Washi Tape Wires

We have just finished a week of cleaning and purging here at Sprout's House, and already the house feels lighter and brighter. The sitting room was one of the last rooms I tackled and I nearly lost the will when I noticed this...

Eek....double eek in fact! It was a tangle of wires along with layer upon layer of dust! 

So here's how to tame those unruly wires with some washi tape!

Remove equipment that you no longer use - out went the Freesat box. (No reason to keep dusting something you don't use!)

Switch off and unplug all the equipment, dust the flexes and then wrap a piece of washi tape around each cable at the plug end. Label the washi tape so that you know which plug belongs to which piece of equipment.

For the sake of simplicity, you can also wrap a small piece of washi tape around the cables that connect the boxes to the TV and each other so it is easy to identify which wire belongs to which box!

And ta-dah you're done. 

Here's to quick tasks that help tidy things up!

What 5 minute tricks do you have up your sleeve to help you tidy?

Sprout’s House

 xox

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How to keep track of Medicines!

Is your child ill? Are you juggling different medicines? 
Trying to keep track of which child has had which medicine?

Last week was a bit of a toughie - for all of us!! It mainly consisted of no sleep, a plethora of medicines, no sleep, doctor’s appointments, no sleep, no food, no sleep, no water and did I mention no sleep!!....

Sprout’s House was hit by another wave of germs which nearly took us all down. Not content with having chicken pox at the start of March Sprout rounded the month off with a raging chest/ear infection.

At the beginning of the week, I headed off to London on a course leaving a slightly lethargic Sprout lying on the sofa. She made it into pre-school on Monday morning before succumbing to a temperature by midday and having to be rescued by her Daddy. I arrived home on the Tuesday afternoon to find a rather subdued Sprout and a rather tired Daddy both of whom were suffering from a serious lack of sleep after two nights of coughing and spluttering. Another sleepless night followed, by which time Sprout wasn’t eating and barely drinking so off we went to the doctor who diagnosed a chest infection and possibly an ear infection too.

We left having been prescribed a hefty dose of antibiotics alongside the Calpol and Nurofen that she was already taking. And this is the crux of the post….after a limited amount of sleep my ability to juggle three different types of medicine was pretty non –existent. 

I ended up keeping a record of what I had given her and when on the kitchen black board as well as using the back of an envelope to keep a note of how much water I had syringed into her mouth. Not particularly effective as I kept forgetting to update both! So with that in mind, I have devised a Medicine Record sheet to help me keep up with the medicines that I have given Sprout. 

Sprout's House Medicine Sheet

The week ended with both Sprout’s Daddy and I fighting a losing battle against Sprout’s germs – although we are all on the mend now. It is certainly the most ill I have ever seen her and has beaten chicken pox hands down in terms of severity. Here’s hoping that the arrival of Spring, and fingers crossed some warmer weather, will give us all some renewed energy and vigour!! 

I hope you are all feeling well. If not, please feel free to download my Medicine Sheet to help you juggle all those medicines. Leave your survival tips in the comments below!!

Sprout’s House

      xox

Organise your Inbox in 4 Easy Steps

Are you a closet email hoarder? Is your inbox overflowing? Is your email account out of control?

Okay people….I have a confession….a deep dark secret if you will! 

Up until Saturday morning, I had 

unread emails in my inbox, and in total probably well over a thousand emails floating around my account. 

So here are 4 easy steps that will help you organise your emails once and for all.....

Delete, delete, delete!! Get rid of all those emails you haven’t read. If you haven’t read them by now you’re not going to! Only keep emails that are important and that you might need one day. For example – correspondence between you and your car insurance company; mobile phone bills; important work emails etc.

Lots of the emails, I hadn’t bothered to read were from a whole host of different companies whose mailing lists I had ended up on. To unsubscribe from a mailing list, simply scroll to the bottom of the email and click on the word unsubscribe.

Create folders so that emails can be easily filed away and then more importantly easily found when you need them. Categories I used included House, Work, Cars, Holiday, Internet and Sprout. I also used sub-categories for example under the Internet category there are two additional categories - Phone and Purchases.

Set up rules to automatically sort your incoming mail. This takes seconds and will mean that rather than having all your mail sitting in your inbox waiting to be filed or deleted it will go straight into the folder you have allocated it. Just remember to look out for unread mail in your folders other than your inbox!

As well as cleaning up my inbox, I also deleted a load of old email addresses that were cluttering up my inbox. So here it is, my sparkling and email free inbox......

Why not have a go at cleaning up your own inbox?

Have a great week! 

Sprout’s House

      xox

Pop over and join the party!!