I was trying to remember today how long I have been here and now long the boards have existed ? My dd is 12.5 yo and I know I posted on here when I was having a miscarriage that I had before her...so I’ve been here at least 15 years maybe? Anyways- yes, those who have been around a long time have fewer questions. I post most often on the college board even though I still have a 7th grader. Most of the advice and support and just things I am interested in discussing pertain to my big kids. Plus so many people here no longer homeschooling or even with kids at home. But the chat board can get you an answer to just about anything. I post most often looking for suggestions or product reviews. There is very little you could post on the chat board and not have someone chime in with an opinion. It’s very effective as a research tool.

That’s great! It is awesome to have a frontrunner!

We haven’t had many issues. Our community has kind of just kept on keeping on in most ways. Places are just shutting down when the virus directly impacts them. So it is more of rolling shutdowns. So while most of everything is operating normally, on any given day, a particular business might be shut down. Like today there was an announcement that our vet is operating only for emergencies as they are dealing with virus amongst the staff. In two weeks they will be back to normal but a gym might be closed or a hair salon. And so on. Personally, it has been okay this way. Minor inconveniences but as a whole everything is operating. And if Great Clips is closed then Super Cuts is still open. We are playing whack-a-mole here as the virus moves through. Who knows what will be impacted on any given day but it is nothing like a shutdown.

I agree. I love the idea and personally I take better care of things when I have updated and/or decorated them. However, I think the other folks in my house won't give a flip about a pretty runner and then I will only be more annoyed that they are messing with my pretty table.

Our state flagship and the out of state university my middle ds attends both use this method so it must be fairly common. They drop out the elective courses and calculate their own weighted core GPA giving a half a point weight to honors classes and a whole point to AP and de. I didn’t used to worry about designating honors courses when my oldest started high school but they are penalized in this method if they aren’t called honors. While those colleges don’t look at the weighted GPA on the transcript, other schools take whatever the transcript has as GPA at face value. So if you are close to the cutoff point for a scholarship it could hurt not to have a weighted GPA. I was told that all colleges will unweight grades. Totally not true. It is hard to say “all” colleges do much of anything. In my region it seems that the more competitive schools do the unweight/reweight core GPA while the less selective regional schools take the weighted GPA at face value. My dc applied to both types. So while I was not into designating honors or using a weighted GPA when I started with my oldest I have changed my mind. If a course is honors level I mark it as such. I have a weighted and an uweighted GPA on the transcript. It’s all there and the colleges can do what they like with it. However, I really think the most important thing is doing quality work in high school and having test scores to back it up. Don’t make yourself crazy trying to be “what colleges want”. We got a lot of that kind of advice and it wasn’t really helpful. I know a lot of homeschoolers with 4.0 GPAs and all honors courses and extremely low ACTs. And homeschoolers with sub 4.0s and no honors courses (my first two kids) with good ACTs. My kids had more college choices than the kids with the low ACTs. All that to say, I think if you focus on four years of quality work in high school the rest kind of works itself out. When my dc came across a college that admissions rules didn’t seem favorable to them they just moved on to a school that would be a better fit.

We’ve had it done when they became dangerous and we were afraid they would fall. I believe we’ve paid between $500-$1000 per tree but $500 might be too low. We once had a tree fall during a storm. It cost us $350 twenty years ago just to have the tree that was already on the ground cut up and removed. Tree work is so expensive. And if it actually falls on your house the insurance will pay. But they aren’t going to pay to remove it before it falls. We have made some decisions over the years to leave them if we were confident no one would get hurt if they fell. We just couldn’t always afford to remove them unless they were threatening.

I remember the best housekeeper/most organized person I know saying something like this. We were waiting for another room that was about ten minutes late. This mom made the comment that she could have vacuumed in that ten minutes. That kind of blew my mind- that level of assigning a valuable task to such a small amount of time. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to think like that. Twenty years later I do think much more like that but at the time it made such an impression. I’m one to arrive places ten minutes early. Same mom pointed out to me how much I could be doing with that ten minutes before every trip. I hate being late and still add in extra time everywhere but I do see the cost of my early waiting time now.

So much dried beef on toast! Anyone else call it by it’s more “colorful” name?

I’ve been a little worried about no news regarding Christie.

Another one that seems so obvious but was not to me- keeping trash can liners (or plastic grocery bags or whatever you use) close at hand to the trash cans. Took me forever to start keeping a stash of bags in my bathroom. The trash can would be overflowing but by the time I left the bathroom and walked downstairs to get a bag I’d gotten distracted. Now I change it out when I see it and carry the trash out with me. Brilliant! 😂I remember changing out garbage at church or someplace years ago and finding a stash of replacement liners in the bottom of the can. Mind blown at the genius of that! 😂

This is great. When we moved into this house five years ago I knew the setup was going to make the dining room table a clutter magnet. I’ve always been pretty intentional about not having any entry way tables or convenient places to drop stuff on the way in. But there is no avoiding it in the current setup. You walk in my house and then to get into the kitchen or bathroom or bedrooms you must pass the dining room table. It’s a problem. It is just impossible to resist dropping stuff there and we don’t sit down to eat there so it doesnt even gets cleaned off daily. I have thought of flowers or a nice centerpiece or something. Now that I don’t have little kids or balls bouncing around the house that could work. Love the runner idea.

We got a dishwasher when I was like 10 yo. My mom was SO excited. But this is how we used the dishwasher: pile up dishes in the sink with food and whatever all over them until the sink was overflowing. Then it was a huge and gross chore to load them in the dishwasher. Then the dishwasher would run but would not be emptied until there was again an overflow of dishes in the sink. So it was a huge job to unload the dishwasher and load all the dishes and run it again. When I got married we had no dishwasher and I didn’t get one until I had three kids. I kept saying they didn’t save any work and were just a waste. When I finally got one and used it I realized that it really wasn’t hard. You put your dirty dishes in, ran it, and emptied it. Repeat. No sinkfull of dishes to load. Just took five minutes to unload and there was no chore of loading the dishwasher- it’s just where you put dishes when you are done. *lightbulb*

I am a challenged housekeeper. I try but I’m just not a natural and both dh and all were raised in very messy houses. I have always had a terrible time keeping up with the bathrooms. It just seemed such a gross and unmanageable job. About a year ago I switched from the heavy duty chemical cleaners to natural products. My motivation was that my dd was helping me with chores and I didn’t like her using the heavy chemicals and worrying about her mixing them, etc. This switch made all the difference and not because my dd was cleaning my bathrooms. It made it so easy to just wipe everything down quickly without worrying about getting bleach on my clothes/smelling like bleach/having bleach soaked rags to deal with. I can now do a 5 minute cleanup daily after I’ve gotten ready for the day versus how it used to be a major project that I would then need to shower after. I feel so goofy now that it used to be such an unmanageable thing. But now I can do a cleanup without worrying about bleaching my clothes or having to open the windows when it is 100 degrees out or whatever. I’m a smart lady. Don’t know why it took me 20 years to figure this out. Another one is keeping cleaning supplies in each bathroom. Again, why it took me so long to figure this out?? Keeping supplies in the laundry room that needed to be carried around to each room was apparently too big an obstacle for my housekeeping challenged self. But now when I walk by the hallway bathroom that I don’t use I remember to just pop in and wipe everything down once a day. Everything I need is there and it isn’t going to make me smell like bleach. And because I am keeping up with it, the grossness is minimal. So, it sounds silly but it took me a long time to figure it out. What simple tips have you found that make a big difference in your housekeeping success? It might be obvious to you but really help someone else!

My lunches were typically Little Debbie snacks and chips. But my mom did insist on some protein. She was very adamant about it. So she would put in those little packages of crackers with the fake cheese you spread with the little red stick. 😂

So funny how socially acceptable it was to make graham cracker frosting sandwiches for your kids a generation ago. And then you’d send them out to ride bikes unsupervised until dark.

My mom used to make a casserole that was ground beef mixed with cream of mushroom soup topped with cheddar cheese, chow mein noodles, and peanuts. What a weird retro recipe.

I think you'll love it. We stuck with it in the beginning even though it was new and we didn't know it was going to get good. LOL. It definitely held our interest enough to keep going. We like cringy humor so that is probably what got us through the first episodes when others were turned off. This is one of the few shows that actually makes we laugh out loud. We just started the final season last night. I forgot how good it is. I think we'll go back and watch them again when it is over and we don't usually do that with shows. So many great characters. The Rose family of course but the supporting characters too. Jocelyn and Twyla are great. Ronnie too!

Yes, my memory is fuzzy for sure but what I do remember was to the effect of anger that some mom did bring cupcakes. Something about having to celebrate the little snowflake that had a mom that insisted on bringing cupcakes? Not sure I just think the issue was the mom did not like someone bringing cupcakes or thinking their child was so special as to warrant cupcakes. ??

I can’t remember ever abandoning a cart though I will admit to just making sure it is secure in the corral and not necessarily making sure it is perfectly nested neatly in with the others. Our stores are not that busy and there is only ever a couple carts in there. I would feel differently if it was a problem. So I’m a bad person I am sure. My 17 yo grocery store cart boy sure thinks so. I would say diarrhea, vomiting, or creeper are good reasons. I don’t remember the kids being that big of a challenge even with a bunch of littles. I’m sure I just parked right next to it. Our stores aren’t that crowded. I will say Publix was a challenge. They only just recently put the corrals in mid parking lot. Previously they had a return area at the front of the parking lot and that was it. I think they assumed their workers were taking most of the groceries out to the car and bringing the cart back. But- I don’t like the baggers pushing my groceries out. I’m perfectly capable and it feels silly and forces me to make small talk I might not be in the mood for. So, first I have to fight off the bagger insisting on walking my cart out, then I have to walk the cart all the way back to the store. What a pain. I know they were striving for good customer service but I’d really rather do it myself. LOL. My kid who works in the store totally gets it because they deal with damage from loose carts a lot. But I doubt most young people would realize what a big problem it really is.

It started out as another dumb show my dh wanted to watch that I endured while I played on my phone but then got to where I was laughing out loud all the time. We haven’t watched the latest season yet and it’s been a while since we finished the rest so I can’t even remember when it started to turn good. Personally I just love Alexis. She should be so very annoying but I just think everything she says is hysterical.

It’s been awhile but I remember thinking it got way better.

Follow up to my area rug question as we outfit our basement to be a comfy space for kids/teens/young adults. I’m thinking of getting a nice bean bag or two for seating/sleeping. My 22 yo ds asked for one for Christmas when he was 10 yo. It has lasted and been well used and is still used regularly when 17 yo ds plays video games. Younger kids have slept on it. I cannot find a tag on it and have no memory of what brand it was but it has been worth every penny. We are fans of Shark Tank so we are looking at the one featured on there that holds a bed inside. CordaRoys? Anyone have a brand recommendation? What type of fabric cover for comfort/durability? I think my kids have preferred the bean bag to other couches/love seats/recliners we’ve had over the years and it has held up better.

I am so not a home decorator- We are trying to move from the phase in life where we aren’t just trying to keep our head above water but actually fix things up and invest in higher quality items that will enhance our enjoyment of our home and will last. We are finally renovating our basement bedroom/bathroom and hopefully making it a warm and comfortable place when adult kiddos return home for visits (or if they need to return here to live for any reason) That said, I am looking for a nice area rug to put down over a vinyl plank floor. I come from the Big Lots/Walmart school of shopping and I’m still always looking to be frugal. But- it would be nice to make this room as warm and comfy as possible. I’d be willing to spend a little extra for something that looks really nice/feels nice underfoot. Am I looking for a certain fiber? A certain pile height or thickness? Where should I be shopping? We have the big box stores but I am willing to order online. These questions seem so silly but moving past the stage of surviving on hand me downs to actually trying to invest in something you enjoy can be very confusing!

We love getting ours at Publix. The first year my dd was really reluctant and didn’t want the shot. The family behind us was telling her that she would then get $10 and could get whatever she wanted to with it. It was clearly how that family handled it but I really wasn’t planning on giving my kids their cards. LOL. I’m sure at that point I was planning on using them for needed groceries. But it would ease the pain of taking kids for shots to then give them the gift card to spend. 🙂 Ita a good deal!

Gosh that is sweet! Seeing these young folks through this pandemic has not been easy. They have all had setbacks. Probably easier on them because, while they do care about each other, at this point they are really just focused on themselves. But mama suffers all the disappointments for everyone! It was therapeutic to type out our good news. 🙂