sure our house feel like a home is to make time for family. Last week I decided I personally needed to take less time online and spend more time with my kids. I easily got distracted keeping up with online friends and family. I love my friends, and my family far away, but I needed to reprioritize this week, and spend more of it with the people right here.
Here’s some tips for cutting back your online time

– Set a timer. Decide how much time you can spend online and set a timer. When it goes off, shut the computer down.

– Turn the computer off at night. In the morning, don’t turn it on. Get dressed, eat breakfast with your kids, do some household chores. By not having the computer on first thing in the morning, you’ll be less tempted to sit down “just for a minute to check on my friends”. We all know that minute turns into much longer.

– Plan! Find some events going on in your town, and get out of the house! Plan in advance, so you have a couple days of things to do. If nothing is happening, go for a walk, hit up the library, invite a friend over!

Since taking time off the worldwide web this weekend I’ve found myself happier, my kids enjoying more productive activities, and a better bond and communication between us. Here’s just some of the fun things we’ve done!

Had a family barbeque

Dressed up and played with Legos

Water Colered

And took a nap on Daddy.

So this week, slow down. Re-evaluate your time and reconnect with your family. Have a great week everyone! I leave you with one of my favorite Mormon-Ad’s!

March 27, 2012
Tuesday Tip – Cleaning Microfiber Couches

Yes I know, it’s Wednesday. I haven’t lost complete track of days yet (or have I? calendars are brilliant inventions!). I spent Monday and Tuesday morning testing out different cleaners on our Microfiber couch, so I could bring you this post. It took longer than I expected, but I got it done, and I’m here to let you in on some awesome tips!

If your kids are like normal kids, then your furniture probably starts to look something like this before you can even blink

I can’t even believe looking at these pictures that I actually let it get this bad, and that I would actually have company over sitting on these! ahhh, bad housekeeper over here. Well I finally saw past my kids, and realized what had become of my sitting area. So off to work I went. I started with some cleaners I had in my cupboard.

EcoFresh Deodorizing Cleaner. It didn’t seem to be doing much. So I pulled out my – 1 time purchase from a door to door salesman – Original Lavender Advanage The Wonder Cleaner Super Concentrated. The claim was that it gets grease stains out like magic! Too bad it doesn’t take pen stains out of microfiber, because that would be a wonder. Admittedly, it did lighten the pen, it just didn’t come all the way out.
My next method of attack was removing the covers from the seat cushions. I threw the covers in the wash on Heavy soiled, high spin, warm water. YES! Ok, again the pen didn’t come out completely, but everything else did, and they look so much better!

Here is my #1 tip for Microfiber furniture – Buy pieces that have a zipper cover. I wish the back cushions were removable for the same reason, but I guess I’ll just have to spot clean them.

After going through the wash here is what my couch now looks like

Isn’t she a beauty? No more dark marks all over it. Absolutely wonderful to sit on! And really the cushion with the pen isn’t nearly as noticeable.

So off to the arm and back cushions I went. I headed to pinterest for ideas. The one “solution” I saw over and over again was Rubbing Alcohol. You take a white sponge (to avoid discoloration of your couch) and scrub the couch with rubbing alcohol. Again, the alcohol helped lighten the pen marks, but didn’t take them completely away. The rest of the arm looks nicer now though.

#2 Tip when cleaning Microfiber – if you can’t remove the cushions, do not spot treat. You will need to wet the whole cushion to avoid leaving water marks. It’s more work, but it will be for nothing if you end up with large water marks all over your couch.

Good luck and Happy Cleaning!

Have any spring cleaning tips or ideas? I would love to test them out. Please contact me at familyroom2@gmail.com

March 14, 2012
Tuesday Tips – Fresh Towels

Tuesday Tip

As I walked into my bathroom this morning, I breathed a sigh of comfort as I noticed the fresh hand towel hanging up. With 3 little kids, our towels are often dirty, or missing. Although I try to keep a clean one hanging, sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

Hanging a fresh towel can add loads to the ambiance of a bathroom. For me it relieves stress, exudes calm feelings, and really just starts my day out right. Now, having a clean bathroom with those towels will add even more! (Which for me this morning was the case, since I just cleaned them yesterday! YES! go me!)

Remember to enjoy the simple things in life – Like Fresh Towels!

March 6, 2012
Tuesday Tips – Window Cleaning

Oh the windows, we all love windows right? I love opening the blinds and letting in some sunshine. What I don’t love is opening the blinds to find finger prints, and smears of who knows what streaking across the glass. Not to mention the same smears on the blinds.
Maybe you don’t have kids and don’t have quite the same problem I do. But you still get dust sitting on the blinds.
Once again, browsing pinterest I found this great idea for cleaning blinds. This tip originated from Robin at Keep Home Simple (so glad I found her blog. I feel like she’s me….but cooler!) Right back to the cleaning tip. So Robin mixes equal part vinegar and water, then slips a sock on her hand and cleans the blinds.

Source: keephomesimple.blogspot.com via Adelina on Pinterest

It’s really a brilliant idea. You can use whatever cleaner you like. I personally prefer just some really hot water to help pick the dust off the blinds. The vinegar is a nice touch to help kill those smears from little kids hands. The best sock to use would be one you don’t plan on wearing again. You know from that pile of unmatched socks that has been sitting in your laundry room for-e-ver! I only had little kid socks to work with. Depending on how many blinds you plan on cleaning, and how big your windows are, I don’t suggest using small socks. They get dirty fast, and you’ll spend more time rinsing them out then actually cleaning. But if you have an adult sock, you can probably get a lot more clean at a time (pending on just how dirty you let your blinds get….yes there’s a big arrow pointing above my head right now…).
The biggest downside I found to this method, is you can’t easily change sides of the sock like you can with a rag. So you really do have to rinse it out to keep cleaning. Other than that, the blinds are much easier to grab and hold in place while cleaning! I’m even going to add a little my tip here, put a dry sock on your other hand, and you can dry the blinds as you wash them!

Now on to those dirty windows! By the way, I suggest cleaning the blinds first, or you may accidentally streak dust onto your clean windows from your blinds (yes I found out the hard way). My personal favorite window cleaner is Windex and Newspapers! Yes Newspapers. Most of us have them sitting in piles, feeling guilty if we throw them out. Newspapers make great window cleaners. They’ll leave your windows streak and FUZZ free. I don’t know about you, but if I use a wash rag I get little fuzzies all over my windows.
Now here’s the thing. Today when I went to grab my newspapers, I realized I had a lot of brown packing paper. So I decided to give it a try. It’s my new favorite cleaning “rag”. The packing paper holds up much better than newpaper allowing you to use less of it at a time.

*While looking for a picture of the packing paper, I came across this article on FunInTheMaking.com with more ways to reuse that packing paper!

February 21, 2012