Life Hacks

Looking Forward to Getting Older.

November 19, 2014 by Merry 1 Comment

In the last month I’ve discovered that the pain I have been struggling to overcome in my neck and shoulder for more than 15 years is in fact arthritis. An ultrasound and x-ray confirmed that my shoulder joint, collarbone and top of my spine are struggling to cope with the toll that ordinary movement has taken on them and I’m facing the prospect of the remainder of my life being about pain management of both bone and the muscles around that area rather than finding a fix.

I’m 40 and even though rationally I know that I’ve had this since I was 25 or so, I feel old and frightened by this breakdown in my body and its ability to care for itself. All those years of thinking I had time to get fitter, lose weight and improve health and diet have caught up with me in a huge wave of horror. 6 babies, a sedentary life and poor posture have combined to mean I’m now looking at discomfort long term and presumably eventually a life that has severely restricted movement.

I won’t lie, I find this desperately frightening.

I still feel like I’m waiting for my life to start. Having brought up the girls and with 15 years before Bene is an adult, there is still so much that I want to achieve and do and much of it depends on being able to walk moors, use my hands and sit or stand comfortably. I want to run and I want to stand straight and try new things. I don’t feel as if 40 should be the start of getting old. I don’t want to be toning down my new experiences and I’m realising that in order to make sure my body is up to it, I need to make some plans and give the future some thought.

It’s not that long since 40 really was the time when people settled back and waited for old age. That is no longer the case but if it is the time when our body might start to fail, or need extra care in order to make 50, 60 and 70 joyful, then so be it.

This is my guide to planning now for being older. This is my plan. It may be a little tongue in cheek 😉 (Because otherwise I may cry).

Decide on some hobbies that you’d like to see you through to old age and start hoarding. If you knit or crochet, start stashing yarn now just in case it turns out your pension won’t support an expensive yarn habit later in life. As the kids leave home, replace the contents of toy boxes with hobby materials and lie profusely if your partner calls you out on it.
Start accumulating stories of all the dreadful things your kids did, in written form, to tell your grandchildren. For one thing the book will be legendary, for a second it will mean you don’t forget them and thirdly (painfully) they can never be lost for good.
Move to your forever home with an eye to the room you’d like to be in on a regular basis. Make sure that whatever it has to be now, you’ve decorated or renovated it in preparation for the day it becomes YOURS to read in/knit in/or do OAP yoga in. It will save time later.
Hoard books on a Kindle that you love. Paper books are all very well but when you need to go back to your library on a Kindle, you can increase the text size without having to physically acknowledge the change in your eyesight by getting a large print book out.
Start saving for a stairlift. We all want to pretend we won’t need one but an awful lot of people do. I have happy memories of whizzing up and down the one fitted in a huge house with a sweeping staircase I visited as a child. If possible, also buy a house with a sweeping stairlift. And let your grandchildren play on it. They’ll love it and you’ll be the best nana ever.
Remember you can use the stairlift to knit on, read on and have a second ‘me’ room upstairs, ideal if you do a better than average job of hoarding yarn. And at £7.26 a year to run once it has been fitted, the stairlift running costs are significantly less than needing a storage container in the garden for craft supplies.
Learn to bake, if you haven’t already. To be honest, if there can’t be cake, I’m not sure getting old is worth it.
More seriously, make some small changes now. If you are already getting aches and pains, see someone and learn the ways of taking care of your body that will minimise later problems. I want to still be able to walk Dartmoor and go running in 10-15 years time and more but I now know that won’t happen unless I get some physio support and make sure I stay fit and able now so I can still do those things later.

The truth is, our lifestyles are changing how our bodies work and arthritis affects over 8,000,000 people in this country, mostly women. Take a moment to read this infographic and consider making some changes and planing ahead for how later life might affect you.

This post is in conjunction with Stannah.

Life Hacks: How to get your kids to tidy the house.

November 7, 2014 by Merry 5 Comments

A year or two back we instigated the Friday Tidy in our house, an initiative which has largely taught our kids how to do a basic house clean and tidy on their own and know if it is a job well done. It does keep on top of the worst of the grim and mess and in my opinion, these skills of dusting, vacuuming, washing down a bathroom and noticing the grime are all ones they are going to need at some point. They had a pleasant few years of life in a house that had a cleaner and I felt they needed to understand about dirt and how it moved through the universe.

Plus… 7 people cause an awful lot of dirt and item displacement and I have far too much of an attention deficit disorder to clean and tidy constantly for the 32 years of active parenting assigned to me.

Someone else needs to do it. We don’t have a big house and there are plenty of us; expecting everyone to clean and tidy one room a week is hardly arduous.

Here is my hit list of how to get kids to tidy up and clean a house.

Do it alongside them. Disappointing as it is, they are not capable of tidying up or cleaning without a lot of guidance. The Friday Tidy works largely because we all muck in together. I have to tidy my room too, which is often the worst of the lot because it is a dumping ground for stuff all week.
Show and tell. If they are old enough to polish, they are old enough to polish properly. I do check they’ve done their jobs and get them to redo them if they’ve not done them right. They all think I won’t notice if clean around items without moving them. I do. I think it is useful for them to be regularly reminded I notice everything 😉
Have a bin in every room. Simple as it sounds, doing this changed our life. Modern life makes so much rubbish and if there is nowhere instant to put it, they will just drop it where they stand. And then teach them that once a week those bins need emptying. They’ll thank you for it later.
Own an easy to manage vacuum cleaner. We swapped our upright version for a flexible pipe one a year or two ago. We have a 3 storey house and lots of stairs and they couldn’t use it. Then teach them how to methodically vac a room, with special attention to the edge attachment, which works better than repeatedly bashing the skirting board in a fruitless but hopeful attempt with the standard one.
Be fair and consistent. Share out the jobs fairly but appropriately and make sure everyone can do their one well and for a few weeks before they swap. Little people can swiff cobwebs and big people can clean a bathroom. Do the tidy every week and don’t let standards slip. They don’t have to be high standards necessarily, just keep it going so everyone takes responsibility for keeping it nice and has some pride in the results.
Have the toolkit. One of mine does a great bathroom clean. I make sure we have cloths and cleaner available so she can do a good job quickly. And I do the loos, because frankly I’m the adult and there is only so far domestic servitude should go.
A place for everything. I’d be lying if i pretended that our house was a decluttered haven because it really isn’t. But I do find that a weekly basic tidy that puts away everything lying about helps to stop huge clutter spots building up. I also try to get them to *think* about where stuff might go, rather than constantly asking me or bunging stuff in the first available hole.
Consequences. In general out weekly speed clean of the house goes pretty well. Bedrooms, however, are another matter. I have no problem with games being out while they are current but I do have a problem with heaps of abandoned stuff. I ask nicely, then I ask less nicely. That night I go in and heap remaining offensive tat up in the middle of the room. If that fails, I go in with a bin bag.
Benefits. I happen to think that a family is a community and should all work together keeping the environment it exists in tidy. One of the upsides of working together on it and being quick and efficient at it is that we get more time together. When the house is done we go out for a family walk or have a sit down meal together or watch a film or play a game. The biggest benefit, the reason I care, is that it just makes us all happier and saves time when we aren’t battling crud.
Rewards. I don’t pay my kids to do housework for the reasons above but that does leave me with the moneys worth of time it would take me to do the whole house to dish out in pocket money. So I pay my kids for reading books each month. That seems fair, I think.

So what about you? Do your children share housework with you? Is it a good or bad thing? What are your top tips?

15 Practical Skills to Learn Before Leaving Home.

October 6, 2014 by Merry 1 Comment

The other week I wrote about preparing our kids for leaving home, having the emotional maturity to deal with being responsible for themselves and their actions and shaping themselves into a person who makes sensible choices and knows their path – or at least knows a way to point while they work out what path to be on. I loved Sally’s post on all the ‘other’ stuff a child needs to learn and our responsibilities to help them achieve those. But in my post I glossed over the practical elements of life outside the family nest in one quick point and an interesting twitter chat developed last week about things you really do need to know before setting off into the big wide world. Things that, until recently, didn’t feature in the school curriculum at all and probably still are learned by costly mistakes as much as by experience.

So what would it be really great to know how to do before you packed up and headed for the hills (or uni halls) of the big wide world?

How to cook. If you’ve been part of a medium or large family, cooking for one – and on a budget at that – is going to be a surprise. Invest time in teaching your teens to bake a potato, boil pasta, make bubble n’squeak and follow a recipe. Being able to create a balanced menu, incorporate food groups and vegetable and all the vitamins they need is a bonus. Luckily, there is a website for this 🙂
How to go shopping. I don’t do the food shopping in our house and even basic staple food prices catch me out. Learning to shop with someone wise, who looks for deals and special offers is useful, as is knowing not to buy the 3 for 2 if you’ll only eat 1 and the other 2 will go to waste.
How to make lists. Helping a child to recognise their personal organisational style (with its strengths and failings) is a skill that will stand them in good stead. Whether they use it for their shopping, uni work or paying bills on time, making sure they know a method that suits them, will really help.
How to budget and pay bills. Knowing how not to blow everything on payday, learning to put aside enough for all the bills and an emergency fund and planning out how to make wages or student loans last the time they need to is tricky. Perhaps the most important lesson is knowing how to solve a financial problem before it escalates. Talk through balancing bills in order of most critical for tight months, how to approach a bank for help, what debt management options are available and the implications and how to analyse the real cost of a loan or credit card. In particular, make sure they truly understand the reality of payday loans.
How to use Microsoft Office. (Or similar). Learning to use the main programmes within an Office-type suite is useful for life as well as how employable they are. Just for the budgeting alone, being able to make Excel sing is hugely helpful. Find an online course or make sure they’ve had access to them as kids, via a student licence if possible (to save you money).
How to clean their house. Our kids are messy but they do know how clean a bathroom, vacuum a room, throw out the rubbish & polish a table and what to use to do so. They also know the danger of obsessive disinfecting and the benefits of healthy dirt. Getting them to do it all is more of a challenge.
How to use white goods. Washing machines are terrifying 🙄 . Knowing the hard reality of washing a delicate top on an ordinary cycle, a wool jumper on hot and a white shirt with a red flannel is no bad thing. Being able to fix the problems that can be fixed (or make something with the felted jumper!) with appropriate products is handy. Understanding the care symbols on a clothing label is helpful. Being able to iron won’t do them any harm.
Basic mending skills. The days of being able to darn a sock heel are probably over but knowing how to mend a seam so it stays strong, sew a button back on, have a mending kit somewhere handy and thread a sewing machine if you have one are all good skills to have.
Basic car maintenance. Know how to de-ice a car, check and top up the oil, check tyre pressure and treads, refill windscreen wiper washers and fill a car with the RIGHT fuel (and know the implications of the wrong one being put in). Know what warning lights can’t be ignored at all, how to tax and MOT a car and when not to risk driving.
Learn to use a map. Google Maps is all very well but it doesn’t work on a walk across a moor with no network coverage or a drive across parts of Scotland. Being able to use a map properly, with a compass, might even save your life.
Talk on the phone. Learning to have adult, professional conversations on the phone with hospitals, doctors, or banks can be really daunting. Building up to that by taking small steps in late childhood is good practice.
Be savvy online and in the real world. Teach them to question the settings on their phone and keep up to date with online good practice. Learn good safety habits for being out and about alone and know the value of being realistic but sensible.
Plan a trip. Whether it is learning to read a train timetable and getting to London and back safely or plan an excursion to Australia, knowing how to plan a trip is great practice for taking responsibility for yourself. Managing connecting transport, keeping control of luggage and dealing with unexpected issues is tricky and part of life. Starting small and early helps build confidence for teen and parent.
Change a light bulb and a plug. There is a time and a place for messing with electricity and both of those are one where you can and should. Make sure they know basic safety for dealing with electric appliances and when not to try.
First Aid. Make them do a course. No further words needed. You just never know when they might need it.

And last of all, one of the greatest skills you can learn is knowing when to ask for help. Whether it is time to call Dad because the driver is drunk, or time to call Mum because you just tried to move a bookcase on your own and it fell on your face or when you are suddenly not sure if the car is safe to drive or maybe you can smell something funny near the boiler, knowing when to say “I just don’t know, I need someone to help me” is vital. Maybe the greatest gift you can give a child, as you try to build their independence and confidence is to give them the strength to put their hand up and say “I’m out of my depth; help me.” It might be a professional need for help, or it might be that they feel sad and alone and know that’s not good for them, but making sure they can say those words is a great gift.

What skills do you think a parent should make sure a child has before they leave home? This linky is jointly hosted with NotSupermum following a Twitter chat. Why not write a post and link up 🙂

Life Hacks: Tips for leaving the house with children.

September 8, 2014 by Merry 15 Comments

In my early years of parenting I avoided one of the major sources of parent/child stress by home educating, thereby upping the quantity of pyjamas and sofa time in our house considerably. After a brief – and almost wholly miserable – stint at trying to get out to take people to playgroup, I concluded that it had no overall benefit to my day since I required 2 hours rest, much tea and a large supply of biscuits to recover from the experience, by which time I needed to go and collect them and deal with the inevitable exhausted, hungry and over-excited children they returned to me.

The trauma over the years of trying to get out of the house to Tumbletots, Ballet, Gymnastics, Brownies, Taekwondo should have improved things but it is a matter of legend that no one ever knew where their ballet shoes were when it was time to leave the house (I often did, under the bed being a safe bet) and clean kit, leotards or rugby boots that fitted and had the right number of studs were generally pretty hard to find. My children have a high regard for my ability to read their wardrobe requirements from the inside of a smelly gym bag that is lurking in the garage.

By the time everyone decided to go to school they were, thankfully, much older and ought therefore to have acquired some skills of their very own at this chore . It’s been an education to discover quite how hard it is – at 9.30pm the night before school restarted this week, the collateral damage was a missing blazer, a missing tie, a shirt that “has always been too itchy mummy!” and trousers that turn out not to match the school uniform requirements after all.

Approx 1/10000 of the stuff required to leave the house each day. No wonder I'm grey. — Approx 1/10000 of the stuff required to leave the house each day. No wonder I’m grey.

I believe they all left with pencils for school. It’s possible they all had shoes. 😆 🙄

So here are my tips.

Have one to three less children than you think you can muster out of the door. They are all twice as much work as you expected anyway so it reduces the hit to something like a doable event.
Lie. Under no circumstances let them know the real last minute that you can leave to get somewhere safely. Leave a buffer of at least 15 minutes; ideally, have all the clocks in the house set fast too.
Have a bag for EVERYTHING. Ballet bag, gym bag, school bag… you will, depending on the number of children, drown in bags but there is at least a small chance of finding stuff you need. If they use something for 2 different events, have two of them, one for each bag. If you can train the children to put stuff back in them after using you are a) a better person than me and b) on to a winner and (c), you might be living in Stepford, but that’s not my problem).
Don’t rely on your other half for anything. They don’t remember what you tell them, recall details like who does tap dancing when, or realise that shoes with metal bits on are required for the aforementioned activity. Have a very accurately annotated calender (with fake leaving times) by the door.
Tell your children – and follow it through – that if they don’t know where their stuff is at leaving time, they have to leave anyway and dance in bare feet/not hand in homework/do taekwondo in their ordinary clothes. This works pretty well for school or anything that involves potential detentions. And it’s a good life lesson anyway. Suck it up.
Don’t need a lie in. Ever.
Don’t go away ever and leave any form of school or activities run to them or their dad. Any system you have created will breakdown irretrievably. There will not be a ballet shoe left in the house by the time you come back.
Don’t tidy up. Obviously there is a critical mass involved here but if you make them put away their blazer, school bag or glasses every night, you greatly up the chances of them randomly stashing it somewhere they can’t remember tomorrow. It’s painful but the newel post and a pile of shoes at the bottom of the stairs is the only way.
There used to be a lot of shouting in the car on the way to school when I was a kid. I don’t shout (much). I sit in stony, furious silence for about 5 minutes and then attempt to do a disconcerting switch to cheerful afterwards. Apparently far scarier and keeps them on their toes 😉
Establish a wishlist pad. If something is too small, broken, missing or wrong, they can write a request for a new one on the pad. Since 98.3%* of all late leaving scenarios are caused by “stuff”, this allows you to only take responsibility for it if you have written proof of a request for replacement. Also, make them buy things they lose. It’s amazing how quickly they learn to take more care of their stuff.

On the plus side, years of nagging, shrieking and enforcing an element of taking responsibility for themselves has genuinely paid off; these days the girls are really pretty good at getting out of the house on time. Which makes it all the more embarrassing that it is often me charging about looking for my keys, purse and shoes….

What are your tips for leaving the house on time and with all the required stuff? Real or ridiculous accepted in equal measure 😉

*May not have been accurately researched.