This Is Us

  I was surprised to find out that most of the people I talked to only clean their dryer filter out every once in awhile. 😱 Did you know that every year over 3,000 house fires in the United States are caused because the lint filter was not cleaned out? It only takes a few seconds to do, and should be done either before or after each load. Ever since I can remember I have cleaned it out AFTER each load. That way when I’m all done with the laundry for the day it’s all clean for the next time. So please, get in the habit of cleaning the lint screen/filter!

Growing up my mom used Tide Laundry Detergent and Downy fabric softener. It never bothered me and I have never had a problem with sensitive skin. When I married Nicolas, I found out that he could only use a certain detergent. So for a good portion of our marriage we used Fab. It’s was hard to find. We could only find it at one store. So we switched to All Free and Clear about 9 years ago. We haven’t tried other detergents to test the kid’s skin, because we didn’t want to risk Nicolas’ skin getting itchy and dry. When my mom has washed the kid’s clothes before they complained about their skin itching. So... All of our kids have sensitive skin too. Here is what we use. Our main detergent is All Free and Clear. We usually buy it at Costco, but sometimes we will buy it somewhere else with a coupon. We also stock up on it when it’s on sale. I don’t think I’ve bought it for at least a year. Yeah, when I say stock up I mean it. Lol! We can only use Snuggle brand fabric softener. Snuggle brand...

  I really hate things being messy and chaotic. It’s hard to find things and it makes me uneasy. One thing I really like is an organized pantry. It easy to find things. It’s easier to see what you have and what you need more of. Plus it looks nice. It took us a little while, because I’m picky about my baskets and I don’t want to spend a lot of money. So we would buy them here and there as we would find them. It’s not quite finished, but it’s almost there! Here is what we have done so far... We just need a couple more baskets and then it will be finished. We are also going to build some shelves on the inside of the door for smaller items and to make it easier access to stuff we use everyday.

  It’s a weird feeling to have as many masks for our kids, as they do underwear... These are our kid’s masks drying on top of the dryer.  I didn’t want any masks to get misplaced, or the clean ones getting mixed with the dirty ones (they are wearing a clean mask every day). So I bought a basket from  Target  for the laundry room so they can put their dirty masks in. I also bought hooks from  Target  to put in their rooms to hang up their clean masks. This year has been challenging, hard, different, exciting, and scary; but I’m grateful to Heavenly Father and Jesus for helping us through whatever comes our way and for blessing my life with a wonderful husband and kids! I don’t know what I’d do without them!

I hated how we were storing our spices. It felt so disorganized and chaotic with them all being different sizes and shapes. So  I decided to change that. I bought glass jars from a .99 and more store by our house. We bought labels and wrote the name of the spices on them. We bought the baskets from Family Dollar. Nick installed a shelf in the cabinet above the stove. It’s so nice. I can pull the baskets out... it’s all organized and the same. I love it. The little baskets have the food coloring and flavoring (vanilla, almond, etc.) in them. It’s nice because we can buy our spices in bulk or grow them and dry them ourselves (from our little urban farm!).

  I can’t even remember what year we bought our trailer, but it was like 2015 or 2016... Maybe even 2017. Haha! Anyway, we bought it for $500. Yep! That’s it. It is a 1978 camper, and boy can you tell! It’s 70’s green everywhere! But hey, it’s okay! It’s a great trailer and we’ve used it a lot. We haven’t changed anything in it, until this year. We bought outdoor fabric for the cushions and curtains. Two different, but matching, styles for the cushions and a different style, but again matching, for the curtains. Then we bought the peel-n-stick flooring. We also changed out the lights for LED ones. I sewed the new covers to be like pillow cases, so I didn’t have to worry about zippers. We bought the sticky Velcro to hold the opening shut. Although because I was in a hurry, I didn’t buy the fabric kind, and it does NOT work very well. I am going to find the fabric kind! We bought the fabric from JoAnn’s. It was on sale for 60-70% off, which is really nice! Outdoor fabric is expensive...

We had Xander's birthday party at Melissa's parent's house. So the Friday before the party Melissa and the kids went over to get the house clean. Melissa decided to clean the walls, and then the kids saw how much fun she was having, that they decided they needed to help too. They actually made a bigger mess, by spilling the soapy water all over the place, but they sure had fun doing it. Here are some really cute pictures: