MamaBlogga

Google is so passé. (Not really; Google, don’t hate me!)

Ahem, anyway, as I was saying, Google isn’t the only way to find fun websites anymore. In fact, I dare say it’s not the best or even a good way to find a fun website. StumbleUpon is better (much better!). So, here’s StumbleUpon from start to finish!

Using StumbleUpon
Using StumbleUpon is very easy. You do have to go to their site, StumbleUpon.com to join and download their toolbar. They have toolbars for IE and Firefox browsers.

Once you’ve entered your identification info, you get to choose your topics to browse. These include everything from blogs to marketing to parenting to religion to writing to politics and back. Choose well; this will impact how satisfied you are with the results.

Using the Toolbar

Now you’re all ready to go. Click the “Stumble!” button to be taken to a random website recommended in one of your topic areas. If you like the site that comes up, click the thumbs up “I like it!” If you don’t like it, click the thumbs down. If you’re indifferent, feel free to click “Stumble!” again.

The “Send to” button lets you e-mail your favorite pages to StumbleUpon friends (I’ll be your StumbleUpon friend) or other friends. The talk bubble lets you see comments on the current page and make your own.

The Channel options are: (globe) see a page from any of your topics (like the “Stumble!” button), (people) see a page from my friends, (newspaper) show a news item, (pictures) show an image, (movie reel) show a movie (there’s also StumbleVideo for this). The All option at the end lets you choose a single topic of yours to stumble in (ie, if I clicked “All” and chose “Knitting” when I hit “Stumble!” it will show me only knitting pages). You can also search, or visit other stumblers or wikis from the All menu.

Favorites takes you to a “blog” with all of the pages you’ve ‘thumbed’ or rated. Friends shows you your SU friends. Tools lets you sign in or out, change your password, update your options or topics, etc.

Getting onto StumbleUpon
There are two ways to get into SU: natural and paid. You can sign up for the StumbleUpon Paid Inclusion program, buying a certain number of visitors for $0.05 a piece, or you can get added by a StumbleUpon user. Yes, you can add yourself, and as far as I can tell, it’s not shunned as it is on sites like Digg.

To submit a page, click the thumbs up button. If the page has already been submitted, your vote will count as a thumbs up vote. If it hasn’t already been submitted, you get this popup:

Fill in the data and voilá . You are on StumbleUpon.

Doing Well on StumbleUpon
Doing well personally: To “succeed” on StumbleUpon, one of the most important things you can do is to Stumble. A lot. Whenever you come across a site you like, “thumb.” The more sites you rate and submit, the more power and influence you wield. I’ve rated 186 sites, about half of which were original “discoveries” (I accidentally submitted the first 30 something posts from my blog at one point, that’s included in those numbers.) Because I”ve submitted and thumbed plenty of stories, I also have 8 “fans” now, or Stumblers who like the same things as I do. Having a bigger network of friends and fans on StumbleUpon ensures that your sites are seen by more people.

Getting your site to do well: A page’s success depends on several factors. It must be labeled in the best topic and tagged well. My most successful pages on StumbleUpon have brought hundreds of visitors in a day because the people visiting my site gave it a thumbs up. The more thumbs up a page gets, the more people get to see it.

I’ve also written about StumbleUpon at work: Is Your Site StumbleUponAble? and Should You Use Paid Inclusion for StumbleUpon?

Enjoy!

I spent some time working as a custodian (okay, a janitor). I deep cleaned apartments for four months and cleaned my husband’s offices (including 4 bathrooms and a large kitchen) for two years. So if you want the maximum results in the least amount of time, here are a few tips from an “old pro.”

• Work from the top down. Wipe down countertops (or dust other surfaces). Don’t worry about collecting all the stuff from your counters (totally gross), just wipe it right on the floor. Scrub spills if necessary.
• Sweep kitchen floor. Don’t stoop and fiddle with dustpans (I hate those). Sweep right onto a carpeted area.
• Vacuum up all the crumblies.
• It saves me time to use my DustBuster for edging carpets; this probably depends on the ease of using your vacuum cleaner’s tools.

If you’re going to be doing all of those things anyway, may as well save yourself a little time and effort in collecting and carrying all the trash around with you.

Biggest bang for your buck cleaning
For maximum impact, hit these areas first:

• Dishes in the sink. Stick them in the diswasher. I give you permission not to rinse them.
• Clutter on horizontal surfaces. Sigh. A constant battle in my kitchen.
• Stuff in the middle of the floor. Find a place for these things. In my house, this stuff is almost always toys, shoes and newspapers. I try to put these things away before bed; keeps the house cleaner so I can focus on other things if I have to clean in a panic.
• Vacuum. You wouldn’t think that it’s worth it, but a very clean floor makes everything feel tidy.

A little obvious, I know, but one of my biggest problems in “panic cleaning” is focusing on the most important things. I suddenly notice that the table is dusty, and I have to take care of that. I vacuum and realize that the table is dirty. I stop and clear it off and shake the tablecloth out and then start vacuuming again….

Since Lindsey asked, I thought I’d share my methodology for organizing closets. I did three in one week in March (and one was the craft closet/guest bed & bath linen closet, so you know it was stuffed!).

Before beginning: assess the damage. Figure out what organizing accessories you might need: hangers, bins, shoe shelves or hanging organizers (if so, approximately how many slots or linear inches will you need?). Find an activity for your children, if necessary (Hayden “helped” me—he’s really good at playing by himself).

Here’s my big secret: Pick a day and just do it. This might mean emptying the entire closet onto your bed or floor. That’s what I did. I took everything off the bar in my closet and sorted it into piles (still on hangers).

To make clothes look neater, hang them by garment length, sleeve length and/or color. My closet (above) is sorted by both garment and sleeve length. Ryan’s is sorted (kind of) by color and sleeve length.

Get rid of anything that doesn’t fit you (unless you’re pregnant and fairly sure you’ll be able to wear an outfit again by this time next year). Get rid of anything that doesn’t look good on you. Get rid of anything you don’t love. (This is why my Goodwill pile, right, is so big.)

To make the closet look even cleaner, consider hanging sweater and shoe organizers and overhead shelf space. A clear floor does wonders for making that small space look neater. I have a hanging shoe organizer and two boxes on the top shelf. I have one big plastic bin on the floor of my closet that I’m trying to get rid of. (And a guitar and a flute, but I’m keeping them.)

Don’t have any shelves? You can buy cheap plastic shelves (like in my guest closet above) or wall-mounted shelving units to hang above the bar in your closet or elsewhere. When I was shopping for organizing stuff for this project, I saw entire shelf organizing systems that featured adjustable-height, wall-mounted bars, shelves and drawers. Barring that, buy under-bed storage boxes and put everything under the bed.

Make sure that the organized state of your closet is something you can maintain. What is more frustrating than taking a lot of time to reorganize your whole closet than to have it last for only a couple days? As I’m learning all the time, to keep something clean, you have to pick up after yourself and put things back in their places.

And the other big way I can help you: you can do it! I promise! If you can’t seem to be able to do it all at once, then even 15 minutes a day will make a difference. Really—if I had done it that way, it still would have taken less than two weeks.

Do you have any closet or other organizing tips? Leave a comment and be entered to win!

For more Works for Me Wednesday, visit Rocks in My Dryer, one of the 30 most Popular Parenting Blogs!

Yesterday, I cleaned my desk (hurray; I’m still in shock). My little tip of the week: how to get rid of 6 months’ worth of junk mail in 20 minutes. (Oh, you read the title? Sorry.)

First, I know you’re wondering, Why did you have 6 months’ worth of junk mail in the first place? Truth be told, it’s been at least that long since I’ve cleaned off my desk. Sad.

My desk is where we keep the ‘to be shredded’ pile. We don’t throw away junk mail with the slightest hint of ‘private info,’ including our ZIP code (another story. I’ll tell you that one someday. It’s funny.). We have a compulsive need to shred it lest someone find out we live here and steal our identities. That and we’re on the lam. (Not really; please don’t call the cops!)

We also shred the mail for half a dozen people that don’t live here anymore. Anyone know how to get people to stop mailing credit card offers, etc. to people who haven’t lived here in probably 10 years?

Anyway, it’s really easy to streamline the shredding process.

1. Take all your envelopes. (You have all your junk mail in one place, right?)
2. Grab a letter opener and slice each envelope open. Don’t stop, just slice.
3. Once all the envelopes are opened, take out only the sheets that have your name on them. For most of them, that’s only the sheet closest to the plastic window. However, a couple (US Airways MasterCard, for one) also have your name and address printed on a second sheet. Do NOT extract the terms of the credit card, return envelope (though it is very fun to mail old tires with them), stickers, fliers, etc.
4. Unfold each sheet as you pull it out (so it’s not too thick for your shredder, unless, of course, you’re using a wood chipper), giving it a little lengthwise tug to keep it open. As you go, remove any cardboard or plastic “this is not a real credit cards.” (I save those for Hayden.) Also try to remove the gummies that hold on the cards; these aren’t good for the shredder (or wood chipper).
5. Turn on your shredder and feed the ready sheets into it. I like to do this continuously so that obnoxious noise doesn’t last very long. I was amazed that it only took about 5 minutes to shred a big ol’ stack of papers (my shredder has a whopping 5 sheet capacity!).
6. Throw away envelopes and nonsensitive information.

It probably takes longer to read or write this than it does to get rid of all that mail. And I’m not just throwing out the “six months” number because it sounds good; these offers were actually dated to expire last October and November.

I also recommend opting out of credit card mailings in the US by calling 1-888-5-OPT-OUT.

UPDATE: Why you should always shred, not tear up, credit card offers.

Honking at people who are weaving in traffic—even if they aren’t passing me—also works for me.

For more Works for Me Wednesday, visit Rocks in My Dryer, one of the 30 most Popular Parenting Blogs!

My son currently has six teeth: but not the six you’d think. He has three on top and three on the bottom—and not even the same three! I’m guessing the other two teeth will come in soon (one has been ‘trying’ for a while, one not so much), so we’ll be dealing with teething for a while.

It seems like a lot of moms, myself included, are at a loss when it comes to teething. It may be one of those times that you just can’t make everything all better, but there are more than a few ways to help ease your child’s pain. I’ve scoured the Internet for everything from the mundane to the unusual in teething tips, and now, for your gnawing pleasure, “The Giant Compendium of Teething Tips!”

Old Standbys

1. Massaging baby’s gums (if s/he will let you!)
2. Teething biscuits
3. Zwieback
4. Acetaminophen (Tylenol, paracetamol)
5. Ibuprofen (Motrin; better than Tylenol because it also relieves inflamation, the underlying cause of teething pain) Note that you can stagger these two medicines and administer every 2-3 hours, alternating which medicine you give
6. Teething rings (freezing them is old school; refridgerating them may be better)
7. Damp rag, frozen
8. Baby gum numbing gel
9. Cold or frozen foods (including ice) in a mesh feeder
10. Hard objects s/he can’t choke on
11. Ice chips (small enough not to choke on)

Slightly More Unconventional

12. Small dampened stuffed animal, frozen
13. Homeopathic teething tablets (yes, homeopathy is slightly unconventional to me)
14. Homeopathic teething liquid
15. Apples, Asian pears, celery, cucumbers, carrots, etc., preferably cold or frozen (small enough not to choke on)
16. Frozen bagel (small enough not to choke on)
17. A toothbrush
18. Carabiner
19. Music, specifically baby disco (strange only because I’ve never heard of that as a remedy for teething)
20. Frozen flax bean bags (I suppose rice bags could work, too)
21. Clove oil
22. Spoons, especially dipped in cold water or stored in the fridge
23. Frozen corn syrup gel pack
24. Frozen applesauce or other baby food, slushy consistency
25. Magnets

Downright Strange (and Not Recommended)

26. Pen

Or you could always do what I did last night: mysteriously lose hearing in your right ear and sleep on your left side to muffle the sound of his cries. (I’m kidding—I can’t sleep on my left side.)

Got more? Leave a comment or e-mail me at jordan (at) mamablogga.com !

For more tips to make your life easier, visit Rocks in My Dryer, one of the 30 most Popular Parent Blogs, for Works-for-me Wednesday.

[tags]teeth, teething, parenthacks[/tags]

I don’t know what the deal is lately, but Hayden’s been really impatient with car rides. Aside from his normal “Oh, please, Mommy, not the car seat!” rebellion upon opening the back door to the car, he used to be really good. When we drove down to San Diego for Christmas, he could make it almost 2 hours before really starting to lose it.

Two hours has quickly dwindled to about 10 minutes, and sometimes less. And we’re not talking simply being uncomfortable—when Hayden has lost his patience with the car, he throws whatever toy I’d given him to placate him (or his sippy cup) and, if I’m lucky, starts babbling agitatedly. (If I’m not lucky, it’s wailing.)

I assume I am not unique in finding wailing unnerving, especially while wrangling a couple tons of metal in the highway synchronized swimming routine where the penalties are death, injury or property damage.

Saturday night we were driving back from going out with a friend. The trip took, I think, 30 minutes. Hayden was put out before I even dropped my friend off at her car (about 8 minutes’ drive). We finished our conversation, wherein I encouraged her to have children, as she was planning to do, over the tormented wails of my baby. We had about 20 minutes till we got home.

I often try to raise my voice to drown out Hayden’s cries. This shocks most babies long enough to quiet down for at least a little while.

Not Hayden. He was undeterred. He was overtired, too—it was really too late for him to stay out.

Finally, truly in desperation, I tried to get him to fall asleep (something he hasn’t done in months) by singing his bedtime song, “Baby Beluga.” He didn’t fall asleep—but he did fall silent. I quickly segued into his very own song, “Bike Rider.” For the rest of the ride home (and the ride home from his aunt’s tonight, too), he was pretty calm as long as I sang.

It works for us (and it’s a good thing, too!).

This post is part of Works-for-me Wednesday: Car Edition, a blog carnival hosted by Rocks in My Dryer.