Month: March 2016

Get Free Clothes: Part 1 :: Schoola.com

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Schoola blogSchoola.com is a website that takes donations of used clothes from people who want to raise money for their schools. They sell the clothes online and give 40% back to schools. They also happen to have a pretty nice sign-up bonus and referral program and often run promotions that will help you get an even better deal. Here’s one going on now where you can get $37.50 in free clothes.

Short instructions (for those with short attention spans): You need to sign up as a new customer using this link to get a $20 credit, then create a collection to get a $10 credit, then go find $37.50 worth of clothes, put them in your cart and enter RMENOT16 in the promo code box for 20% off your order. You’ll qualify for free shipping (14-21 days) so it’s $37.50 worth for FREE!

Long instructions (pretend you’re teaching your mom):
1.Click on the link for $20 credit: https://www.schoola.com/stitch?ref=cp-3X8tov6FP
2. If you are on your phone scroll to the bottom of the page and click “full site”
3.Click on “join” and create an account.
4.Click on “New Collection”on the side and create a new one (such as “womens”) A promo running right now gets you a $10 credit for creating a collection.
5. Add up to $37.50 worth of clothing from ANY category to your cart and head to checkout. Make sure to check “Good” under condition if you want to use the 20% off code – it won’t work for New with Tags items.
6. At checkout, add the promo code RMENOT16 for 20% off (or check retailmenot.com for a new code). Choose Free Shipping.
7. Your total will be $0 if you added $37.50 or less! It will absolutely show you how much your end total is, so you’ll know if you did it right.

Make sure to do it in that order for it to work. We don’t know how long this will last or how long the promo code is good, so if you want to try it, I’d do it soon.

There aren’t great descriptions and no guarantees on the condition. Most of the kids clothing I received was in fair condition- okay for play clothes. I had much better luck with Women’s career clothes and did searches for nice brands such as Banana Republic for some cardigans and pants. I also scored nice dress pants from H&M and The Limited and a great pair of Athleta pants. Shipping took about 2 weeks. Even after my “credits” were used up, I ended up ordering a nice dress for a reasonable price and I felt great knowing that 40% of my purchases were helping schools!

Hope you find something fun and feel free to share with your friends! (Full disclosure: the link is my referral link so I get some credit if you use it, but it’s the only way to get the $20 credit yourself too! When you share with YOUR friends..give them your referral link and you can keep earning $20 credits up to $500/year.)

 

Stay tuned for additional entries in this 5-part “Free Clothes” series.

The Mitten Habit

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The Mitten Habit

The three little kittens, they lost their mittens, and didn’t know where to find them.

“Oh Mother Dear, we sadly fear, our mittens we have lost!”

“What! Lost your mittens? You naughty kittens! You know where your mittens go…

In your hat, in your sleeve, in your coat, in the closet.

In his first winter month of kindergarten, my son had lost 2 hats, 3 sets of mittens and both sets of boots. Only a few were recovered from the various Lost and Found boxes. I knew something had to change or pretty soon he’d be down to one black and one navy stretch glove and his little sister’s spare pom-hat.

What’s a mama cat to do?

We implemented the mitten habit. Every time. Like, E-V-E-R-Y time the boys come in the house, they take off their mittens, put them in their hat, stuff the hat in the sleeve and get the coat in the closet (usually on the floor, but you pick your battles around here.)

So, when it’s time gear-up and get out the door? The mittens are always in the hat in the sleeve in the coat in the closet. I didn’t even realize this was working until I saw my just-turned-three-year-old automatically carry out the ritual with no reminders. And saw my 16 month walk to her room, retrieve her coat and reach into the sleeve to get her hat.

After recently hearing Charles Duhigg speak at a conference and then reading his book The Power of Habit within 2 days, I was re-inspired to look for other places where developing intentional habits had the potential to make life much, much easier.

So try this exercise with me.

Think of something you lose the most. What are you always looking for?

Keys? Phone? Purse? Coat? Favorite Pen? Remote? The other shoe?

What habit/routine can you create so that you always put those things in the same place and therefore always know where to find them?

For example, my car keys live in 2 places when they’re not in the ignition of my minivan. When I’m home, they immediately go in the junk drawer. You know you have one too. Where else do you store the Box Tops for Education labels, mini screw drivers and random marbles? When I am ANYWHERE else, they go in the end pocket of my purse. Not in my coat pocket, jeans pocket, van console, desk drawer, or even the black-hole-main-pocket of my purse. Only one pocket. Now I don’t even think about, it: they’re just magically there every time I look!

So my challenge for you is to pick ONE habit. ONE thing you lose often and decide where that object is going to live at all times that it’s not in use. Then make a commitment to put it there every time. I don’t know if it will take you 7 days or 21 or a year, but you’ll know you’ve succeeded when you never think to youself “where is the [X]” because your feet automatically walk and your hand automatically reach for it…

and it’s there.

 

 

 

How to STOP Head Injuries from Falling Sippy Cups

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sippy cups sigDUCK AND COVER!

This was my strategy when opening the cupboard containing our plates, bowls and cups. Among the why-did-we-pick-that-pattern Corelle place settings and the grown-up glasses was a rainbow of plastic drinking devices designed for the post-bottle and pre-breakable glass contingent. You know, the soft-tip sippies that were supposed to be the easiest to transition from the bottle, the hard-tip easy-to-clean ones that never fit in the stroller cup holders, and my personal favorite, the miracle 360 cups that dentists love because they’re most like cups but lose their magic when thrown defiantly from a high chair. I was sick.of.all.of.them.

I am embarrassed to admit how many times I have actually been injured by these topsy-turvy, falling-everywhere sippy cups. Like, give-me-a-minute-I-might-cry injured. This is dumb. I am dumb. There has to be a better way. Here it is:

Put sippy cups in a basket. Or a drawer. Just not a cupboard above eye level. Or they will hit you in the head. #organizinghack

There is no reason the infinitely more unstable sippy cups need to be in the cupboard next to their more mature glass counterparts. They don’t.  That is dumb. They will fall over. They will fall out. They will attack you.

If you can’t spare the drawer space, get a basket and throw them all in there. You know where they go, you know where they’ll be, and where they won’t be is smacking you in the face every time you open the cupboard to get out another snack bowl to hold goldfish because Child A picked a different snack but now sees Child B’s choice and wants some of that too and they can’t have goldfish touching their other less-cheese-product-dusted crackers. Because waaaaah.

Snack bowls, by the way, have the decency of staying in a nice stack, so don’t demote them. Let them live up in the cupboard with their equally courteous cousins, the cereal bowls.

But the cups, man. Just bring them down.