WFMW- Solutions for small bedrooms

AKA How To CRAM Fit More Children In One Bedroom

Twin size bunk beds are great for saving space, but they are overkill, size wise, for young children. The size of the bed verses the size of the young child just doesn't make good space saving sense. That is why my wonderful, handy hubby and I came up with our junior bunk bed version (JBB).

To gain some perspective first, a typical bunk bed is approx. 84 inches in length, 44 inches in width and 64 inches high. Our JBB is approx. 64 inches in length, 35 inches wide and 55 inches high. A major space saver! This size allows it to fit on many smaller walls that the normal size bunk beds could not. We have found that this size bed works for a child up to about 8 years old (if your children are on the shorter side, it might work longer). Be sure to click on the pictures to enlarge them.

How we came to deciding on this specific size: I had NO IDEA what size to make this bed, but after a little thinking decided that if each mattress was just slightly smaller than half of a queen size mattress, I would be able to buy queen size sheets and cut them in half to use on this bed. That would save me time making custom sized sheets for the bed. Same for blankets, quilts, etc. Just cut them in half and sew up the cut edge. We found a mattress business in the Yellow Pages that makes custom sized mattress. We shopped around for the best price on high density foam, that had a "ticking" (fabric enclosed like a normal mattress). Most places will just cut the foam your size, but don't do this nice finishing touch to make it look nice and protect the foam. I believe the mattresses cost about $75 each, which was a little spendy, but these mattresses will last 20 years or longer!

Our JBB is also a little lower to the ground than a standard bunk bed, so it works well for little ones learning to sleep in a "big kid" bed. We use a bed rail (fits just fine with this size) when a young child, usually around 2 years old, first starts sleeping on the bottom bunk.

All in all this has been an awesome solution that really works for our family! Right now our JBB is in the "girls" room, that has a standard size bunk along with the JBB. Our four oldest girls are in this room (ages 8,6,5,3). There is not enough space in this room (or any of our bedrooms except the master) for two standard size bunk beds. We could use single level twins, but that would take up all the floor space and leave no space for the girls to play in their room.

Another space saver are drawers for under the bunk beds. My husband made two of these REALLY nice, totally enclosed drawers that are really deep (so as to use almost all the available real estate sitting unused under the bed).
There are some plastic drawers on the market you can find, that might work for under beds too. Be sure to measure first. I have found the nicest and easiest for kids to use are the ones that have an enclosure that they slide into. Keeps dust bunnies and missing toys from getting into the clothes, plus they slide much better.

For more Works For Me Wednesday see Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer!

WFMW - Cooking Bacon (Low Carb Diet)

With our new low carb way of eating, we eat bacon nearly every morning. Sounds yummy, right? Sure, but how many hours will it take to cook bacon for a family of 14? WAYYYY too long (we did it a few days before we found this better way!) Kudo's and credit to my wonderful hubby - he is the one that spent time searching the web trying to find an easier way to cook bacon. This is the way that works for us! Enjoy!

Here is the fast and easy way to make any amount of bacon you want:
1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Take a cooking sheet ("jelly roll" style) and grease with cooking spray (or whatever your favorite type of grease/oil is).
3. Place the strips of bacon very close together, getting as many slices as possible on the tray (I can usually get 12-13 slices per tray). Don't worry if the slices touch a bit, they shrink fast and even if they come out attached to each other when done cooking, they come apart easily.
4. Put cooking sheet(s) in oven and set timer for 15 minutes.
5. Turn on exhaust fan to low. After a few minutes you might notice some bacon steam coming out of the oven - rest assured the bacon is not on fire. Simply open the oven door and let some of that steam out, close the door and keep the exhaust fan on.
6. Bacon cooks at slightly different rates depending on if it is thick or regular cut and also depending on how many trays you have in the oven at one time.

7. Check bacon at the 15 min. mark and decide if it is done enough for your liking. It will get a nice layer of foam on the top of the bacon when it is getting close to being done, so don't be alarmed. If it is still pale and/or floppy, give it another 5 min. and then re-check. If it is close to being done, but maybe not quite as crisp as you would like it to be, give it another 2 min. and check again.
8. When bacon is cooked to your liking, remove from tray and place on paper towels to absorb the bacon grease. Poor bacon grease from the tray immediatly into a grease bucket/container. This will make washing up the trays much easier later.

Remember bacon has low to no carbs (read the labels!) and dietary fat does not make us/people fat; carbs are what make us fat.

Also, make a few extra pieces to crumble and use on salads or other recipes. It also reheats great in the microwave.

To read my other low carb posts to here, here and here.

For more Works For Me Wednesday see Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer!

WFMW- Putting gifts under the tree

It used to be that we would keep all the Christmas gifts for our children in our closet until Christmas Eve and then dear hubby and I would stay up late wrapping like crazy to get it all done AND still get a few hours sleep before the children woke up. That wasn't too bad of a system for our family when we had, say less than six children. Yet, as our family size grew, our closet stayed the same size. It became impossible to get into the closet to get to our clothes with all the gifts being "hidden" in there. With twelve children and even with trying to limit the amount of gifts, even 2-3 gifts times twelve is, well too much for our closet to handle!

I think it was my smart hubby who came up with the solution we have been using for several years now: We wrap gifts as soon as we want after the Christmas tree goes up, but instead of putting names on the gifts we use a number system. Wrap the first gift, slap a number "1" on it and on our master list that we keep hidden away till Christmas morning I write who number "1" goes to. And, so on till all the gifts are wrapped. This way, the gifts our out of our closet, are already wrapped (much less stress and more sleep Christmas Eve!) and the children do not know who's gift is who's so they are not tempted to try to "peek, shake or rattle" the gifts as they sit for weeks under the tree.


This year, we put the tree up on December 4th and on the 6th hubby and I wrapped 26 gifts, which was the bulk of them, but a few more are still on the way from doing 90% of our Christmas shopping online this year (another life saver for the busy mom of twelve!).

This is also a good idea for families of any size who have kids who like to "peek".

That's what works for me! Visit Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer for more Works for me Wednesday ideas!

More to do about Crayons

I am amazed and humbled by the response to my little post about crayons. There are lots of great comments following that post, so be sure to read them all. Here is a comment that started a new mystery for me to investigate:
Anonymous said... "This is only hearsay, but from someone I trust. Her grand-niece tested as having a high level of lead in her blood, and when the person sent to investigate saw her RoseArt crayons, she said, "There's the problem" and claimed that RoseArt crayons contain lead. I can't find anything on the Internet about RoseArt in particular although there are some warnings about lead in imported crayons. Has anyone else heard about this? "

Well, this sent me on a search to see what I could see. I found some interesting articles you can find here, here and also here. Even if you don't read all of those, be sure to read this one. It seems there is much more to do about asbestos in crayons than lead in the colorful, waxy sticks of childhood delight.

My advice? Just don't let the children chew, suck or inhale the dust of their crayons....just to be safe. (wink, wink)

What do you think?

Works For Me Wednesday : Dress-Up Clothes

With five little girls in our home, playing dress-up is a favorite activity. The dress-up clothes box is the first place little girls run to when they visit out home. It is always fun to watch them play and admire how fancy they look!

My tip this week is about how to store dress-up clothes. I found this wonderful Rubbermaid Hidged Storage Box about 4 years ago. It has been great! Plenty of room for the ever growing dress-up colection, without having to worry about whether things were put away "nicely" inside it. Personally, I don't care if the clothes are tossed in so long as they are IN and not all over the floor of the girls room.

A side note to this subject is how to choose and where to buy dress up clothes. (I knew you were going to ask! LOL!) Don't, I repeat, DON'T buy dress up clothes at a toy store like Toys R Us. Most of their "dress-up" clothes are terribly expensive, cheaply made and consist of mostly sequins and feathers. My girls prefer "real" clothes to dress up in. Where to shop? Goodwill and other thrift stores (garage sales work too!) have great items at a fraction of the cost of Toys R Us. I will look in the bargin bins first to see if there is anything suitable there. A few dirt spots don't bother my girls and I can usually get them clean anyway. I choose items several sizes larger than their normal size for my girls to wear. Women's clothing is just too big and I don't have the time right now to alter them to be shorter.

The funniest thing I have discovered is that the more hideously gaudy the dress (ribbons, bows, poof, lace, layers, etc.) the more the girls love it! I found this one dress at Goodwill that is a satiny material, with a hideous floral print, with layers of poof, and gobs of lace and ribbon. I really didn't want to buy it, it was just that gaudy! I did decide to buy it and it is one of their absolute favorites! It is a smaller size so they don't wear it past about 5 years old. Hopefully by then their "taste" in such things will start to improve!

Please don't think that gaudy means slutty. We don't do slutty. No spaghetti straps, strapless, skimpy, form fitting, etc. Just pretty or fancy dresses that are slightly too big that they can wear just for playing.

We also have a bear and rabbit costume in our dress-up box and a cowboy outfit for my 6 y.o. son (he needed something to dress up in when his sister are playing dress up). Sometimes you can find scrubs and army gear at thrift stores, which also make great additions to the dress up box.

And, that is what works for me this week!! Check out lots of other Works For Me Wednesday tips at Shannon's Rocks in my Dryer blog!

Much to do about crayons

The 24 pack of Rose Art crayons are on sale at Target for $.10 each this week. They also have Crayola's 24 pack on sale, going for $.20 each. I decided to experiment and so I picked up a couple of the Rose Art packs (I already had gotten some Crayola packs two weeks ago when they were $.15 each at Office Depot). Let's face it, at a dime each even if they aren't as good as tried and true Crayola, I'm out a whopping twenty cents. I'm sure I can shake down the couch and come up with at least that much lost coinage. But, I digress.

Back home, I decided to check out and compare the colors these two different brands put in their 24 packs. It was interesting to see that most of the colors have the same names (there were a few with similar colors, but different color names) and that there were only three colors that did not have a match in the competitions package. (see photo's below - click to enlarge)


Now, this may all seem fairly trivial to you, butI'm a sucker for a mystery, so I had to know what the big difference in colors would be between the two companys. Crayola has an indigo, scarlet and cerulean that Rose Art does not have. Rose Art has a turquoise blue, orchid and forest green that Crayola does not have. Here is my thinking: some (girls) might like the Rose Arts better because of the orchid (lavender), and some (boys) might like the Crayola because it has two more blues in it. The Rose Art crayons have a more colorful paper covering the crayon (though not always very close to the REAL color of the crayon) while Crayola's papers are more subdued (but closer to true color in my opinion). I think the Crayola's color a bit more smoothly, but for a dime, the Rose Art crayons are just fine.

On a related note, Target also had the Rose Art washable markers for $.50 a set of 10. You can guess I bought a few of those to tuck away for stockings and gifts too!

Edit: Just a quick additional note here. Per the Crayola website, the retail price of their 24 pack is $2.49. There are also lots of fun things to explore on the Crayola site: printable pages, lesson plans, card creator, etc. Per the Rose Art website (which I won't bother to link to because it is mostly about Mega Blocks - hard to even find the crayons listed there. Weird, huh?) their 24 pack of crayons retails for about a buck. So, are we paying more for Crayola's name or are Rose Arts just made of cheaper materials. Or????

My fugal mind says a dime a pack no matter the starting price is a good deal. My "eye-out-for-a-bargin" mind says I'm "saving" more money paying the twenty cents for the Crayola pack. LOL! What do you think?

Works For Me: "Back to School" sales

This is the time of year that most stores are starting to have their "Back to School" sales. This is a great thing for public, private and home schoolers alike, as well as those with preschoolers at home. Even if you don't have any little ones in your home, but have neices, nephews and friends children you regularly buy gifts for, you can do some frugal shopping in advance for gifts to have on hand. Here are some tips on how I "work" these sales.

First, make a list of the things you know you need. Most public and private schools have a list for each grade and the supplies they need. How easy is that? Home schoolers (like me) need to go through all our supplies, clean out, throw out and organize and see what needs replacing (crayons always!). Looking at the ads can help trigger ones memory (oh yeah I totally forgot we need some of those!). Also think about stocking stuffers and/or other gift needs for the coming year. It also helps if you know what these items usually cost. Make a list of the usual prices to keep on hand all year to compare to. For instance, if you know binder paper can be had for ten cents a pack during the back to school sales, you are not going to want to pay $1.99 for a pack of it in February! For a whole dollar you can have ten packs on hand for when you need them.

Second, I watch the Sunday ads for the stores closest to me. Since each store only has a few deep discounted items (loss leaders) each week to get you into their store (in hopes you will also buy many other items "you need" and pay full price), be patient, watch and wait. Don't drive all over town to get this weeks sales items at each and every store.

For instance, I live near a Fred Meyer and a K-Mart. I also go to physical therapy 1-2 times a week near a Target and Office Depot. So, I only watch those ads. Yes, it can be frustrating to see that Office Max has a great price on......, but it is too far away. If I am patient, one of "my" stores is bound to have that same item on sale in one of the remaining sales weeks before school starts.

Third, be sure to compare the items that are on sale at each store. One store may have the 24 pack of Crayola Crayons for $0.50, another for $0.25 and yet another for $0.20. Obviously, twenty cents is the best deal, but if there isn't anything else at that store you need that week and the store that has them for a quarter has several things you need on sale, pay the extra nickle and save yourself the time and gas money and shop at just one store.

Fourth, think about how these great priced items might also make inexpensive gifts or stocking stuffers. With my large family I am always trying to come up with inexpensive stocking stuffers. Usually by December those brand new crayons I gave them in Sept. for the start of school are already broken and ratty. Well, at twenty cents a box, who cares? It is so inexpensive to buy extra packs of crayons during the back to school sales, put them away till Christmas and put a pack with a coloring book (or make your own coloing pages by printing pages off the Internet) to put in their stockings! (side note: do you know how much Crayola Crayons cost in December? That twenty cent box will cost you about $1.99!) This can also make a great gift for any younger children you need to have a gift for.

Things to watch out for: quanity limits and two-for-one, or buy-two-get-one-free offers. I don't usually go for those last ones at all. I'd rather wait and see if those kinds of items will be offered at a reduced price by another store. Those types of offers are usually going to force me into buying more than I need. Case in point: Office Depot had Sharpie Markers sets on a buy-two-get-one-free offer. Well, the base prices were around $18.00 a set. I was looking at spending $32.00 to get three sets when all I wanted was two of the sets anyway! So, I waited. Another store then had the sets on sale for $8.99 each. So, for $17.98 I could buy the two sets I needed. Big price difference!

And, that is what works for me this week! Check out lots of other Works For Me Wednesday tips at Shannon's Rocks in my Dryer blog!