Mom Hacks, Tips & Tricks

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links.                 My new life passion is optimizing my car. For years I’ve treated my suburban like a trash can tornado, but I’ve officially put an end to that way of living. I spend a lot of time in my car and I finally got tired of opening the door to a rancid smell and random items spilling out. It’s a new day, friends! There is absolutely no reason that I should not enjoy climbing in my car and taking my kids on an outing. The trick is to add in a couple habits and buy a few items for full optimization. Here’s what I’ve done: Trunk Organization  A fellow Red Stick Mom writer shared about organizing...

I grew up wanting to do everything. Play every sport, join every club, chair every event, volunteer for everything, etc. This mindset of I can do everything literally started at age 7 when I left dance class and went to my flag football practice right after. Still, to this day, I am the yes girl. I’ll lend a hand, start that committee, and attend this event. I cannot seem to drop the mindset of needing to do it all. Becoming a mom only seemed to intensify this desire. We live in a world where moms seem to do it all. From cooking to cleaning to chauffeuring to breadwinning. Women do it all. But I can tell you when you...

Having a shared family iCloud album has turned into a new medium for communicating with my family. I got the idea years ago from a friend I worked for and tweaked the idea. She and all of her extended family all contributed pictures and updates from their families in a shared album. She loved it for keeping up with her nieces, nephews, and siblings. Only a handful of months after having my daughter, I was, frankly, exhausted from hearing my family tell me they hadn’t seen her lately… most of the time, they had seen her just the week before. I remembered my friend’s shared iCould album from years ago. I decided to take on the idea and tweak it to my...

It is comical that I, a mom free of any culinary ability, would offer up a recipe blog. You should probably not ask me for advice on how to make dinner for your children. Even crockpot meals intimidate me. But thanks to my mom, who has become quite the cook, I have mastered making bacon. So, if I can make perfect bacon, so can you. Because perfect bacon really is divine. Buy the good stuff. Thick-cut slices of bacon are where it’s at. Wright’s applewood bacon is my personal fave, although Wrights Hickory Bacon will also do. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Then loudly discourage your toddlers from touching the oven as it heats up.            ...

I … am a skincare junkie. I love it. I spend an inordinate amount of time searching about skincare, looking up trends, perusing beauty stores online, and generally obsessing over ways to stop the clock and bring out my clearest, brightest skin. In fact, I’m wearing a sheet mask as a type this, and I just spent waaaay too much money on a special light-up doodad that’s supposed to give me the perfect “at-home spa experience” (shhhh … don’t tell my husband.) And don’t even get me started on r/skincareaddiction #IYKYK Over the last 25+ years, my routine has consisted of the bare minimum all the way to the 10-step Korean skincare system and everything in between. I’ve used only all-natural, organic products. I’ve used...