Hurry Up!

Dear Goodjoan,

I have a child with an attention issue. Generally it's not a problem, I've learned to adapt to her 'speed' at various tasks, but one thing that still drives me slightly bonkers is that she will NOT GET IN THE CAR!  It's not that she doesn't want to go in the car, or go out, in fact she's usually very eager to go where we are going! She seems to think that she's moving pretty fast but she has to stop and look at every rock, every ant, some clouds, every dog hair stuck to the car upholstery, the interesting weave of the fabric on the car seat cover...you get the idea.  When I suggest she keep going, or look at that later, she gets mad and tells me she IS hurrying!  Normally, I leave plenty of time to get to the car, but some days, like when it's raining, or when we're late, I'd kinda like to move her along a bit faster without creating a scene that stops the whole procession in it's tracks! I know you have a child with ADD. How did you deal with things like this?

I found the ideal solution for this problem completely by accident! Many year ago, I had started a work at home type job and one of the company samples in my starter kit was a kid friendly stop watch. Before I could get it out of the box, my oldest, who was probably 2 at the time was interested in it. I explained what it did and he immediately wanted me to time him doing various things!  How fast could he run across the yard?  How long did it take him to count to 10? I saw the benefits of this right away and turned almost everything into a game. How fast could he run to the mailbox and back 5 times? (to tire him out!) How sloowly could he walk to that tree and back? (So I could sit down for a minute!) How quickly could he put away his toys? (he cleans!) How long could he go without talking? (do I need to explain this to anyone with a 2 year old?) How quickly could he put on his pajamas?  One time I even tried to see if I could time how long it took him to go to sleep but he insisted on popping up every 10 seconds to ask "How long has it been now?" but hey, you can't win them all!  Not everything was a manipulative way to speed him up, but when so many things were a fun game with the timer, I don't think he realized when I was using it as a way to hurry him on those pokey days!  I kept that stopwatch in my diaper bag for YEARS!  Get a stopwatch and ask your daughter how fast she can get in her carseat!  Then the next time, remind her of her 'score' and see if she can beat it!  Time yourself getting into the car and see if she can do it faster than you. When you get home and have time, let her use the stopwatch to time how long it takes that ant to crawl over that rock!  Or how long it takes her to read 3 books. Not everything has to be a race.

Remember, don't encourage her to move at a speed that is dangerous, just a little quicker. You want her in the car and not smacked into it because she ran so fast she couldn't stop! And you want her safely buckled, not racing so fast she doesn't get latched properly!  Time her going up stairs or uphill but not down! One is a game, the other is an emergency room co-pay!

Best of all, remember to try not to get too frustrated.  If you are really stressed out, use that timer to make yourself count to 10!  :)  My ADD kid was a handful, but is now the most creative person I know! He's outgrown much of his dilly dallying and now I can see how what used to be aggravating 'attention problems' has grown into a unique view of the world and a fantastic eye for art and design!  He sees light and dark, and motion and form in a way that I simply cannot!  When he talks to me about a picture he's drawing, he points out shading and colors that I didn't notice. I mean, I see them, but not the way he does. The other day he went on for probably 30 minutes in the car about the color saturation and shape of clouds. I had noticed the clouds. I thought they were pretty that day, quite fluffy and poofy.  I don't think I could think up 3 minutes of monologue describing them other than that, he had 30! 30 minutes, non stop, in classic ADD fashion, but the way he was describing the sky made me glad he was the kid that couldn't help but stop and stare at an interesting rock :) I saw a rock. I wonder what he saw?

Hot Georgia Summer Body Scrub

Dear GoodJoan,

My son just came back from scout camp and he's so ground in dirty that even after a shower, I can still see the dirt rings on him! Any advice for getting him clean again?

Certainly! Scout camp is fun but they sure do come back a special kind of filthy!  First, empty his trunk and haul it outside to sit open in the sunshine to air out.  Do not do like I did the first year and tell your scout to unpack his things and them assume that he did it.  6 months later I found a trunk half full of mostly clean laundry, topped with a bag of pool shoes that had been worn in the lake, loosely tied in a grocery bag and left there to fester.  There's not enough febreeze in the world for that!

Next, whip up a batch of this and have him use it in his next shower!

Hot Georgia Summer Body Scrub!

This body scrub feels COOL as it washes away so it's great for showering off after a long, hot day! It'll take off bug spray and sunscreen and that sweaty film that you can feel all over yourself when you've been out in the heat too long!

Ingredients:
1 box of baking soda
1 bottle of  body wash or liquid soap (use Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap for Extreme COOL!)
water (amount depends on your container)
a small plastic container with a wide mouth

1) Wash out your small container.  I used an empty gelati tub because it was handy.
2) Fill container about 3/4 full of baking soda.
3) In a separate cup, mix about a tablespoon or so of soap with warm water and mix gently. I used about a cup and a half in my example.  You want to thin out the soap considerably, but not make a frothy mess. For the example in the photo, I used Suave body wash in Sweet Pea and Violet scent. Dr Bronner's is organic if that is important to you.  If you don't want the ultimate tingly sensation, use a scent other than peppermint or tea tree) Any liquid soap would probably work, but I like really stinky ones, so the final product still has a good amount of scent.
4) Slowly pour the soap solution in the the baking soda. When the tub is full, put the lid on and roll it gently back and forth to wet all the powder.
5) Test consistency. If mix is too runny, add more baking soda. If it's too dry, add more of the soap solution.  Eventually, you should find that the baking soda will settle and extra water will rise to the top. I keep mixing and adding until I have the tub mostly full and about 1/4 inch of water remaining on top.  The end result should be a slurry you can easily scoop up in your hand but still has some grit.
6) Place container in shower and enjoy!

This stuff leaves my skin feeling so soft, I just love it. The baking soda exfoliates and the touch of soap cleanses.  A good scrub with this should have your scout Class A ready in no time!

WARNING- This scrub can make the bottom of your tub or shower slippery so be careful!!

Totally aside, my spinal cord injury left me with something called a 'neurologic itch' which is a fancy term for a spot on my body that itches almost constantly. The itching is caused by a glitch in my spinal cord sending the wrong signal, and not something actually on my skin. This scrub is gentle enough to use quite vigorously on that spot on my hip so that I feel like I'm really scratching it, but without damaging my skin like I've had happen with salt scrubs! Then the cool sensation helps calm the itch for a little while! 

The non-paper towel solution

My 3 basket, non-paper towel system.

Several months ago, I decided we had to stop using paper towels in my house.  Between myself, hubby, and all the kids, we were going through about a roll a week. I could go through a roll a day if I started cleaning mirrors and windows!  Rather than contribute to more trash, we needed to switch to a paperless system.  I pondered my options, which narrowed down to cut up old clothes into rags, or buy new cloth. The idea of buying new stuff to then use seemed frivolous, but hubby had a strong reaction to using old clothes.  I guess a childhood of cleaning windows with your dad's old underwear leaves a mark on a kid!  That meant I needed to buy something new, but buy individual cloths or buy fabric in bulk and cut and stitch it into smaller pieces.  OK, I realized as soon as it went through my head that the second idea would leave me with a giant bolt of fabric stashed in the house, uncut, unstitched, and making me feel guilty for A) not completing my project as planned and B) continuing to use paper towels until "I got around to that project."  So, buy individual cloths it was!  I decided on flat, birdseye cloth diapers.  Like most parents, we had a few hanging around from the kids diaper days and once they are no longer needed for spit rags, they do make great kitchen towels!  I found a place online and got 3 dozen for about $16 a dozen. ($1.33 each) They routinely run about $18-20 on ebay and most online cloth diaper stores.

Once the initial buying was done, I knew I had to come up with some sort of system to keep the towels contained and not lost in the chaos of my household. In the spirit of "A place for everything, and everything in its place" I organized a system of 3 small baskets.

One basket, holding the clean, folded towels, lives in a cabinet in the kitchen. One sits like a dirty clothes hamper near the trash can, to catch dirty towels. The last one sits atop my washing machine, to catch the stray towels that end up mixed in with other laundry as they come out of the dryer. When the dirty basket in the kitchen gets full, I carry it upstairs and wash the towels, usually with a load of socks and underwear to save time and water. I put the now empty hamper basket on the washer to become the 'orphan' basket, grab the basket of accumulated orphans and bring it back to the kitchen. I grab the few remaining clean towels from the clean basket, and drop them on top of the orphans and tuck that basket in the cabinet, and put the now empty clean basket on the floor to act as the hamper. In a few small moves, the cleans are refilled, the dirty hamper is empty, the orphan basket is empty, and the dirty one are washing. Simple!

I love our new system.  The towels are handy, more absorbent and while I may have needed several paper towels during the typical dinner prep, to wash a pan, wipe the counter, dry my hands, then clean up after dinner, I can use one cloth as an apron to protect my clothes, dry my hands and the assorted dish, then when I'm done cooking I pull it off, wipe the counters and clean the stove with the same towel! I can throw a folded towel on the counter as a trivet, I can use a dry folded one as a potholder. When there is a spill on the floor, I can grab one or two out of the dirty hamper and use those again!  I never run out!

Now, is it worth it? At my grocery store, name brand paper towels are $10 for a 8 pack, or $1.25/roll.  At a roll a week, we're using about $65 in paper towels every year. I do have to drive to buy them, using gas and putting miles on my car, but realistically, I'm going to the store anyway so that isn't much to affect the outcome. Of course, there is an opportunity cost to running out of paper towels and having to drain your bacon on your kids old homework papers!   3 dozen cloth diapers cost me $48, and the baskets were $1 each from Dollar General,  total of $51. That's already a $14 savings just in purchase price.  Granted, I do have to wash them, but I usually wash them in with other laundry so I'm not running the washer more, or using more soap than I might have.  It may use a little more water, but it's a front loader, so the difference there may be equal to the 'driving to buy the paper towels' spending on the other side. Also, consider that the cloth diapers will last more than a year.  Some estimates say a good quality cloth diaper can last 2-5 years depending on use and washing.  If I'm tearing them up and only get 2 years, I've saved $79. If they last a good long 5 years, I've saved $274!  Even using the bargain paper towels brand, which run $0.65/roll at my store, or $33.80/year, I would lose $17 the first year, but save $16.60 by year 2 and $118 by year 5. Not to mention what we've saved the planet by NOT putting 52 rolls of paper towels into the landfill this year!

What to do with used lingerie?

Dear GoodJoan,

Yay me for decluttering. I cleaned out a whole drawer in my dresser yesterday to make room for things that I really don't want hanging in my closet. I ended up clearing out a whole drawer of lingerie. I kept a few things, but found a lot of things that were maybe worn once or twice that either no longer fit or don't appeal to me. None of them were hugely expensive, but everything together filled up a paper grocery bag. Now, what to do with them? I don't know if Goodwill takes and resells used lingerie? I feel funny listing it on freecycle. What would you do?


Congratulations on the decluttering!  It's such a great feeling to free up space and lessen the chaos around us!  Now, on to your question.  I see a few possible things you can do with your bag of goodies.

The simplest is to just throw it all away.  It's a bag of old underwear, it's clutter, it's ok to throw it away.  I know that's hard to do though, especially when you feel like some things still have some use and some value, so if you cringed at that first suggestion, let's move on.

You can safely sell or donate bras, teddies and nightgowns and things like that, but not panties or anything worn as underwear.  It's a sanitary issue. In addition to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, consider a local women's shelter, or even a local 'dress for success' program!  If you think the tops could fetch a few dollars, and don't mine the work involved, post them on ebay.

You could offer the items to friends or family. If you know someone who's been losing weight, a new assortment of pretty panties in the right size might be a real blessing and they won't be as concerned about cooties as ebay.  All the same, you should wash the items and sanitize them with a disinfectant rinse, like Lysol, before passing them along.

For the non ebay friendly items, like already worn undies and socks, both clean and dirty, you can use an online classified site, but you'd be selling them as a fetish item at that point, which may or may not appeal to you.  If you'd like to go that way, Nina Koske at Brokelyn has already written a tutorial for getting started! It seems there's quite a bit of money to be made in that market!

Of course, you could go in a whole different direction and re-purpose the items into other things.  You could go the traditional route and use old cotton bottoms as dust rags, or in the garage.  Or you could go more creative!  Cut up the panties into squares and triangles and make a patchwork blanket.  Cut out strips and stitch into fabric flowers!  There's even a pattern for making an old bra into a purse!

How do you make iced tea?

It's no shock to anyone around me that I'm not southern. I wasn't born in the south. I wasn't raised in the south.  I came here when I was 20.  There are many thing about me that will always be particularly northern.  I talk fast, faster when I'm around my northern family.  I always have a clean and dry walkways and stairs after every snowstorm even when my only tools are a dustpan, some kitty litter and a box of salt from the kitchen, and I pronounce the word OIL as though there is a Y in the middle of it (vs the more southern pronunciation of 'ole.')  However, after spending more than half of my life here, I have adopted a few southern habits.  I say "Y'all" a lot.  It's so much nicer than the northern version "you guys" and I drink iced tea all year long. Not just iced tea, but sweet iced tea. And yes, there is a difference.

It didn't take long for the iced tea habit to start.  It's available everywhere here, is generally bottomless where some restaurants charge for refills of soda (oh, and I call it soda!) and it's nice on a hot day and let's face it, we have a lot of hot days!  In New England, if we wanted iced tea, our options were canned, powdered, or simply unsweetened hot tea left to cool. They are all pretty horrible. I had no idea how bad things were until I tasted the real thing! The tea here is sweet and cold and clear.  It seemed so simple, yet trying to recreate it at home never seemed to work.  Thankfully, I met and married a southern man, who came armed with the secret to making iced tea at home.  He taught me how to do it, probably so I'd stop asking him to make more.  Once I had the knowledge, I became the person in charge of making the tea at my family functions, partly because the tea is good, partly because my cooking is that bad! Now I'm at a place in my life where I feel this knowledge needs to be shared not just with the world, but with my children!  Kids, the next time you ask me to make more tea, I'm emailing you a link to this page.  All this stuff is in the kitchen!

It's simple really.  You'll need a gallon pitcher, some tea bags, some sugar, a measuring cup, and a way to heat water.

How do you get a kid to take icky medicine?

While not an official reader question, I discussed this today with the nurse practitioner at a local walk in clinic while she was trying to prescribe medicine to my sick kid, (we'll call her "Princess," she's 10) She's asthmatic and now has pneumonia. The NP was trying to decide what to give her and Princess was critiquing her medicine choices. "Is that a big pill? I don't like big pills...Is that a liquid? Does it taste gross? I hate gross liquids" While I encourage the kids to play an active part in their medical care, since they need to be willing participants, especially with medicine, this was getting crazy. Because I knew there were 7 other people on the waiting list and this nurse hadn't had lunch yet, I suggested we just go with the traditional zithromax and prednisone. I suggested orapred, which isn't so bad, but Princess said no liquid steroids. (one course of prelone in one's lifetime will make anyone scared of liquid steroids. I'm 42 and I can still taste the horrific liquid my mom gave me when I was about 7!) I told the NP to just rx the tablets and I'd 'fix them' so she'd take them. Princess was happy with that. The NPs ears pricked up and she wanted to know my secret for making prednisone tolerable!

Over the years, I've been told various 'secret tricks' from doctors and pharmacists. One said to give the kids a spoonful of jelly before the medicine, one claimed the liquid from a jar of maraschino cherries before and after the medicine would block the taste, peanut butter, chocolate syrup, pancake syrup, soda, I think I've heard them all. I've also tried them all. Heck, one year I gave my oldest kid $1 for every dose of prelone he didn't throw up on me! The closest we've come to really masking the taste is chocolate. Letting the kids suck on a chocolate kiss before and after the medicine helped a little, but a few years ago, I took it to the next level. Chocolate coating!

This is awesome for prednisone, but also works with other chalky tablets like penicillin. It makes them more slippery to swallow and keeps the nastiness hidden from the taste buds just long enough to get it down. More after the jump, including pictures! Please ignore my dinner dishes waiting to be washed!

A holiday gift that keeps giving!

I've been seeing many posts and emails lately about ways to do holiday shopping that is less 'big box' and more personal and local. It's got me thinking about what we do for the holidays.  One of the things we like to do is grab an angel or two off the angel tree either at a local store, or one of the kids schools. A few charities ask for gifts for kids in need in the area and we like to be able to pick out a new outfit, some warm clothes and pajamas and a few toys for a child that may not receive much else. The kids are reminded of the importance of service and giving, and to be completely honest, I love shopping for stuff I think is cute but gets eyerolls from my kids!  (What's wrong with floral prints?!) Even though I will never meet those kids, it feels good knowing that this winter, they'll go to bed warm and wait for the school bus with a sweater on.

In the spirit of helping other this year, I'd like to ask that you all take a moment and think about registering as a bone marrow donor.  There are so many people that would like to go to bed not just warm but healthy this year.  Donating marrow is a little more involved than just donating blood, but still only takes a few hours out of your day.  It's a few hours that could save a life.  What a great gift that would be!

DKMS is a registration organization that will send you a free kit and allow you to register for FREE.   All you have to do is swab your cheek and return the sample in their envelope.  They send you back a card with a member ID and they'll contact you if you are a possible match.  There is no obligation to donate even if you do come up as a match.  Please use the widget below, it'll take you right to the website where you can sign up and ask for the free kit.



(disclaimer-I get nothing for this, no compensation, just a widget with a counter.  I am a registered donor with DKMS, but that's all!)