When I was about six months pregnant, a coworker of mine told me a story about visiting her sister and newborn niece. In this story, it took five hours to leave the house for a grocery run. "Five hours?" I recall saying, incredulous. "Yup- I couldn't believe it, but it was that hard to just leave the house. She kept needing to do everything over and over again, and we just never could leave."

I decided right then that I would not be like that. I would not be a person that took a long time to leave the house with a baby. And so after my son was born I put a lot of thought into how to leave the house- the amount of time it takes, the supplies that are really required, and how to somehow make it easier.

Lately a very good friend who's baby is due next week has been asking for my efficiently-leaving-the-house technique. So here it is: Plan, pack, feed, diaper, and go!

Stop and think about what you need to bring. If it is a bunch of stuff, make a checklist and use it to stay focused. If nothing else: Diaper bag, snacks, phone, keys and wallet.

Pack the car/stroller/bike trailer with everything you need, except for the baby. This is made far easier if baby is in a sling, wrap, or soft carrier!

Feed the baby, or at least offer food. If the baby refuses, take baby for a walk around your living room and then try again. If the baby refuses to eat again, baby is probably not hungry, so go to the next step.

Change the baby's diaper (and clothing, if baby spat up). You know the drill.

Leave! Now! Decisively! If the baby screams, check the obvious (neck skin pinched by car seat straps?) and quickly fix, as needed. Do not let a fussy baby stop you. If there is no immediately fixable cause to screaming, just take some deep breaths and leave with fussy baby in tow.

The reason that you can just leave is that you know your beloved child is actually fine. You know the child is fine because you've just, right then, taken care of all its most important needs. The screaming is simply due to some disruption or stress from the act of leaving, and thus, trying to calm the baby will only result in another screaming bout when you try to leave a second time. By just doing it - leaving! - the baby learns that the hubbub and frustration goes away quickly, that the parent is remaining calm, and that screaming doesn't actually help. With practice, the screaming and fussing during leaving time will subside, and pretty soon you'll have a much, much easier time leaving the house.

I can't say that this will work for every parent and child out there, but it works really well for our household. I can proudly say that it has never taken me more than 45 minutes to leave the house (and about 35 minutes of that time is usually spent breastfeeding) and I almost always make it on time to lunch dates, appointments, and other time commitments. So remember: Plan, pack, feed, diaper, and then go! - Leigh G.

When my twins were born, I was suddenly thrust into the world of being a stay-at-home mom. Naively, I had never pictured what my life would be like once I had children. When the option was available for me to stay home, I knew that was the best choice for us, but I had no idea how to manage our day-to-day. How does one go about making the change from being career-focused to being in charge of running a home and family?

I was thrilled when I discovered Simple Mom, a blog written by Tsh Oxenreider. Tsh’s writing has been an inspiration to me, and her blog’s motto, “Live simply, stay sane. Life hacks for home managers,” is right up my alley.

Tsh recently wrote a fantastic blog post called 20 Tips for Finding Your Routine With Kids. This post is a great overview about learning the ins and outs of being a stay-at-home mom. Not only does she provide the promised 20 tips on getting through your day while taking care of your home and your children, she also discusses getting into a routine and ideas about setting a schedule that is good for your family. This is exactly the post I could have used when I was learning to be a stay-at-home mom. Honestly, even three years later, I am still learning to find my groove and this post gave me some great ideas. Maybe it can provide you with some ideas and inspiration on ways to streamline the management of your family! - Sara I.

Most likely in response to the fact that parents everywhere rue itchy tags that bug their kids, a lot of kid clothing these days has no tag at all. This is a problem for hanging things up on hooks, and thus, a problem for people like me that are seemingly incapable of keeping the entryway of our house tidy without being able to hang things on hooks.

The solution is simple: Sew on your own hang tag on the most "frequent offenders" of messiness. By hand, this is a five- to seven-minute project. On a machine, if you're the kinda person who knows how to sew, this is about a sixty-second endeavor.

Just take a 3" scrap of ribbon, fold the edges under twice (see schematic) and pin it to the garment you need a hang tag applied to. Pin either side of each folded area to prevent unraveling before you sew. You'll need about a 1 1/2" span of ribbon remaining to make the hang tag convenient, and the reason you want to fold it under twice is to prevent excess fraying.


The brick red line is your garment, the blue is your ribbon, and the thin arrows represent where to sew. From there I think you'll be able to get it just right. Now you can be a little bit more organized with your child's jacket, your infant sling, your kid's favorite blanket... whatever! - Leigh G.

Do you have a limited play space? We sure do. To keep the mess at bay, we've come up with a simple solution that is both tidy and cheap - a bucket-based toy rotation.

Hang a nice looking shelf somewhere high enough that your child cannot reach it. Find some containers (we use one recycled bucket and one bucket that came with a toy set). Then communicate with your partner that the rule is that only one bucket can be off the shelf at any given time, and stick to it.

The benefits of this system are clear once you've gotten used to it. You never have a huge horrible mess of toys, because half of them are always put away. Forgotten toys in one bucket are far more exciting when they are reunited with their pint-sized owner days later - almost as if they are brand new. Teaching the art of pointing to what you want, a very important baby skill, is easy when the buckets are two different shapes, colors, or sizes.

Perhaps most importantly, your child (and you) is encouraged to learn to pick up one mess before another one is created. If you really stick to the one bucket at a time rule, soon your kid will start to help you pack up the old bucket with the desire to get to the new one. A good lesson to instill early! - Leigh G.

When my first child was born I had a baby book, first-year calendar and a journal where I wrote down her milestones and first words. With my second it was the book and calendar. My fourth was lucky to get the calendar! Offline solutions for recording precious moments and memories as my child grows don’t seem to be working and that’s why I’m intrigued by Keepaboo.

Keepaboo is not an online scrapbook, which is appealing to someone like me who’s never had an interest in scrapbooking and doesn’t want to think about page layouts and design. But it also isn't as DIY as starting up a blog, pulling elements together, and ending up with a basic way to post photos, videos and pictures in a chronological stream. Think of Keepaboo as more of an online suite replacing the standard baby book and even scrapbook. You can collect, record and even share moments and milestones from your baby’s first year. You can keep a parent diary, create picture galleries, track your baby’s growth and “write down” the memorable things your baby is sure to say.

Everything you record is put into your baby’s LifeBook, an online 3D book you can browse like a real baby book. Plus you can create custom books with themes such as Baby’s First Birthday or Grandma’s Brag Book. Keepaboo plans to offer the ability to print hardcover versions of your keepsake books, which is clearly their money-making strategy - great for us, because it means the site itself is completely free to use.

Keepaboo is a wonderful way for parents to capture those first-year (and second-, third- and fourth-year) memories in one place and share them with family and friends. It’s the perfect solution for a mom who’s online as often as I am and tired of dusting off her daughter’s current baby book! - Emily H.