A Tip for Photographing or Scanning Your Child’s Art

One way to reduce the amount of artwork that you should save for your child is to photograph it or scan it. When you take a picture of that new masterpiece, make sure your child is often in the photo too.

Lane goes to a small class once a week, and when I pick her up she always has a new piece of artwork to bring home. I keep a camera in my purse, and I take a picture of her right there, when she is most excited to show me what she has made.

This way, even if we’re trailing cotton balls all the way to the car, I know I’ve already taken care of it.

Because even though I’ll ooh and ahh over the picture, what I really love is her.

Some pieces of art are scanned so that we can see the details. If something has a story to go with it, I write it for her along the edge of the page, so that we’ll remember it later. I write the date, too.

Special pictures are saved in a folder — a portfolio, as Renee from FIMBY calls it. I love that.

And we don’t save everything of course, just the ones we like the best.

Your Child’s Keepsakes, 30 Years Later

It’s a big question. What will you keep for your children as they grow older?

What toys and personal mementos are they going to want to remember and look through later? What will they treasure as adults?

I almost cried when I found my old, tiny dollhouse furniture. I didn’t know my mom had saved it. We placed it in Lane’s dollhouse to give to her for Christmas.

When it comes to saving toys and other keepsakes, there are three important considerations.

Three Questions

• How much was it loved?
• How big is it?
• How well will it keep?

In other words, will it store well and is it worth keeping?

One thing I know we will save is the wooden play food from Haba. It’s small, it gets played with all the time, and it will look exactly the same in thirty years. I want to have a few toys available for small guests to play with at our house, and then pass them on to grandchildren.

Passing it Down

Here’s a question from a Small Notebook reader:

How well I can relate to that dilemma! I’ve lived in an apartment my entire adult life, and I wasn’t ready to receive the big storage boxes of keepsakes my mom saved.

It’s “out of sight, out of mind” when it’s at your house, and most grown kids will be satisfied to leave their stuff at your house for as long as you’ll let them. Or maybe they want it, but not yet.

Either way, it’s delayed decisions.

It’s difficult to know what will hold sentimental value to another person, so the best thing to do is sort through it with their help. Just be careful to stay focused so that you don’t end up reminiscing and then putting it all back in the boxes when you’re done.

A couple of years ago I looked through those boxes with my mom, and together we were able to reduce how much stuff was being kept. I didn’t care about old trophies. I reduced a big storage bin of elementary school art papers down to one artwork album that I love to look at. A few other things weren’t looking so good, and the memories were better.

If you can’t work on it together in person, maybe you could do it over email. Send pictures of the item with the subject line, “Do you want this?”

Do your grown children still want the actual item, or the memory of it? Maybe you could find old pictures of them playing with beloved toys, to keep instead.

Don’t forget the golden rule of keeping sentimental things:

the fewer things you keep, the more special they are.

Get Clean with Shaklee Basic H2 – A Review

I like Shaklee Basic H2. It’s a non-toxic cleaning concentrate.

Note: This is not a sponsored review. I paid for this product with my own money, liked it, and thought you would too.

Why I like it:

• It’s super-concentrated, so it lasts a long time and doesn’t waste packaging. It makes 48 gallons of general purpose cleaner. According to the website, one 16 oz. bottle is the cleaning equivalent of 5,824 bottles of 26 oz. Windex!
• It’s fragrance-free. The concentrate has a faint scent, but I don’t notice it at all when I spray the diluted cleaner.
• It works. No more ring around the tub, and you don’t have to rinse either.
• It’s safe. This means I can put the baby in the bouncer seat next to me when I’m cleaning the bathroom, instead of leaving him by himself in another room.

It’s easy to mix up the concentrate with water into three spray bottles for different cleaning strength: glass, general purpose, and degreaser. Doug always reaches for the degreaser, because he thinks degreaser is manly.

I also like the bottle it comes in. My bottle fell behind the washing machine, stayed there upside down for a week, and it didn’t leak at all.

I use microfiber cloths with it, and a cost-effective place to find those is the automotive section at Wal-Mart, where they come in a package of 8 for $5. You’ll never use paper towels to clean a mirror again once you switch to using those.

But what about natural cleaning agents such as vinegar?

I do like using vinegar and baking soda to clean. For cleaning glass and mirrors I can use about 1/4 cup of vinegar to 2 cups water. But for tougher cleaning jobs, you often need to use a lot more for it to be effective. I don’t have a wholesale club membership to buy in bulk, and you’ve seen my back room — where would I put it?

A 16 oz bottle of Basic H2 concentrate is about $12, plus tax and shipping. You only need 2 drops of concentrate for a spray bottle of glass cleaner, or 1/4 teaspoon for general cleaning. You can mix up a 16 oz spray bottle of Basic H2 glass cleaner for about a penny.

Shaklee is sold through independent distributors, and I bought mine from Becky Rapinchuk. You can buy Basic H2 through her Shaklee website. She also blogs at Clean Mama.

Have you tried it? What cleaners do you use?

Good Reads – the Staying Warm Inside Edition

For the record, I am never wearing a Snuggie, no matter how cold it gets.

Just can’t do it.

My strategy is hot baths and hot tea instead. What’s your strategy?

Let’s read:

Our Journey Towards Saving 100% Down For Our First Home: Part 1 and Part 2 — from Money Saving Mom

Do-it-yourselfing — from New Urban Habitat

Simple Solutions for Everyday Issues — from Nesting Place

Grocery Shopping With Kids Tips — from New Nostalgia

9 Ways To Encourage Your Kids to Live Simply — from Simple Mom

If You Give a Girl New Cabinet Knobs… — from Remodeling This Life