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Too Much Stuff

Published on January 2, 2017 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as we did here. We’ve already taken down our tree and put away all the decorations. A little bit of a cleaning bug hit me and I decided we needed to declutter our playroom a bit more than we had before Christmas.

My kids, as you can read in Remember The Reason For The Season and So Much More Than A Basketball, were doubly blessed with gifts this year. That doesn’t include the gifts they received from their older siblings and their father. So when they were instructed to ‘put away’ their toys it became apparent that we had not gotten rid of enough things before Christmas. The following are some picks of what we had going on:

The book cases were overflowing, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but we couldn’t fit any more books on the shelves. The toys piling up in front of the chalkboard were a problem though. As well as the other toys and baskets being piled on top of things and hidden inside of cabinets. Then there was there problem of not being able to find their new favorite toys because of all the clutter.

It was stressful for me just to walk in there, not too mention trying to clean around everything. It was such a chore to pick up this to vacuum, then pick up something else and hope you didn’t knock something else down. Trying to dust was almost impossible and there were so many little things getting vacuumed up I was afraid I was going to kill the vacuum.

I grabbed a couple of trash bags, a laundry basket, and a tote. Big sister and I started in one corner of the room and went around it in a full circle. Every area was taken apart, dumped out, and sorted through. If there was an item that didn’t belong in that area it was placed into the laundry basket so it could be put away properly.

Some of the items that were seasonal, like some sensory bins and activities for Fall, were placed into the tote. Broken toys were thrown away and toys that they had outgrown or no longer played with were put into another bag to donate.

When we finished we had several small bags of books to donate and two trash bags of toys to bless others with. There was a bag of broken toys and other items to be thrown away. Then the seasonal items were put away for later in the upcoming year. Some of the toys and books were passed along to their little cousin. The TV that had been in the cabinet was passed along to big brother and the cabinet now holds the laptops and chargers plus a couple of items for younger kids to play with when we have visitors.

Below are some pictures of the results:

The kids are much happier now that they have the toys organized. There are also some empty bins for new things that Momma may pull out of the closets later on. We were able to set up some individual areas for magnet/dry erase play, dinosaurs and legos, and an area for the kitchen and food play. They have their dinosaur skeleton on display and they can easily look at it. There is also a space where they can play with the Spielgaben set and/or the light panel that we have.

The bookshelves are so much better looking now and they actually have an area where they can sit and read. The storage table now holds their dress up and the new race car sets that they got for Christmas. The top of the table turns over and has a flat surface that they can set the race tracks up on so it works out great.

So far the only downside was that I moved the storage bench out and now I can’t reach the calendar to change out the month or days. Sigh, the constant struggles of being short. Luckily I have a kitchen stool that works just fine and I did get the calendar switched out.

My kids were happy to pass along some blessings to other kids that may not have gotten quite as much for Christmas. There were actually a couple of new toys that I passed along as well as I knew the kids would not play with them. This is something that we do every couple of months and sometimes they will actually bring me something that they no longer play with and ask me to pass it along to someone else.

I am slowly trying to pare down our belongings as the more stuff you have, the more clutter you have, and ultimately the more stress you have from keeping up with it and cleaning it. In the end it frees up some of my time also by not having to clean it, move it, or take care of it. Do you have something that you aren’t using? Why don’t you pass it along to someone who can use it. You’ll feel so much better.

Keeping Up With The Bills

Published on January 2, 2017December 13, 2017 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

**Please note this post does contain affiliate links to which I may, possibly, earn a small commission from if you click on and purchase an item. For full disclosure click here.

One important aspect of making sure that everything runs smoothly is making sure that the bills get paid. I don’t know about you but sometimes it gets hard for me to try to remember when things are due and how much to pay.I mean you have the normal bills like the utilities that need to be paid once a month, sometimes you have other bills that are semi-annually or annually, and then you get the unexpected bills like payments on an appliance that just had to be replaced.

The bills have to get paid or we will find ourselves sitting in the dark or with no place to live. We may find ourselves with no way to go anywhere either. Not too mention those outrageous late fees! With so much on our already full plates it can be so easy to overlook something every now and then. Knowing how much is due and when it is due is a big challenge for some people. How do we juggle all of our responsibilities and make sure that everything and everyone gets paid?

It helps to designate a place for all of your bills to go. Then you can use a variety of options to keep up with them. You could just make a simple file by due date or you can write them on the calendar every month to remind you. I have some of them set up on my Cozi calendar to remind me about them. I also have an Excel worksheet that I created to help me stay on top of this. I am a visual person and it helps me to see it all written down in front of me. This sheet of paper is folded and placed into a desk drawer where I can easily access it when needed.

If you don’t have access to a Excel or another software you can always keep up with your bills in a notebook. Just use what you have on hand and what works best for you. Below is an example of the worksheet I created for my house:

I have a place for the name of the bill, the due date, and the amount due. The ‘ACCT’ section is to remind me how the bill is set up to be paid. The abbreviations stand for:

BP = Bill Pay through my checking account

** = Set up through the Bill’s site

CC = Set up to be billed to my credit card. (This is usually for the ones that don’t happen on a monthly basis.)

You should make your own abbreviations that you will be able to remember. It may be a good idea to write down a key somewhere also in case you forget or in case someone else may need to take over bill paying if you were sick. Keep it simple!

I also have a column for each month. I shaded them to just help keep my eyes from playing tricks on me.

This next picture is of the bills that are paid on a monthly basis.They are listed in order by the due date. I try to pay the biggest majority of my bills around the beginning of the month. This method may not work for you or your family. Make sure you know when the bills are due and pay them according to your pay schedule. After the bill has been paid for the month I simply put a ✓ in the box under the month.

For the bills that only happen every other month, or like the pest control which is every three months, I simply shaded out the other months. For the refrigerator I only have a couple of more payments, yay, so I shaded out the rest of the months.

This next picture shows the annual subscription payments that I currently have. This serves as a reminder for me to evaluate whether I really need/want to keep these services before the due date. I do have them set up to charge to my credit card but by knowing when they are due I can try to be prepared to pay them off when they come due.

Another benefit of keeping up with your bills is that you can see where your money is going. If something happens and you need to make changes you can see what is costing you the most and where you need to make cuts. This will go a long ways in helping you to make a budget, as well.

Just remember to keep your system simple and manageable. It won’t work if it is too complicated or if it takes too long to set up or use. I wish you the best in getting those bills under control.

Help! There’s a snake in my boot!

Published on December 16, 2016December 15, 2016 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

Help! There’s a snake in my boot, actually it was in the closet but it could’ve been in my boot as some point. The cover photo for this post was taken just last month. My 14-year-old had said he spotted a snake in the heat vent. Many people would think that he was just imagining things. But I know that this could have been a real possibility. So I prepared myself with a pair of kitchen tongs and my brother helped me to close off all the heat vents.

Last month appeared to be a false alarm. No snake ever emerged from the heat vents or anywhere else in the house that we saw. However we have had some not so false alarms in the past year.

The picture below is a snake that we found in our kitchen last November. Yes, those are the kitchen tongs. This was not the only snake we found though.

I was actually pretty calm this time around as this has been the second snake we had found in the house within a few months.

This is what my bedroom looked like after my daughter had called me last May. She had saw a snake in the playroom. Imagine her surprise when she bent down to pick up the toy snake so she could vacuum and it moved.

This is another picture of my closet when we were looking for the snake. Needless to say this prompted me to do a major decluttering.

This is a picture of the play room after the snake was spotted.

After a second, more thorough, search of the house the snake was eventually found in my closet. If you look closely in the corner there is a tiny hole in the wall and that’s where he was.

This is the snake that was found in the closet the first time. He was let loose only to be found in the chicken house a couple weeks later.

Below was the second snake that we found near the house. He was curled up under the hood of my truck. I could not believe my eyes when my son sent me this picture. He had borrowed my truck to jumpstart his early in the morning. I bet he was shocked to find this under the hood.

After asking Google and many of my Facebook friends no one had a good solution for getting the snake out of my truck. My truck sat in the hot sun for three whole days trying to bake him out. I tried to throw mothballs under the truck and various other suggestions to no avail.

You can see him playing peekaboo in the grill. I was paranoid that the snake would pop out while I was driving down the road or something. That’s when I found out that kitchen tongs work well for grabbing hold of snakes.

Remember that if you ever happen to find a snake in your house, or your vehicle, just try to stay calm. If you’re unsure of how to remove the snake or if you cannot positively identify the snake then don’t touch it. Call the professionals, if needed.

This was just a quick little post to show you that it that it always pays to be prepared for anything.

Oven-Fried Chicken

Published on December 11, 2016November 16, 2019 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog7 Comments

Note: I will admit that sometimes I cheat when this pops up on the calendar and use Shake-N-Bake if I find it on sale. Continue reading “Oven-Fried Chicken” →