My Pick for a Laminator

I spent this morning working on some things to keep my Preschooler busy during school time with the older ones. Pinterest, of course, being one of the tools I used today but once I had some things printed out I got our one of my favorite tools...my laminator. I don't know why I love to laminate things but I could just go around the house laminating things if I thought I could get away with it. It seems that every time I read someone's blog about their recommendations for a laminator they always mention the Scotch brand laminator which uses certain size pouches depending on your project. I personally don't want to buy different pouches as I never know what size I might be laminating. A friend introduced me to the Zyron laminator many years ago. This laminator is such a basic machine and so very easy to use that my children all love to help me laminate things. There is no heat involved with it so I don't have to worry about anyone getting burned. The one pictured below is a newer version than what I have but it works the same. You can buy these new or used on Amazon for as low as $8.49. Even if you don't homeschool, having a laminator on hand can be so useful.

In case you have some young ones at home and would like some busy time activities below are some links to some ideas for you. If you have a laminator, have a fun time laminating them to make them last.

 

Little Minds at Work..http://littlemindsatwork.blogspot.ca/2015/08/explore-tubs-freebies.html

Tot School...http://www.totschooling.net/2015/12/cookies-number-matching-printable.html

Math Geek Mama....http://mathgeekmama.com/free-skittles-pattern-cards-printable/

 

Of course there are tons of other freebies on Pinterest that you can print out and laminate for you kiddos. If you have older children in school maybe you want to laminate chore charts, school schedules, or enrichment activities for after school to help keep them off of screen time.

A follow-up to my declutter post

Even an old dog can relearn old tricks...I do love to declutter and get rid of things. But I am relearning that sometimes we(I) can get out of balance. Take my children's toys, for example. When my older four children were little we had the big toy box with all kinds of toys in it. But as we had more children I was inspired by what a friend of mine does. When our children went over there to play out would come one toy bucket at a time with one type of thing in it, such as legos, farm/tractor type toys, duplos etc. I just loved the idea of purging our assortment of toys and organizing things in to types of buckets. We currently have a different bucket for food, legos, duplos, farm animals/tractors, cars, KNEX, Playmobile, Lincoln Logs and wooden train tracks/trains. I do really like that way of storing their toys BUT....

Here is where the old dog relearned an old trick....we recently went to another friends home for dinner and fellowship. While we were there the boys had the best time playing with an assortment of different toys. Now some of that may have been that to them they were "new" toys but it got me to thinking about what my boys do when they play here at home and I realized that although I do love the way we have our toys separated and stored, I don't really have many toys to keep a 23 month old and a 3 year old interested for long. The toys that we have are more suited for children a bit older who are ready to sit for extended periods of time building towns, farms or trains. So I am seeing that I need to rethink our toy situation with our little boys in mind and with the thought that little "Audie" as we call B#9 will soon be in the same stage the boys are in.

I guess for me the lesson is that there needs to be a balance to everything we do. Organizing is great but there are also seasons in life where it is okay to have an assortment of toys for the children for those many times when mom needs to get things done.

Clearing out the clutter

A recent post on one of the blogs that I read on a regular basis(http://www.raisinghomemakers.com/) talked about cleaning out the clutter. Darlene from http://www.time-warp-wife.blogspot.com (thanks Aunty M for this blog) is a contributing writer on that blog and she suggests seeing how much you can clear out in ten minutes. I like that idea but thought I would tell ya'll about something we have done in the past. I challenged everyone in our family to get rid of 10 things. At that time there were 10 people in our family so that would add up to a whopping 100 items leaving our house. I "helped" the little ones who were too little to know any difference, oh and DH too. Amazingly we did manage to do it but there still seemed to be too much stuff in our house. But I didn't just throw out the challenge and expect them to all willingly comply so we threw out that if we all got rid of 10 things each we would go for ice cream at our local ice cream shop. That helped:)



I think it is amazing how much stuff we all have and what a pack-rat mentality creeps in. I personally keep a brown paper bag in my laundry room and regulary add stuff for my next Goodwill donation.



Give it a try in your family and see how many things you can declutter from your life.