Mothering Many

In my house are many children. Children have friends, and they want to trade phone numbers, don’t they? You go out, and meet someone you think you’d like to get to know better, and want to trade numbers. Professional business cards are great for this. Order some, and carry them in your purse, and you won’t have to search for a pen and a scrap of paper (you know it’s only going to get lost in that pocketbook anyway, right?)

I’ve found them handy for another use as well. I read, my dh reads and 5 of my children read, plus another is learning. And of those 7 readers over half read more than one book at a time. You know where I am going with this don’t you? Business cards make excellent bookmarks I have a set that I “outgrew”, and whenever someone asks for a bookmark, I get one, write their name on the back, and viola! instant bookmark. And it’s special, because it’s “Mom’s Business Card”.

I wanted to follow up on my cloth post with a little word on dishtowels. In general I have found the cheaper towels work much better for drying stuff and soaking up spills than the nice, thick expensive ones That’s all I have except for a few that I have received as gifts or bought for decorative purposes. So, choose your dishtowels for how you plan to use them.

One way to save a bucket load of money is to use cloth instead of paper whenever possible. Now, we still use the Charmin©, but we’ve replaced most other paper in this house with cloth. We use cloth diapers on the babies. In the kitchen, we use cheap dish towels instead of paper towels.

It may surprise you to know that my family of 10 generally makes less than a garbage can full of garbage each week. I’m talking about the ones the trash service gives out, now, not the one you bought for your kitchen. So not only does this save money, it also reduces the amount of garbage you are hauling out to the curb. And we all know that garbage has to go somewhere, right?