A while back, when I suggested you all ask me a question, a couple of readers asked how we managed six people in a two bedroom house. More specifically, how do we fit myself and all three of my men into one room?

Sharing the master bedroom with both my boys and my husband (though not all the time as he usually sleeps on the fold out couch in the lounge when he’s on shift) isn’t that big a deal really. The girls shared our bedroom till they were about 18 months old, and I have many friends who have a ‘family bed’ and share with more than two extra kids. But it is kind of a squeeze and I know Morgan is really wishing he had more of his own space, for his precious stuff, and somewhere he can go when he is cranky or needs a break.

So here it is… a quick vlog of our current sleeping arrangements and our future plans….

What are the sleeping arrangements like in your house?
What would you like them to be like??

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Our Current and Future Sleeping Arrangements Vlog! is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s April.

I am not ready for April.

I didn’t take into account that it would be April.

You see, this past week or so I have been just getting by. I have been hanging on, just trying to make it to the end of term. Just washing enough clothes to get me through until the Digital Parents Conference. Just juggling children until the Bloggers BBQ. I’ve been planning and organising, and hanging on until we got to this one big weekend.

I know so because this morning I found 16 acorns in the bottom of my washing machine.

I also know that I fed my children apples and mars bar slice for breakfast because that was all we had in the house. And… ahem… I am wearing a pair of my husbands undies.

I’ve got to stop doing this.

I’ve got to stop living for a single day or event and forgetting to take into account what will come after. I have to get my act together.

So this is it, this is the time when I get my act together. This is me doing my own little version of Modern Parents Messy Kids – Organise your Entire Life.

I’ve set myself a handful of goals…

1. Declutter, clean and tidy the whole house before the end of the school holidays.
2. Use a version of this file folder system to organise paper work and important dates
3. Get back on top of meal planning and grocery shopping.
4. Do some blog housework.

I am not fooling myself… if I get half that done in the next two weeks I’ll be happy. But I am also not going to let myself slip back into ‘getting by’ mode… so what is not done now will be done later.

What about you?

Am I the only one who lives for a single day forgetting what comes after?
Is anyone else feeling the urge for an Autumn Purge?
Am I the only one with acorns in my washing machine?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Acorns in my Washing Machine. is a post from: picklebums.com

It’s a new project of mine…

Attempting to make laundry beautiful…

One instagram image at a time…

Because laundry is my life…

Join in. instagram user name: katepickle #instalaundry

Playing Wordless Wednesday with My Little Drummer Boys

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

#instalaundry is a post from: picklebums.com

The photo above might not look like much to you, but to me it is full of potential… Potential walls!

This ‘build your own house’ gig is a lesson in patience for me. It takes a long time to double the size of your house when you are doing pretty much all of it yourself, while trying to hold down a full time job and look after four kids.

It’s also a lesson about choices.

We could have chosen to mortgage ourselves beyond our means and pay someone to do a lot of the work, but we choose not to.

We could have chosen to spend every spare second of our lives working on the house, but we choose not to.

We choose not to sacrifice our financial stability, our health, and our family life to have a ‘perfect house’ in a specified period of time. In a way this has taught me what I already knew; there is so much more to life than where you live or what your house looks like.

Sure, it will be awesome when it’s done, but awesome because we did it ourselves, our way, and with luck we’ll still be married at the end of it!

So, I’m trying hard not to be too disappointed that our kitchen won’t be done in time for Christmas, or new years, or my birthday. Instead I am focussing on the positives. I now have more time to make dream big dreams and mull over big decisions. And despite the fact that I’ve not yet decided on tiles for our bathroom floor (which might actually be done by Christmas!) today I am dreaming about the master bedroom.

Our master bedroom has french doors that open out onto our own little corner of garden… Ok, at the moment it is more mud hole than garden, but one day it will be garden. We also have small a walk in robe, which is a huge step up considering we have had no wardrobe at all for the last 6 years. Apart from those two elements the bedroom is pretty much a blank slate…

What colour would you paint your bedroom?
Do you dream of a king sized bed like I do?
TV or no TV?
Do I dare dream of a spa or hot tub in our little private garden??

What would you put in your dream bedroom?
Would you be totally practical or amazingly indulgent?
Share your ideas!

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

What Would You Put in Your Dream Bedroom? is a post from: picklebums.com

After taking a week of writing blog posts last week I managed to tick off two things on my To Do list.

Yep, you read that right. TWO THINGS!

I had plans to knock off the majority of the items on the long list so that I wouldn’t have them hanging over my head as we scream towards Christmas and the end of the year, but it didn’t happen. And as I sat combing nits out of my children’s hair last week it hit me… I can’t keep going like this.

My To Do list is eating me alive.

Even when I feel like I might actually be making some progress, a week like the last one happens, with way too many Dr’s visits and a round of head lice thrown in for good measure, and suddenly, I am even more behind than before.

I feel like a slave to all the things on that list, and they are just the extra things, like blogging commitments and design work, I am too scared to add the day to day stuff. I’ve tried very hard to say no to new requests, even when I’ve been sorely tempted to say yes, but it’s obviously not been enough.

Just the thought of all the things on the list stresses me out, and when I’m stressed I’m disorganised, scattered, always late, and a bad mother. I am not doing anyone any favours by taking on more than I can handle, least of all me.

Perhaps my thinking was chemically affected by the tea tree fumes wafting up from my kid’s heads, or maybe it was the constant rotation of Disney DVDs, or perhaps I have just finally come to my senses… I don’t want to be that kind of person. I need a plan to dig myself out of this To Do list black hole and a plan to stop me falling back in!

How I Tackled My To Dos

Keep Up the List Writing.

I used to write a list at the end of each day of all the things I needed to do, remember or think about for the following day. Lately I’ve gotten out of that habit, and that made it easy for my To Do list to spiral out of control. If I really knew all the things I already had on my plate, perhaps I wouldn’t have taken on so much.

Set Limits, Realistic Limits

I often find it hard to say no. When an email pops into my inbox from a blogger I really like and admire asking me to re-design their blog… oh I so want to say yes…. I know I need to say no, but it’s so hard! Sometimes I think I can squeeze one more thing in, especially when it is something so awesome/important/chance in a life time, and so I do, even when I shouldn’t. No more. I am setting harsh and realistic limits of how many extra things I can take on. I’m also going to make sure I can clearly see when I have already filled up my quota, and what times are likely to be busy and therefore when I should say no even more often.

To make sure I keep on top of this I whipped up this simple monthly planner with a space to write all my ‘work’ commitments (not sure why I feel I need to put the word ‘work’ in inverted commas… there’s some deep seeded neurosis and denial there, I’m sure). It’s not rocket science but if you’d find it helpful you can download the pdf here.

Routine, Get Some.

I can’t do schedules, anything with times on it makes me nervous, but I do need to work on my routine. I need to make sure there is time in my day for things like washing, and school lunches. Time for working and also time for relaxing. Just blocking out the rhythm of our days helps me to keep the balance a little more centred. Even if I don’t stick to it, sitting down and making sure our routine is working well at least gives me something to fall back on when I need to.

Use The Systems I Already Have in Place.
I need to keep menu planning, and keep the girl’s schedule up to day and displayed. Just these little things help take the pressure off and make me feel like I am accomplishing something, which goes a long way to getting on top of everything else!

Remember to Dance

I am not a naturally organised person. I’d like to be, but I’m not. I really need to work at keeping things in check, not biting off more than I can chew and making sure life doesn’t pass be by in a haze of lists. I saw the above quote pop up on pinterest last week and it made stop and think. I am just me. I will not miss out, life will not pass me by if I do what I do in the way that I need to do it. And don’t forget to dance.

I prettied up a little, printed it out and stuck it up so I am always reminded to dance. You can download it as A4 printable poster if you like.

What do you do to make sure your To Do list doesn’t eat you alive?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Tackling My To Dos is a post from: picklebums.com

We have several small ‘play spaces’ tucked into nooks and crannies of our little old house.

There is a little table tucked in near our big dining table, an easel that often lives at one end of our tiny kitchen, and a corner of our living room that is dedicated to toys.

We don’t have lots of room for toys, nor lots of child friendly storage in our house, actually we don’t have much storage inside our house at all, so we rotate toys.

Every few weeks I change around the toys that are available in the living spaces of our house. Depending on what the children are interested in and what stages they are at, I get out a selection of toys that they have open and easy access to, all the time.

Because we have a range of ages (almost 8 years old – 1 year old) I try to choose toys that are safe for everyone to have play with. They may not all be toys that the baby is interested in or able to use the way an older child would, but they are all toys that he plays with in his own way and all are safe for the occasion chew too. We also use higher shelves to store toys like little Legos and non-board books so that they are safe from Noey, but accessible for the bigger kids who use them on the big table or when the baby is asleep.

We use lots of baskets and boxes on the shelves so that things are easy to get out, and move around, and easy to pack away.

I usually try for a selection of toys that include something to build and create with, something to pretend with, and something to read. That usually covers pretty much all the learning areas you can thing of. I mostly stick to ‘open ended’ toys that can be used in lots of different ways (this helps with the range of ages too) and I think about the sort of things the kids are into at the moment and try and include those things too.

On our shelf at the moment (from left to right, bottom to top):

• A basket of baby toys, including posting boxes, soft books, cars and some other favourite toys
• Duplo – despite having moved on to ‘little Lego’ last Christmas all the kids still really love the Duplo.
• A basket of wooden tree blocks – some of these stick blocks and other home made wooden pieces
• A basket of wild animals, with a few fairies and elves who’ve also found their way in too
• A basket of board books, and in front of those are the wooden rainbow, fire and water blocks we love so much.
• A box of kitchen and cooking accessories – because my big boy is going to be a real chef one day!
• A selection of little toys for the bigger kids – tiny animals, dominos and the counting frame.
• Little Legos

We also have a big basket of basic dress-ups, hats, bags and necklaces and simple doll accessories, and a small table with the magnadoodle in the same area as our toy shelves.

We have art materials and puzzles and games in a separate closed cupboard which the big kids can access, and the girls and Morgan both have a stash of special toys in their rooms.
They are always able to request other toys that are put away, but keeping the ‘out’ toys to a minimum helps us manage in this small space and helps everyone keep on top of the packing up.

Sometimes I wish that we had a separate ‘play room’ so the kids had their own space, and so I could just shut the door and walk away from the mess. But I really love that our children play and work in the same spaces that the adults play and work. It means that someone is always close by to help when needed, and it also means that we spend more time together, sharing and doing the things we love. To me, this is what family is all about.

When the renovations are done (how many times have I said that phrase??) we’ll have both more storage and more space, but I still plan to manage our play spaces in a similar way. Though by then Noey should be almost old enough to not destroy a permanent writing/drawing area!

How do you manage the toy chaos in your house?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Toy Rotation. is a post from: picklebums.com

There is something about the change of seasons that makes me want to change things as well. So yesterday, as The Father Figure worked on the new bit of the house, I decided it was high time the to make some changes in the old bit also. No more slacking off, no more ‘It’s not worth doing till the renovations are done’, yesterday was the day for doing, so I did.

I had one goal in mind… deal with the toys.

My poor kids have inherited a hefty dose of the ‘don’t throw that out it might be useful’ gene from both their father and I.

A ripped pair of Barbie undies? Don’t throw that out we can fix them!
A plastic toy from some TV show they’ll never watch, which they never play with, that came in the box with a meal from the Empire of the Evil Clown? Don’t throw that out, it’s my favourite!
A pair of shorts that are size 2 but that they still fit, even though they are nearly eight? Don’t throw that out, I might want to wear them!

I am trying hard to get on top of my ‘just in case’ tendencies but it’s hard, so I’m doing my kids a favour and helping them evict the internal hoarder and let go of stuff early on.

We started with the girl’s bedroom. That room is one of the few places we have to store toys so it is kind of stuffed full of… well… stuff! Some of it HAD to go.

There were tears, and tantrums, and begging (mostly from me) and then finally negotiation. If they let go of the broken, out grown and never played with stuff, and packed away some of the things that they don’t use very often (with a promise not to throw it out), then we would make space for a writing desk in their room.

As much as I like the idea of us all writing, drawing, working and creating together on the dining table, with the limited space that we have at the moment, and with a baby who can reach anything near the edge of the table and destroy it in under five seconds, I can see why the girls were so excited at the thought of having their own desk. To have a special spot to sit and draw and write and play with all those tiny little Polly Pocket shoes is a dream come true for the girls, and with the school holidays coming up I thought it might buy me some extra space between arguing parties too.

So we swept and sorted and excavated under the beds and vacuumed and negotiated and threw out until there was space to bring in the table. Nothing fancy, just a hall table we had been using to store clutter elsewhere and two super cheap stools from Ikea. Teamed with a few of our painted tin cans to store markers and pens and an old cereal box cut down to make a magazine holder and we were done.

Of course the bog boy wanted one too. There is not even a sliver of space left in our bedroom (our = me, The Father Figure and both boys) but there was a great space left in the dining room where the hall table had originally been

So we salvaged an old Ikea kids table that had been left out in the weather too long. The top was water damaged, split and discoloured, but the table was still sound. So I found a piece of material that fit and cut open a thick plastic bag and used them to cover the table top. I simply folded them under and stapled them on (it’s ace having all kinds of power tools lying around!).

I’m not sure how long the plastic will last, but if it holds up ok I think we’ll cover our other Ikea kid’s table too!

I am not sure my kids will ever be ‘clutter busters’, after all, it’s hard to break free of your heritage! But hopefully starting out young and enjoying the benefits of letting go of stuff will at least set them on the right track!

Are your kids hoarders? Or do they happily chuck stuff away?

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Writing Desks, Clutter, and Kids, Oh My! is a post from: picklebums.com

I don’t ‘vlog’.

I don’t vlog because our house is a mess, I don’t like the sound of my own voice and more often than not I am still wearing my PJs at 2pm in the afternoon. But today I’ve been lured into the big bad world of vlogging by Aldi….
(I’m not sure if the video will embed into my rss feed… if not pop on over to the blog to check it out)

Aldi are running a competition and you could win $10000! To enter the Aldi ‘Making it Possible’ competition, make a short video featuring your favourite Aldi product, an Aldi bag and what you’d do with $10000. Further information and terms and conditions for the competition can be found here.

Obviously I am not going to be winning any money with my little video, but I did it for you, my dear readers, because not only can you enter the Aldi competition but Aldi has also given me a hamper of baking goodies valued at $100 to give away!

Now it seems you either love or hate Aldi, and I am definitely a lover. Sure, not every item in store is exactly what we want, but I find most are good quality, good value for money and the staff at our local store are lovely, even when I rock up with four kids and a ginormous trolley full of stuff!

So I had great fun using the Aldi website’s online shopping list creator do-dad to choose a variety of baking items for my hamper. It includes the basics like flour and sugar and dried fruits as well as the apple puree we like to put in muffins, plus some extras like tea towels and a baking tray. A great way to try out some Aldi products or just a good excuse to bake something!

To win my Aldi Baking Hamper just leave a comment on this post and tell me what you’d put in your dream bathroom.

This giveaway is now closed. Congatulations to Jo from The Country Life Experiment who is the winner.

Entries are open to Australian residents only and you must leave a valid email address. A random winner will be drawn next Monday, September 12th. The winner must contact me within 7 days of being notified or the prize will be re-drawn.

And don’t forget to enter the Aldi Making It Possible competition too!

So…. What would you put in your dream bathroom??

{Disclaimer: Aldi provided the hamper and it’s contents. I was not compensated for this post in any way. The ideas and opinions expressed in this post are purely my own. }

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

What Would You Put in Your Dream Bathroom? is a post from: picklebums.com

It both amuses me and frustrates me that I’ve blogged this very question before, 3 years before!

Yes, it was three years ago that we first spoke to an architect and took the first, very tentative, steps towards our renovation. If I knew then that we would still not be even close to finished three years later I probably would have given up then and there. It seems life has a way of putting even the best laid plans off course… and it’s not like we’ve done nothing in the last three years. We’ve dealt with a new baby, flooded foundations (three times), and a heart attack, and none of these things have been very conducive to building our own house. So with only a little begrudging I have accepted the delays and the long drawn out processes… and here we are.

We are finally at the point where I need to make some concrete decisions about a kitchen. In the next three weeks I need to have decided on all the appliances, finalised the kitchen design and ordered it. Ok so it might not go in exactly on schedule but I don’t want to be the one holding up procedures on the off chance that we really are ready when we hope we’ll be ready!

Help!

I am not great at making decisions at the best of times, and these are no small decisions. These are big expensive decisions. Decisions I will have to use, look at and live with every day for a long time.

First on my list is appliances.
Oven? Cook Top? Range hood?

In the beginning we had plans for a beautiful wood fired oven, but things have changed a little. In the end the oven wasn’t going to heat our living area in the way we’d hoped and spending $1500 on something that wasn’t exactly perfect seemed a little excessive. So in the end we’ve decided the money is better spent on getting a new wall mounted oven and a new cook top. So now I’m waving goodbye to my blue Rayburn and trying to decide whether we need one really big oven or perhaps a double oven, one big one small?

I know I want a big cook top because I hate that I can’t fit four decent sized pots on our current one. I also know that it has to be electric and can’t be induction, so hopefully those limitations will make that decision a little easier. I also want a range hood that is big enough to really cover the cook top.

I think I want all of these appliances in that fancy, new, non-marking stainless steel…. except that we’ll keep our current dishwasher and that is white and we currently have a white fridge. Will that look funny?

We also need to look at a new fridge, and a new microwave too. I can see my budget being eaten before my very eyes!

If I can actually decide and purchase appliances then I have to move on to ordering the actual kitchen.

We are going with Ikea. For affordability, quality and range, they win hands down for us. So now I am up late every night dragging and dropping various kitchen cabinets around our ‘virtual kitchen’ and trying to figure out how to fit in every cool Ikea storage idea ever made. I’ve not even come close to making a decision about door fronts or bench tops, though I bet I’ll go with my safe fall back of white and wood, cause I’m boring like that. And what about handles? or maybe no handles?

Now lets move on to splash backs. Oh how I want glass, and if I don’t go too overboard on everything else then perhaps we can even afford it, but what colour???

Oh it’s all so darn hard, and The Father Figure is no help. He may think that saying ‘whatever you think is fine by me’ is helpful, but really it’s infuriating! Have an opinion damn you!

So tell me oh wise and wonderful blog readers…
If you were buying all new kitchen appliances what would you get?
If you were ordering your dream Ikea kitchen what would you design?
And, most importantly, what would you not do if you were building your dream kitchen?

{image: from 2012 Ikea kitchen catalogue}

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Burning Question – What Would You Have in your Dream Kitchen? is a post from: picklebums.com

Our house seems to be over flowing with clothes. Clean clothes, dirty clothes, clothes that are put away, and clothes that have been left in a heap…. and yet we still never seem to have anything to wear!

I can’t decide if we have nothing to wear because we have too many clothes, the wrong clothes, or just because I hate doing the laundry so the clothes we want and need are never clean when we want and need them.

I’ve heard a whisper that if you have less clothes you actually do less laundry, but I can’t quite reconcile that. Sure you have less clothes to wash, but don’t you have to wash them more often? Which would mean you are actually doing the same amount of laundry?

Still, the idea of having less clothes to deal with in general is appealing. We have precious little storage space as it is, and it would surely be easier to find that elusive favourite shirt, or to know that we are out of clean school socks, if there was less clothing junk to wade through. It would definitely make it easier for the kids to put their own clothes away and keep them tidy.

But I’m not good at getting rid of things at the best of times. I have a ‘someone might need that at some stage’ mentality which is even harder to get over when it comes to clothes. Sure that pair of school pants are too short and she says they are scratchy and doesn’t want to wear them, but what if I have a bad washing week and we run out of school clothes, surely a scratchy too short pair of pants is better than none? So we should just keep them right??

A while back I read about Trish from Little Eco Footprints starting a clothing challenge. Trish (and others around the web and the world) challenged herself to wear only 6 items of clothing or less (with some exceptions) for a month. The idea fascinated me. I don’t think I could ever do it, especially not in winter as some days I wear six items of clothing all at once just to stay warm! But it did get me thinking about how many items of clothing do we really need??

What do you think??
Could you do what the lovely Trish did and survive on six items of clothing for a month?
How much clothing do you think you really need?
How many clothes do your kids need?
How do you get on top of the clothing clutter?
Leave me a comment and share your thoughts, or feel free to blog about it and leave a link in the comments so I can check out your post.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with others...

More »

Burning Question – How Many Clothes Do we Really Need? is a post from: picklebums.com