I never used soap or high temperatures to wash DS's bottles or pump parts. Just rinsed with water (only) in the bathroom sink and air dried until next use

I have two in daycare right now. They both have L.L. Bean backpacks. There’s plenty of room. I’ve taught my four-year-old to carry it into the car and into the house by herself. Today we had to take home the rest mats and she was able to carry that as well. This frees me up to carry the one year-old and his stuff.

1. Meal planning - We schedule the same five, super easy meals each week, like Taco Tuesday, Spaghetti Wednesday. I keep all the ingredients for these meals on hand at the house at all times.

2. Shopping - Use the past purchases list on Amazon grocery. The things we buy each week automatically load into my cart. Groceries are delivered to our front door.

3. Prepared meal service - We have a Freshly subscription too, which we use as necessary during months or weeks that are especially busy.

Other things we don’t do: playdates, toddler classes, and fancy summer camps. Our kids go to summer camp at school.

We do a boatload of laundry and wash sheets and bedding weekly. Unfortunately necessary given DC’s asthma. When we have more money and a bigger home, we will probably send laundry out.

I also purposely avoid researching gear or kid crap. If it has good ratings on Amazon, it usually works fine enough.

I give my kids Mag Calm Pro and they are out like a light at night and it helps them to poop easily in the morning too. For parents that struggle with their kids taking lots of time in the morning in the bathroom, this is a life saver.

Anonymous wrote:I'll start -

No toddler music/gymboree classes
Wash sheets monthly
No elf on the shelf

Np we wash our sheets every Saturday and Saturday night is my favorite night...clean sheet omg up there with hot coffee and shower. Can not imagine washing them once a month!

All the lamps and lights in our home is on timers. My entire house is lit in the evening and then everything switches off one by one at a certain time.

I taught the following to my kids and these are now habits for them.

- Shower at night before bed.
- Making beds as soon as they get up.
- Packing their school bag and laying out next day clothes that nigh before
- Brushing twice a day, but flossing only at night.
- Leaving their lunch box at the counter as soon as they get home.

These are my meal hacks.

I have menus for dinner from M-F. Kids and DH choose together what they want to eat for dinner. Lunch is usually leftovers. Weekends is takeouts for dinner.

I have an extensive lunchbox menus too. Kids pick together what they want and that is what will get packed. All selections for the next week happens on the Friday before. I use the weekends to get the groceries. I basically follow a formula of what gets packed.

M-M - breakfast is very simple fare that DH makes - toast/bagels, cream-cheese, jam, stuffed omelets/boiled eggs/scrambled eggs, sometimes sausages, cereal of choice or oatmeal, breakfast cookies, chocolate milk/juice/tea and bananas/clementine or apples. We eat the same thing almost every day.

I serve veggis and fruits as first course for lunch and dinner. Meat, carbs, sauces, cheese, savory dishes are served as second course. Dessert is third course. There is no restriction of what my kids eat. No weight problems etc. They just need to eat their veggies and fruits before eating anything else.

No soda, chips or cookies because kids don't like it. Stangely enough they like appetizer kind of foods for snacking - mini quiches, tacos, baked potatoes etc.

- my kid dresses himself (sometimes I lay out clothes, sometimes he just gets dressed)
- he goes in the fridge and gets his own snacks
- I don’t cut up fruit , I let him eat through it
- I don’t turn off the lights at night, he does it
- my kid knows how to get water out the cooler


Biggest hack
I put his plates and cups on the lowest cabinet so he grabs everything and serves himself
Teaching how to navigate the remote - he just changes his own shows


He’s three

I have to search for two camps for two different gender kids who are in different grades and have different interests. I also have to figure out pickups and dropoffs that fits in with our work schedules. Camp signups happens as an iterative process but we have aced it by now.

1) I am friends with the parents of several of my kids friends. We share what camps we are planning for so that some of the other friends can also signup for it. It makes car-pooling easy. We are guilty of camp-hoarding too, so my kids friends can join in too.

2) I overbook all camps. I will sign up for every thing from one camp/location, before proceeding to another vendor/activities. This way, I have full coverage. I start withdrawing from camps only if I get something better for the kids.

3) Other parents and I will be the first people to sign-up our kids for the camps, as soon as registration opens. If it opens at 1 am, we are up and quickly register for it. We have a system for which camps to sign up for.

3) DH and I usually sit together to sign-up and maintain a google calendar for the signups that we share with the kids.

4) Vacation happens at the beginning or at the end of the break. A couple of leisure weeks happens when one of the parent can be off and we basically do nothing but veg out, have playdates, go out to eat, shop for BTS, schedule home/yard improvements and my cleaners come to do a weeklong deep cleaning.

This is a system that has worked very well for several years. My kids like to go to camps that their friends are also going to. So, I do the work to get all the parents organized and the camps then becomes a fun playdate kind of activity.

I have also arranged for EC coaching and classes from private instructors at home for my DD's team. It has been extremely helpful to build a winning team and resulted in good friendships between parents. Kids look forward to these classes because we build in playtime before classes as well as snacks. Parents get a break too and can run errands because kids are having fun with their friends and learning or doing something constructive. Usually, this is a year-round thing. My kids are very social so anything that they want to do (or need to do), we have to make sure that several of the friends are doing it with them.

I made my kids carry their own towel/goggles/pool toys/water bottle to the pool from a very young age. They got a backpack. Goggles and pool toy live in there throughout the summer. Their pass to get into the neighborhood pool is attached with a lanyard. Before we go they have to fill their own water, I'll toss them a snack, and they grab their own clean towel from the closet. It's so nice not to be in charge of giant bags of stuff when we go to the pool. I see other parents like sherpas lugging everything while their kid yells at them demanding their goggles.

Anonymous wrote:Organized activities before 2nd grade

Second grade is waiting too long. Age 5 is where I started seeing real a benefit and they were learning skills. But before that, I agree it doesn’t matter.

Anonymous wrote:I have a rotation of 4 meals that we cycle through.

It makes grocery shopping easy, straightforward and cooking is very fast. We buy fresh fruits in season and minor variations in vegetables but 90% of the time it’s broccoli or green beans. Once or twice a week we get take out for variety, but the 4 meal rotation has gone over well with the family.

I don't know how long you've been doing that, but I can tell you that I can not eat spaghetti or plain white bread because I just was given WAY too much of it as a kid. I can eat other types of pasta or bread, but not those. I feel like we had spaghetti like 3 nights a week!

Anonymous wrote:Oh I forgot I barely brush my 2yo's teeth. She rarely eats anything sugary other than fruit, doesn't drink milk right before bed and her breath doesn't smell bad.

Wth

Anonymous wrote:I ask my DD's best friend's mom what she's doing for certain things and just do that. Best hack ever. She is a huge research nerd.

This is the best thing in the world. When my daughter was in preschool she made friends with a little girl who had an older sister. Their mom was very type A and had researched everything. Anytime my kid asked about any activity I would just ask her and she’d have a list of the best dance studios and their philosophies, soccer teams and piano teachers! It’s awesome!