November’s favorite things are nerdy mom things – cleaners, organizers, and kitchen items! This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission if you choose to purchase any of these items (at no extra cost to you).
As I’m writing up this post, I’m finally accepting the fact that I’m a mid-30’s mom of three. I mean, my favorite things (that are truly making my days better) are cleaning supplies, organizing charts, and kitchen appliances. Oh man, I really am old!
1 : our new organizer
Since we moved into our new house, we have not been really good about setting up a good rhythm and flow for chores, cleaning, laundry, etc. With a new house, it’s crazy the amount of things you have to change! But also, we moved right after we had a huge shift in our life: Isaac starting Kindergarten. We no longer have restful afternoons together where we can get our chores done as a family after quiet time. I drive to go pick Isaac up, and I leave with both of the girls by 2:30. Then we get back by 3:30 and go right into the “after school rush”. If you have school aged kids, then you know.
Anyways – all of that is to say…life feels WAY more crazy than it did before, and it has been getting a little overwhelming when we’re trying to figure out how to continue working, be a taxi, take care of the kids AND keep the house clean.
Enter: the nerdy but way exciting addition to our fridge.
Have you heard about issue of the mental load of women vs. men in the home? This is something we’re trying to work on in our house, especially as I am struggling to get time to work and I still have all of the mental load of the “house stuff” that needs to be done. My husband is more than willing to help, but often he just doesn’t know what needs to be done.
By adding the day’s chores that need to be done in a visible space, I can cross off what’s been done that day, and then when my husband gets home, he can see what has/has not been done (without asking me). Then he jumps in and picks up on the tasks that haven’t been done yet.
I cannot even tell you how exciting this is for us. I know I know – nerdy. BUT if we can be consistent with this, it can be really life-changing for our family!
Also – it’s inexpensive. You can buy yours here if you want to implement the same system in your home!
The only thing I don’t love: the markers that come with it. They’re FINE but I’ll eventually be replacing them. Also I don’t think we’ll keep the little magnets that come with it. But it’s still totally worth the purchase for me!
2 : steam mop for our new wood floors!
We had a steam mop years ago that finally died maybe 6 months ago. We went without for a while, and now that we JUST got new floors put into our house (literally – they just finished last night) we knew we’d need to do the best we could to keep them clean and in great condition.
I had heard about this steam mop through Jen (TheRamblingRedhead) and put it on my list to get once our floors were installed!
As per our cleaning chart above – I have it scheduled to steam mop every weekend. And then we wash the towels & the steam mop pads in with our other cleaning cloths, so we didn’t feel like we needed to buy more pads (the steam mop comes with two pads)
It really is crazy – I’ll sweep and vacuum and our floors LOOK very clean, but once I steam mop them, I realize they are NOT clean at all!
The pro and the con: the long cord. I really kind of wish it was cordless, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. Also, since it’s not cordless, at least it has a long cord so I can go between multiple rooms when it’s plugged into the hallway outlet.
Check out the steam mop here – and the amazing reviews too!
3 : our air fryer!
I talked on my food Instagram page about how I am usually someone who is all against a new trend until it’s no longer trending – and then I buy it. Ha! What can I say – I’m pretty stubborn.
The whole air fryer trend wasn’t too interesting to me. Sure – seemed cool but it was a giant appliance I didn’t want taking up valuable space in my kitchen.
Butttt then I got told to eat a whole foods plant based diet. (again – more of that on my food IG and blog!). Now that we were eating 2-3 different kinds of veggies at dinner, and I wanted some new ways to cook them to keep things interesting.
So I swallowed my pride and checked out alllll the air fryers. I finally picked this one to ask for my birthday present (would be a great Christmas present too!) and here’s why I chose this one:
- It’s ceramic coated- not Teflon.
- I am pretty picky with not using non-stick things in our kitchen. There’s so many toxins that are released from Teflon and other non-stick kitchen items – right into the food we eat! A lot of air fryers use the non-stick coating that I avoid – this was the only bigger and ceramic coated one I could find!
- The size!
- Size DOES matter with air fryers. I have talked with people that love theirs, but wish it was just a little bit bigger. I got the 5.5 quart one and I’m really glad I did! We have 5 people that we feed in our house every night, and I want to make sure it all gets cooked well and evenly. I’m so glad I got the bigger size!
- The reviews
- I am a review junkie – I must spend hours reading reviews of items I want to purchase before I click “buy”! The positive reviews sold me on this one (but really on everything I have listed in this post too).
I also love the broiler rack option! The only thing I STILL don’t love about air fryers is the amount of space they take up in the kitchen. I planned to put it in our pantry when we weren’t using it, but we’re using it basically every day! So it’s been staying on the counter.
The other thing I’m looking forward to : using it in the summer without making the kitchen hot!
4 : The most random one
I heard about these from Young House Love and bought them before we got our floors – and knew I’d be so thankful I did once we got our furniture back on the floors!
You know when you drag furniture (especially chairs/bar stools) across the floor and they have those sticky furniture pads that come off & leave the sticky residue on the floor? Or is that just me?
These are NAIL ON and they don’t do that to your floors! They’re inexpensive and you literally just hammer them onto the bottom of your furniture – so simple!
The con – they won’t work if your furniture has a hollow space in the middle of the legs. But if it’s solid, it’s perfect!
If you want to check them out, click here!
The other things I bought recently with my own money & would recommend:
also – check out last month’s favorite things – I still love all of those things & I’m using them every day!
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Lydia says
I’d love to hear more about what you are enjoying making in your air fryer. Like you, I tend to avoid a trend until it’s not cool anymore…and lately I keep thinking that maybe I should try an air fryer, but just am not convinced that I’d use it enough to justify it.