Don't Flush the Toilet Paper!

"Don't forget to NOT flush the toilet paper!!" was a yelled reminder during the last half of the week that my family was visiting. (You can read about their visit here.) I think it was Thursday morning while we were all trying to get left for different destinations that Sam came upstairs and calmly told his mom (Gail), "Mom, the washer is flooding the basement." I think Gail questioned him, not quite believing it, and I ran down to look. And yes, the washer was definitely flooding the basement!! I had started the laundry earlier in the morning and it was trying to drain, but was instead gushing up and out of the wall box in which the washer hook-ups and drain are located. There was water once again running under the wall, out the door, and into the utility room. 

A similar event had just happened a week prior, except that time the water was coming up from the sewer line and out from under the toilet. Only slightly gross, right? After several phone calls for that specific incident, a plumber came out, augered out the sewer line, couldn't find any real cause, ran lots of water down the drains for a while, and we thought it was fixed. The plumber did admonish me to not flush anything more than toilet paper down the toilet. Flushable wipes, flushable toilet bowl cleaning wipes, and anything that is marketed as flushable really isn't flushable aside from toilet paper, he said. 

Unbeknownst to the plumber, I had gotten that speech before. The very first house that Jason and I rented had sewer issues and, after the landlord got it fixed, the rules were: don't flush anything but toilet paper. Nothing else. I mentioned to the plumber, at our current house and situation, that I just couldn't figure out what would have clogged it unless Little Miss Pumpkin had started flushing foreign objects down the toilet

Tuesday Tip: Packages of Multiples

This week's Tuesday Tip actually comes from my sister, Rachel, who shared this method a few years ago.  Unfortunately, I don't feel like I had some great examples to show you, so I'm working with what I've got!

When you buy general household goods, and even some groceries, there are a lot of items that you can get in packages of multiples be it bulk packaging, or individually packaged items grouped together in one large package. If you shop of Costco, Sam's, or other bulk-type stores, you will have a lot more of this. Some examples are: toilet paper, tissue boxes, wipes, toothpaste, canned foods, etc. Hopefully you get the idea.

The tip for this week is when you return from shopping, completely un-package, or unwrap, everything that is packaged in multiples. Or, for items like toothpaste (and other things I can't think of right now), go ahead and take it out of the box before putting them away in storage. Rachel said her little kids loved to help unwrap everything after a shopping trip, and also helped put it away.

Here are my few examples that I have available to show you:

Tuesday Tip: Socks

Today's helpful tip is the sock-pairing method that I have found to work best for us. Meaning, the sock pairs actually stay together in the drawer, or wherever their home is as clean socks. And, when anyone grabs a pair, they actually get a matched pair in one swipe without rummaging through trying to find a sock's mate.

Over the course of years, I have seen several methods of folding and storing matched pairs of socks. They are pictured below:

A. The safety-pin method 

B. The fold-in-half method (This is what I grew up with- they don't stay folded, or together, especially in my husbands sock drawer!)

Tuesday Tip: Bed Sheets

I'm trying a new thing of sharing various tips, or tricks, I have discovered that simplify my life. I'm not sure if I have enough tips to make it happen every Tuesday, but we'll see where it goes.

Bed Sheets: Folding, Storing, and Making the Bed

I'm sure everyone has heard, or seen, that there is some viral video out there on how to fold a fitted sheet. This is not that video. Instead, this bed sheet tip is geared more towards making it easier to put the sheets on the bed.

Folding Bed Sheets

First, fold the sheets inside out. I don't know about anybody else, but my instinct is to fold everything right side out; seams in. But, I recently realized that it makes the bed-making process harder than it needs to be. So, start by folding your sheets inside out. My folding method is as follows:

First, fold in half horizontally; end to end.