Dishwasher fires and Recall website

I just read about recent dishwasher fires that had been happening and was concerned! I'm running mine as I type this hoping flames don't shoot out the side after the article I read. Makes me want to make sure my fire extinguishers are up to date and handy.

It's always good to have a safety website for recalls handy! Keep his in your favorite places so you can link to it easy and fast! recalls.gov and saferproducts.gov





Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

How to dry your cell phone if it gets wet!

So I woke up this morning and my cell phone fell off my nightstand. I was too lazy to roll over and pick it up so I waited until I got up. 20-30 minutes later I went to retrieve my phone from the floor only to discover it submerged in my cup of water on the floor next to my bed! UGH. So I came across some good hints from mobiledia that I wanted to share in case this happens to you! I currently have my phone in a bag of rice in my fridge!!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are several ways to save a wet cell phone or GPS device. Some may seem unusual but do you really want to have to purchase another expensive phone and learn a new keyboard for fast text messaging? Here are several steps and methods you can use to try and save your wet cell phone before buying a new one.
1. Obviously the first step is to remove the phone from whatever liquid it was immersed in. Next remove the battery as soon as possible. I can’t overstate how important this step is. The phone is an electronic device and electricity and water do not mix. Leaving the battery in will cause short circuits and damage the phone. If your phone has a SIM card remove that too. Wipe off any excess water with a towel paper or otherwise.

The bad news; it is likely that your battery has been damaged. The good news; most batteries can be replaced for a reasonable price and are certainly cheaper than a new phone. Do not heat the battery under any circumstances; they can explode!

2. Try putting the phone in the refrigerator. This may sound strange because most of us associate heat with the drying process. Actually the refrigerator cools things by drawing moisture out of things. Do not put the phone in the freezer as this can damage the LCD
(Liquid crystal display) After 30 minutes or so, take it out for about 10 minutes, and repeat until the phone is dry.

3. One of the simplest methods is to place the phone on top of a TV, or vent from a cable box or a device which emits a low heat. This can take up to 3 days but it’s better than having to shell out the bucks for a new phone.

4. If your accident happens outdoors miles away from home the simplest way to dry a phone is to place the phone on the dashboard. The car should be parked in a place that gets plenty of sun. After about 2 hours check to see if the screen is fogged. If its still foggy put it back on the dash, if not try putting in the battery and boot up the phone.

5. Another common method used to save a wet cell phone is to place the phone in a container of rice. Remember how Grandma put grains of rice in the salt shaker to keep the salt dry. Rice can absorb an incredible amount of moisture.

6. Other methods along this line involve putting the phone in a sock or pantyhose and placing in a container with silica sand or the new crystal kind of cat litter. On the average these methods take about 3 days to be effective.

7. Try using a compressed air can like the ones sold at computer stores. Hold the can STRAIGHT (holding the can sideways, upside down, or at an angle, will discharge a freezing liquid damaging your phone further) Shoot the air into speaker, mic, keypad, and hard to reach crevices.

8. One of the easiest methods to save a wet cell phone is to use a plain old hair dryer. This method is somewhat controversial. Some sources say that the heat from a hair dryer is too hot. Most hair dryers have a low heat setting and this is the one that should always be used. If the low heat setting on your hair dryer is too hot it is better to use another method.

If your phone was dropped in salt water or water containing an excessive amount of minerals you will have to take some special steps. Salt water will crystallize causing its own set of problems.

9. You may use alcohol or distilled water to flush out contaminants. If you use alcohol it must be at least 95% denatured alcohol. Rubbing alcohol is only 70% and not effective. Be sure to check what the alcohol is denatured with. Do not use anything other than methanol. Any other kind of alcohol can damage your phone. Rinse the phone with alcohol and dry. Alcohol is flammable so this should be done outside or in a well ventilated area.

10. Another way to remove salts and minerals from a wet cell phone is to use distilled water. While not as effective as alcohol, distilled water will dilute minerals and salts. The idea is to get the salts and minerals off the copper parts in the phone before they corrode.

A wet cell phone need not be an expensive tragedy that causes you to sell your old cell phone. All the above steps have been tested and found successful most of the time. The key to saving a wet cell phone is patience. None of the listed methods are quick fixes but they can save you a lot of aggravation and money. While the best case scenario is a dry functional phone accidents do happen. Don’t panic, have patience, and everything should turn out just fine.

Jeff Davis is a consultant for two Philadelphia based companies and has had the unfortunate experience of having his cell phone soaked not once but twice. Mr. Davis experienced his first soaked cell phone at an Eagles game and managed to drop his cell phone in a blue ribbon trout stream in Montana. He did save both wet cell phones and decided to share his information with others unfortunate enough to share this experience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Toothbrush Storage Idea!

Being new to the coupon world... I have been slowly collecting items and finding ways to store them. Ideally I want to put a small pegboard up somewhere to store items like toothbrushes, but this idea below is free and I have many hangers to use! So I thought I'd share the idea~!

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

How to save money with Coupons!

NOTE: CHECK YOUR STORE'S COUPON POLICY.

I've started really getting into coupons and savings. I do take my coupon binder to stores and search the store ads and online for sales. And every once in a while if I need to make a big shopping trip, I do go to my main store (Krogers) and walk the isles and write down sales. Then I compare those to coupons at home. They have good Mega sales and 10 for 10 items that are great to combine with your coupons so it's worth the isle walking because they don't show all their sales in their printed ads!

I wanted to give you a few steps to help you start to save. Once you get started you will find it so much fun. You will organize your coupon binder differently than I do, you will sort your coupons differently and you find what works best to help you save.  A lot of stores have changed policies due to the "Extreme Coupon" show.  But in the end, you should do these things: 

1) Buy more than one newspaper! OR ask others to give you their inserts.
2) Carry a coupon binder!
3) Search for things on sale 1.99 or under.
4) Check out Couponmom.com and let her do the work!


1) Buy more than one newspaper! OR ask others to give you their inserts.
You need 4-5 inserts per Sunday paper in order to save big. I sometimes get 6 depending on what is in the coupon inserts. You can preview Sunday Coupon Inserts HERE. If one deodorant is on sale for $1.29 and you have ONE .50 cent coupon (my store doubles it to $1), then you can get ONE deodorant for .29 cents. Great, right? Well, if you have FOUR or SIX coupons for .50 cents each (doubled to $1) then you can get FOUR or SIX deodorants for .29 each. So you can stock pile those until the next sale.

Krogers had Crest toothpaste on sale 10 for 10 (buy 10 participating items get them for $1.00 each) . I had TEN 1.00 coupons in my binder so I got TEN tubes of toothpaste free! The key is to look for sales, check your coupons and buy when things are on sale when you can.

Try to clip and save all coupons in your binder. You can't always be brand specific when using coupons. The deodorant you like may not be on sale for pennies like another brand, but if you can get it for pennies or free, why not try it. Donate it if you want to also!

2) Carry a coupon binder!

It may seem like a lot of work, but it is really fun once you start and it's the best way to find those deals. I sit down after my daughter is in bed and organize my coupons while I watch television. I organize mine by my store layout. I don't get all neat and fancy when organizing as you can see by this photo. This day I was organizing coupons and looking through store ads on my bed while my daughter played in her room. You can get baseball card insert pages at any store (I got mine at Target), which work great for displaying them in your book.



3) Search for things on sale 1.99 or under!When I'm shopping, I always detour down the cleaning isle and the health and beauty isles. I look for wipes, cleaners, deodorants, shampoos, lotions, hand soap, toothpaste etc that may be on sale for less than 1.99. Because my coupons can be doubled at Krogers, any .50 coupons or more will actually be $1 coupons. So anything less than 1.99 you can get for pennies! (Just watch if the coupon has a size specification). These are great items to stock pile because they won't go bad and are always useful.


4) Check out Couponmom.com and let her do the work!
Click here and scroll down a bit and watch her #1 video called "Grocery Deals By State". You'll see what I mean by letting her do all the work for you! All you have to do is print her list and cut your coupons. I prefer to keep the coupons I use a lot or think I can get a good deal on clipped and in my binder so they are close at hand, but I also put the additional inserts in a stand up file system shown below for easy reference.

DEALS I'VE GOTTEN


I got all this for .24 cents!
The large crest was 10 for 10 at my Kroger grocery store plus I had (10) $1.00 off coupons.
So buy 10 at $1 each minus the $1 coupon and they are all free!
The floss was .88 at Walmart and I had $1.00 coupon so that was a .12 money maker.

Paid $15.35!! 87% Savings!

Actually, two of my Mega Sale items got messed up on this order so I'm going back tomorrow to fix it! After that I actually will have only spent about $9.46 on all of this! ALL Body wash and water was FREE, everything else was on sale plus coupons.

GOT ALL THIS FOR ONLY $2.76 !!
Deodorant was only .19 each and Conditioner was .25 cents each!
Had a free coupon for the Caress.

Spent a little over $14.00 on these items!
The gain sheets were .12 cents each box!

Here are just SOME of the items I picked on a Krogers shopping trip!Total grocery amount $302.51 and only paid $173.74!
$128.77 SAVINGS!$7.00 of that total was on 4 Sunday Papers, so technically I spent $166.74 on groceries.

$54.08 of items for $13.46. That's a 75% savings!
All this toothpaste was FREE and the dove was .29 cents each!

Let me know how you like to save!

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Cleaning My Keyboard! Hint & Tip.

I was cleaning my computer and just couldn't get all the lint, hair and dust out from under the key's. The "dust off" wasn't cutting it. While it did get a lot of things out, it didn't help for that lint or hair that was stuck around the keys. So I decided to grab some double sided tape and start running it between and under the keys. That helped SO much because it could get a hold of the fuzz and things and pull them out.

Just wanted to share a tip!

Double sided tape ran between the keys is great to grab a hold of that hairs, lint and fuzz!

Visit other Tackles at 5minutesformom.com

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Lime Away and hard water stains in fridge!

It was time to tackle the nasty hard to clean water dispenser in the fridge! We are having a party so I decided I'd better work on it. I usually just rub it down and try other cleaners with no luck. So I decided to use some Lime Away this time, because after all it is hard water stains.

YUCK

Spray it good and let it sit a while so it can do it's thing!

Before I used this toothbrush I did wipe it down and a nice majority of gunk came out.
But I decided to give it a little more elbow grease and scrub.

If I worked harder and had a scraper I could get it all off, but this was enough for me! I have a lot of other cleaning to concentrate on so I'll call this one done for now!

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Motion Security Light in your closet!

We recently made a trip the hardware store because the pull chain on our light in the closet came out for the hundredth time! We were going to figure out how to put a "do it yourself" light switch in the closet using a lot of extra materials to run the cord on the outside of the wall and cover it up.

The man at the Hardware store suggested a less expensive and easier way to do it. He said to take an outdoor motion security light and use that instead. It's an easy install, no pull chains or switches and kids don't have to remember to turn out the light. It's perfect! We have it set to only stay on for 1 minute after the motion starts and we put just one regular 75 watt bulb in it.

Such a great idea and I love it! Just thought I'd share!










Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Organizing your Baking Spices and Medicine

I found some inexpensive lazy Susans a long time ago and have them in my pantry to store medicine and my baking spices (sprinkles, cupcake paper cups, baking soda etc). I love the lazy Susan because you can turn it easily to see everything. I also have some plastic bins off to the right that hold band-aids, antiseptic, gauze and baby items. This makes it easy to just snag the whole container and go if an emergency arises.

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

How to clean your microwave....EASILY!

So maybe I'm the last person on earth to know this little tip, or maybe there are others like me who never knew about it and will love this easy tip! If so I want to see comments that you've never heard this and will try it! I listed this in one of my other hint and tip posts, but thought I'd show pictures. I love pictures so much better. I purposely let my microwave get icky so I could show you an easy way to clean it. So here it is! Stuck on cooked food from all sorts of lunches, dinners and snacks. Yuck! The sad part is, this photo is actually cleaner than it has been in the past. lol

Step 1

One dirty microwave needed!

Step 2
Put a glass container in the microwave with at least 1-1/2 to 2 cups water *
Close the door and microwave on high for 5 minutes.
(*NOTE: Make sure you have at least this much water, boiling a small amount of water can result in it exploding! I know from experience...ooops)

Step 3
When the 5 minutes is up....KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED FOR 5 MINUTES! Do not open the door.... the steam from the boiling water will soften all the gunk.

Step 4
After 5 minutes, open the door, CAREFULLY remove the glass container.
HOT HOT HOT!! Use an oven glove or similar item to remove it.
Step 5
Wipe inside with a warm wet washcloth.
I take out the microwave tray (if you have one) and rinse it in the sink. This lets me get under the glass tray and wipe the bottom, top and all sides of the microwave. See how clean the tray is with ONE WIPE of the washcloth! t

FINISHED!
Beautiful, clean and it was so easy.

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!

Peter Walsh Video Interview, [IN]Place and you-organized

I had a wonderful opportunity to interview Organizational Design Expert Peter Walsh. You may know Peter from TLC's "Clean Sweep" and as a contributor of the Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2009 he partnered with Office Max to introduce his [IN]PLACE system and is now launching his you-organized office collection shown in the photo's below. The pricing is wonderful and includes SO much for such a small price!

He has a book and DVD called "It's All Too Much". You can find the photo of the book in the side bar of my blog and you can see my review about it here.

A few questions you can find in my interview with Peter are:
1) Can you tell us the name of your collections and what is in them.
2) What would you say to someone who says "My clutter is so overwhelming, I don't know where to start".
3) Should there be a determining factor on how long you keep items.
4) What are some tips to help your kids stay organized.

Be sure to check out the video below to hear Peters answers to these questions and more and remember you can get his organizing tools through Office Max at very great prices.

you-organized
All-in-one desk solution

Inspired Message Boards

[IN]PLACE system

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the interview and Peters collection!


PETER HELPS ORGANIZE YOUR CAR!

Enjoy being a Mom All Day!