Do you find that getting your children to help you clean around the house is more of a hassle than it’s worth? Here are a few ways that might help get them in the cleaning spirit. 

1. Give the kids an old pair of socks to wear as mitten dusters. Dampen the socks slightly and send the kids off. This is a great way to get baseboards clean!
2. Shorten the handle on a broom so it is child sized. It never hurts to have an extra hand while sweeping.
3. Better yet, buy a small vacuum that is easy to maneuver for the kids. My grandmother bought us a cordless, lightweight floor-and-carpet cleaner and my kids take turns vacuuming the wood floors while I do the carpets with the larger vacuum.
4. Set a timer and have the kids pick up for 5 minutes straight. Offer a treat as a reward for a job well done.
5. Try having the kids clean each other’s rooms. Sometimes it is more fun picking up someone else’s space rather than your own.
6. Most importantly, let go of perfection! When the kids are helping, you will not get the same end result as if you did it yourself. However, it is important that they learn how to do these things. If a towel is not folded to your liking and you feel the need to fix it, do it later when little eyes aren’t looking. Don’t make them feel the job was done wrong when they clearly tried their best.

 What are some creative ways you use to get your kids motivated to clean?

We can all give in little ways that make a huge difference. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want their children to be kind and generous people who grow up with a desire to make contributions. There is no question that the best way to teach kids is through role modeling. At Mabel’s Labels we wanted our work lives to reflect that value, so over a year ago we started a Community Relations Committee. We recently had a look at what we have accomplished and it left us with a decent case of the warm fuzzies.

The round up:

- Partnered with a camp for children who are burn victims;
- In celebration of International Women’s Day, donations were made to the young mothers at St. Martin’s Manor;
- Staff volunteered at an Eco-Festival to celebrate Earth Day;
- Gift wrapping – staff volunteered in the holiday season to raise money for local hospital;
- Food bank food drive – Mabel’s Labels had an interdepartmental competition;
- Product donation to group home for developmentally disabled adolescents;
- Portion of holiday product sales used to sponsor families through the holiday season;
- Countless gift certificates donated to charity organizations to use as door prize and silent auction items.

I’m pretty excited to be working with a bunch of folks who think this stuff is important – makes us feel even more like a team and has the added benefit of showing our children that involvement in the community matters.

So I’m happy with how that lesson is being taught through what I do at work, but I got to thinking about what we are doing at home and also feel pretty OK about our efforts:

- Each week the big kiddos donate a portion of their allowance towards a charity or cause;

- Our family sponsors a child in another country. The kiddos have learned to sacrifice some of their ‘wants’ so that we are able to support our sponsored child’s needs;

- The kiddos participate in community projects. Just recently we did a clean up day with daddy-o’s company and all kids, big and small, contributed. OK, so maybe the baby just sat in the stroller and “supervised”.

What do you do, either at work or home, that helps to spread the love? Let us know because we’re always looking for fun and fresh ideas on how we can help in little ways around here.

Fall is here in my part of the country and with it came the cooler weather. I thought this would be a good time to talk about storing seasonal clothes. For us, this week marks the time when I go through all the clothes and decide what stays, goes, or gets handed down.

Since I have two boys, the younger one always gets the hand-me-downs of the oldest. I store these clothes in large bins in the top of the closet. Normally these clothes get stored by size and season. For example, ‘Size 5 – Summer’, ‘Size 5 – Winter’. If there are not enough clothes to separate by season, I just put them all in one bin and label it ‘Size 5’. Of course, the key to using this system is the LABELS! Mabel’s Labels Custom Bin Labels are ideal for this since the text can be personalized to suit your unique requirements. Labeling the bins clearly means you won’t have to go rummaging through boxes every season to find what you are looking for

Besides labeling, the other key component to tackling the seasonal clothes is maintaining your system. Normally throughout the year when one of my children is wearing something that is obviously too small, it goes through the laundry and then I set it aside to go to the hand-me-down box. If it belonged to my daughter or youngest son and there is no one to hand it down to, it goes to the donate box.

Now that we are headed for colder weather, I am going through all of the summer clothes for the younger kids and donating all that will obviously be too small for next year. I save anything that is salvageable from my oldest son to hand down to his brother. I then hang the winter clothes and rotate all of the jeans and shorts.

This seasonal maintenance of rotating the clothes takes me about an hour each season and keeps things simple and organized.

Mabel’s Labels is thrilled to introduce you to our sensational new Label Out Loud™ line of full colour sticky labels.

Complementing our ever-popular Classic Sticky Labels, Label Out Loud Sticky Labels offer more choice than ever. With 20 fabulous design motifs, striking new colour combos and that famous Mabel’s Labels’ durability, it’s hard not to LOL!

As with all our labels, these are dishwasher/microwave-safe and UV resistant, making them fantastic for toys, water bottles, litterless lunch items and so much more. And thanks to their unbeatable quality, they will stay looking great. What a bright idea!

View all our brilliant new Label Out Loud Sticky Label colours and design motifs at mabel.ca and prepare to be dazzled!

Here is a sneak peek of just a few:

I’m not a fun person. Let me qualify that – I’m not fun in the traditional sense.

I don’t dress up for Hallowe’en and I have never met an April Fools Day prank that I didn’t think was stupid. When people send me funny jokes by e-mail, the joke gets deleted immediately and the sender receives a message requesting removal from the group list since I have no time for such nonsense. There is a long list of things that prove that I’m not a fun person.

So imagine the surprise my neighbours got this Hallowe’en when I was trick or treating with the kiddos while carrying the baby in the sling – they’d ask to have a peek at wee Finian so I’d pull down the sling to expose this:

OK, so maybe I’m not fun – just a little weird. But mamas can go a bit crazy on Hallowe’en too. This is my friend Astrid when she was expecting her daughter. I’m happy to report that baby Harper is much cuter than the alien shown here: