How to find a job in a bad economy

As I was scrubbing a toilet this morning, I got to thinking about how many times people have asked how I started my business, The Cleaner Sweep.  Let me tell you...

About two years ago, my sister and her husband made the decision to pick up their family and move their lives to the other side of the country. They made this decision for some very good reasons, but they made this decision without jobs. I assured my brother-in-law that he would be able to get a job at a call centre to get the finances started up again, and then he could start looking for a job in his field. It took him a month and a half to get hired at one of the three call centres in the area.

Meanwhile, my sister realized she needed to get a job to help out, at least until her hubby found other work. She applied for a variety of jobs and finally got asked to come work for one of the Big Name cleaning services. She lasted two days before they told her she didn't need to come back. (Knowing what I know about her, it was certainly not her work ethic or attention to detail that bothered them.) My guess is they just didn't have enough work for a new girl.

So we  sat around and cried and worried and waited until someone called us and told us they wanted to pay us to form our own company and gave us an instruction manual on how to build a successful business  chatted and wondered and prayed and eventually one of us said, “Let's just start our own company!” We called our mom, the Tax Lady, and asked her a few tax-related questions about how to set up a business. Then we made up flyers and put ads online on those free advertising sites (Craiglist, Kijiji, etc.) and within a day or two we had a job lined up. Within a month we had five regular clients!

One and a half years later, my sister has, consistently, been working as much as she wants (which is a good thing as her husband is still stuck in that awful call centre.)  We've had to turn away business. We are known by our clients to be hard-working cleaners with great attention to detail. And it was built from an idea in my kitchen, using our hands and hard work. God has definitely blessed our determination to work.

The point of all this is:
There is work, even in a bad economy. To quote a movie that my parents enjoy, “There are the Haves and the Have-Nots.” You just need to figure out where the money is and how people are willing to spend it. Day-time childcare, house-cleaning, cooking/shopping for a busy family... There are all sorts of SAHM type jobs that someone wants to pay you to do! Find out what it is and where those people are and advertise where they'll see it.

People have asked me specifics about how we started our company and I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has in the comments section.

My perspective on "Family Faith Talks"

(I wrote this as a comment on my friend's blog post, Family Faith Talks.  And then as I was proof-reading my comment I realized that I'm far too long-winded to be commenting and I'd better just write it on my own post.  But please read his original post to get some context on what I'm writing.)

We have been trying to read a chapter from the Bible every day since last spring (six months ago, I guess.) We're on Mark 9. We started in Matthew.

Yeah, we didn't get very far. We let it slide for a while. But when we've slumped, my husband suddenly remembers and tells the youngest to go get his Bible. (His is the most kid-friendly version to read and understand.)

The kids (6, 8, 10) really do enjoy curling up on the couch and listening to a chapter. I read since I have a better reading voice, but my hubby and I will each interject questions about what we're reading. And what I love most about where we are right now is that the kids are starting to say, "We already read that story in Matthew!"

They know these stories from Sunday School but now we actually get to talk about them and answer questions that they may not think about in the higher-paced Sunday School format. We love speculating about the Messianic Secret (although they have no idea that it's called that) and looking to see when demons were speaking vs when it was the actual person. (My smarty-pants 8 year-old girl asked just last night if a demon was speaking through Peter... Right before I read the part where Jesus rebuked the demon in Peter!)

And since our worship team practice happens a couple nights a week in our living room around our piano, we open up the worship team binders and get the kids singing along. They may not be fully participating in the worship the way we are, but they are seeing it being modeled in a real way, on a regular basis and they are "practicing worship".  (That's not to detract from their worship either.  Only they know where their hearts are when we're singing.)

As my friend said in his post, there's no Biblical command for daily/weekly family faith talks. I've found that it just becomes part of your family life, whether it's a structured time or seizing on the teachable moments. I think using the teachable moments means just as much as those scheduled times.

How about your family?  Have you been able to have structured family time to discuss faith-filled matters?  Do they come and go?  I'd also love to hear from more experienced parents whose children have left the nest to lead their own families.

The Best Kind of Best Friend

Here's how you know your daughter has an awesome best friend:



My girl and her friend were playing at the park.  I just told my girl that it was time to come home.  She dutifully came inside and opened the window to yell a parting farewell to her awesome best friend.  Her awesome best friend yells back, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you!  Hebrews 4:14.  Or something like that  I just made up the last part.  I don't know where it is."

And then we spent the next minute or so discussing where we thought it might be.  (It's Hebrews 13:5, she was close.)

Sneaky Music Theory

We have struggled to get our six year old interested in playing piano.  The older two love it and even ask for us to find certain songs that they can learn and play in their free time.  My husband (the piano teacher) had enough a couple days ago and vented to me that he didn't know what to do to get the kid learning the notes properly.

I brainstormed and came up with this fun idea which combines snack time with music theory.  At the end of snack time yesterday, the youngest asked, "Can we do this snack again tomorrow?"  Yes, please!

We made up a word list of all the note-names on the piano (A-B-C-D-E-F-G), Then I had the kids spell the words with their snack mix on the music staff...

I told the kids that once they were done, they

could spell any word they wanted and they'd

get as many M&Ms as letters they used.

 B-E-A-D-E-D

 D-E-A-D

A good time was had by all!

All Night Long

How we finally got our 6 year old son to stay dry at night!

Sometimes I write about funny things; sometimes I write about life events. This time, I'm writing about something personal and kind of gross.  Poop.  And night-time peeing.

So if you don't like reading about poop or pee, go away.  If you'd like to know how we got our son to finally stay dry at night, please pull up a chair and listen to our story.

The boy has had no problems in the daytime since he was 3.5 years old.  He's never been consistently dry at night.  It got to the point that we bought cloth pull-ups (Super Undies!) to save money.

My very good friend told me about a book called "It's No Accident: Breakthrough Solutions to Your Child's Wetting, Constipation, UTIs, and Other Potty Problems" by Steve J Hodges, MD.  I read it and it was like a light bulb went on in my head about what the problem might be.  Constipation!  Armed with the knowledge from the book, we tried a "natural" laxative called lactulose but it didn't seem to do too much.  We got lazy about it since it wasn't consistently working and went back to doing the "same old same old."

A few months later, we were approaching The Boy's 7th birthday.  Age Seven seems to be the benchmark age at which doctors start seriously considering night-time bed-wetting issues.  So we made our appointment and went in.  The doctor asked a few questions and determined that The Boy had an overactive bladder (something that will correct itself over time.)

Then he had The Boy get up on the examination table.  After listening to his bowels moving (how cool is that???) he said, "His bowels aren't moving quickly enough."  I didn't know you could hear that with a stethoscope.  Now I want a stethoscope of my own so I can listen to all the different body sounds we've got going on.

He didn't give me his stethoscope, but he gave me something much better, ground-breaking advice.  Are you ready for it?  Do you want your world to be rocked?  No more night-time laundry?  Here's what he told us to do:

"Give The Boy a smoothie each morning.  Put some ground flax seed in it.  Put lots of fresh fruit in it; veggies too if he'll tolerate them.  Then, get him up to pee every night.  Do this for a year.  Come back if you have any problems."

At this point I'm thinking, "We've kind of already tried that.  Okay, not exactly like you said, but we've done the laxative thing and we've tried getting him up at night.  Maybe not together and maybe not every day.  I'll try it, but I'm pretty sure this isn't going to work."  


And then we got home.  We made smoothies.  The Boy even got to pick the colour of the smoothies.  (Green was fun.  He didn't even blink when I told him it had kale in it.  He likes kale chips.)  We got him up to pee every night before we went to bed.  And he was dry the second night we started.  Then the third night, and fourth, and fifth.  We've been doing this for three and a half weeks, and he's only had one night-time accident, the night after we forgot to make the smoothies.

It works!  

Two nights ago, as the kids were getting ready for bed an hour early, The Boy asked, "Mom, do I need to put SuperUndies on right now?"  I told him not to bother wearing them that night.  And last night too.  It may be a bit premature to be throwing a "Dry Nights Party", but we're fairly excited to have had this many dry nights.

If you're interested, here's what we do for our smoothie (which all three kids and I drink, The Boy getting the full cup before we divvy up the rest.)

Flax seed smoothie!

1 banana
1/2 cup to 1 cup of your favourite berries
2 Tbsp ground flax seed
1 small yogurt
1.5 cups juice 

Blend with hand blender.  Serve.  Enjoy.  
Check teeth for seeds.

(If you want to change it up, instead of yogurt and juice put milk with chocolate sauce.  The kids thought that was a great treat!)

If you've had success or if you're struggling with your own child's night-time bed-wetting, I'd love to hear what you've tried.  Drop me a line or two in the comments section!

Funnies from Riley

Two nights ago I made homemade lasagna, complete with hand-cranked lasagna noodles.

 Last night I waxed my eyebrows and left the strips to dry as usual.

This morning, my eight-year-old daughter walked into our bedroom and asked, "Dad, why is Mom making little lasagna noodles in the bathroom?"

 

Need some calamine lotion for that?

I've been noticeably silent for a while.  While I'm sure some of you have been thankful for that, I've been feeling guilty about ignoring you for so long.  After spending a busy summer running around with my family and my new business, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. 

Curiously, I find myself even busier.  But I'm more focused now, too.  I've re-dedicated myself to being there for my kids when they need me and to providing a safe and healthy home for them.  Part of what that means is that I'm making even more of an effort to cook things from scratch.  I realize that cooking from scratch means different things to different people.  I want to see how scratchy I can get in my cooking.  Today I rendered lard.  If you don't know what that is you'll find out soon enough (but only if you want to.)

I like this blog as it gives me a place to be random.  But I've also felt that with my new semi-organized self it made more sense to have a blog dedicated to the "from scratch" stuff that I do.  So, I will be posting homemade, from scratch stuff on another blog called "Scratch That".  (Check it out to see about the rendering lard thing-a-ma-hooey.)  I'll try to keep up over here too, but I really felt like I needed to have a different place to try to be "scratchy".  So I hope you join me over on the other side.