Tag: house

Baby

First Time Parents: Keeping the Cleaning Simple

Jayne1 Comment
First Time Parents
Photo by Felipe Salgado on Unsplash

For first time parents, the first few months of your baby’s life is an absolutely wonderful time, but some of it can seem a little overwhelming and mysterious. In the lead up to the birth, your mind will be absolutely full of questions and worries, with preparations taking over the majority of your thoughts.

One of those pressing concerns is making sure that the house is clean and tidy enough to bring a newborn into, as well as being able to keep the place in order once your little one or ones are home, without sacrificing too much time with your precious new arrival. With this in mind, I thought I’d give you some tips on little things that you can do which will make things more simple for you:

Declutter in Advance

One thing on which most new parents will agree is that newborns require a lot of STUFF. Your usually minimalist space will suddenly contain dummies, muslins, toys, books, nappies, a million babygrows, teethers, wipes, changing bags, nappy bins…the list goes on! Something that can really help is having a serious declutter before baby comes along. This will ensure that your house isn’t full of unneccesary stuff that will just give you more to dust and tidy in the long run.

Keep it Simple

When you’re recovering from birth, looking after a baby and probably hosting a whole slew of family and friends, you want to make sure you get as much rest as possible. Grabbing 40 winks when the baby sleeps is one of the most important tips I can give first time parents, but once you feel rested enough to tackle the housework, just take care of the basics. No-one cares if your windows aren’t spotless or if your oven hasn’t been deep cleaned. Vacuuming, washing up, laundry, cleaning loos – that’s all fairy vital. Almost everything else can wait!

Use a Sling

When Sausage finally came home from the NICU, she did NOT like to be put down for very long, which made doing almost everything tricky. Then, I invested in a sling and suddenly, life was easier! Sauage was more than happy hanging around on my front while I did washing up, vacuuming, all sorts of stuff (although nothing involving chemicals or fumes, obvs!) and it was lovely to have that closeness. By the time BB came along, I was a pro and the sling was deployed straight away.

Accept Help

Everyone tells you to accept help if it’s offered, but so many first time parents are too proud or don’t want to be an inconvenience. But seriously, if someone is offering help, ACCEPT IT! Your parents, siblings and friends all want to feel like they’ve been able to help you, so you should let them. Something simple like chucking a wash in the machine, loading the dishwasher or pushing the hoover round will be a minor effort for them, but a big load off for you. It will also give you more precious time with baby.

Do you have any handy tips for first time parents? I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice!

Home · Money

5 Tips to Financing your Next Home

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Everybody, once you become an adult, you would love to enjoy your private space. Having your own home is a dream come true for most people in the world. However, as we all know, that does not come easy. You have to be ready to work for it.

Money is the main factor that can limit you from making a down payment or paying the new house in full. You may need some help in this area. This article focuses on giving you five tips 

that you will need the next time you are making an investment of this magnitude.

Do you need a new home?

Any dream is achievable. However, you have to sit down and analyze whether you require this new home or not.

One of the things you have to analyze is your income. Most lenders will give you reasons why you should take a mortgage. You should nevertheless think about the risk that you are about to undertake. Even if you qualify for a particular mortgage limit, it does not mean that you can pay it off in time.

Thus, if buying a house can wait for some time, you had better do so.

Preparing to acquire the property

Once you think that you are ready to invest in a new home, you have to think of ways of investing in this new asset. If you do not have the ability to pay in full, then your other option is to look for a mortgage.

Before you even start the process, ensure that you prepare beforehand. For instance, you could try to work on your credit score. If it is low, then you lower your chances of getting a mortgage. However, if you can work on getting up, then you can increase your chances by a considerable margin.

A good credit score, by the way, can range between 650 and over. If it is below that, you can work towards improving it.

Look for various borrowing options

Here is where many people make mistakes. You can get the wrong option if you do not shop around to see the various options available. There are many lenders in this space, which means that you have to be keen when making a decision.

Here are the mortgage options you can consider:

– Use a private lender

If you have a poor score on your credit, you can look for a person or a private business that offers that. This is a good option for people that do not have documents required to acquire a mortgage.

– Make a deal with a homebuilder

Most home builders provide in-house mortgages, which you could also use. Nevertheless, you have to be keen when agreeing with these types of lenders.

– Using FHA mortgage

Most federal banks support these loans because they are affordable to many. Even when you have a bad credit score, you could get the mortgage as long as you make a 10% down payment.

Other financing options include rent to own, using your retirement account and crowdfunding.

Final remarks

Before you make any purchases, you have to ensure that you analyze your current situation. For instance, with a new home, you may have to adjust your current budget to help pay for the mortgage you just committed to repaying it. 

Remember also that people take years to finish paying off a mortgage. Therefore, ensure that you make the right decisions and consult professionals in this area.

 

 

 

 

 

Family

Family Admin: The Background Work In A Successful Household

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Being a parent is often considered a full-time job, and this makes sense when you think about all of the work you have to do. You will have to feed, clean, and help your child to sleep, while also providing them with an early education and plenty of play, eating a huge amount of the time you used to spend on other things. When you’ve got this much on your plate, it can be all too easy to find yourself making mistakes or ignoring crucial work which could have a big impact on your life. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring a range of different admin areas, giving you some easy ways to handle them when you’re trying to keep your family moving in the right direction.

Money

While it might be a subject which people don’t like to think about too much, money is crucial to your family, and is one of the key areas which you need to focus on. Children can be extremely expensive, often costing their parents a small fortune before they reach adulthood. During this time, you’re going to need to be on top of your money, or you could find yourself struggling to give your little ones everything they need. You can find some examples of the areas you need to keep in mind below.

Savings: Saving money when you’re having to spend a lot can be a difficult task, and a lot of people choose to have small comforts instead. Having savings behind you will make it easier to afford the big things in your child’s life, like getting their first car or paying for college. There are loads of tools on the market which are designed to help with this, from bank accounts which can manage your saving for you, to financial experts who can be on hand to help you to make the tough choices which come with your money.

Debt: It’s likely that you’ll get into some sort of debt as a parent, whether this is the occasional credit card spending or something much larger, like a mortgage. When you borrow the wrong kind of money, though, it can often be a challenge to pay what you owe, and a lot of people struggle with this. A debt relief order can help your family to get out of debt. In most cases, though, it’s best to work hard to avoid this position, putting time and effort into the background work to avoid debt.

Taxes & Bills: As the last part of this to consider, it’s time to think about the tax and bills you pay. A lot of people struggle to cover these parts of their lives when they have kids, and even doing the work to get them paid can be a challenge. It’s well worth looking for help if you’re struggling with this, though you should be putting enough time into working on it to avoid this. If you need help to get started, there are countless blogs around the web which are in place to cover this sort of work.

Education

Giving your child the best possible education your home town can offer is crucial to their success in the future. Even if they don’t like going to school, being in a good one will make it far easier for them to get good grades, though you will have to be on top of a lot of admin work to make this possible. Schools are becoming increasingly competitive, and will often open applications long before your child would be old enough to enroll. This makes it worth doing plenty of research to figure out the process you’ll have to go through at least a year before they start. There are a lot of Facebook groups which are filled with knowledgeable parents who have gone through the same process in the past.

Medical

Along with enrolling your child in a good school, it also makes sense to make sure that they have access to a quality doctor. A lot of people ignore this factor when they are thinking about their children, assuming that they will be healthy for years to come. Of course, though, it’s impossible to tell what might be around the corner, and the help of an experienced health expert could be invaluable. You can research your local doctors, but will also have to fill out a bit of paperwork to make sure that they are ready for your child. In a lot of cases, it will be worth having the little one see a professional like this on a regular basis until they have developed enough for you to be confident.

Moving Home

A lot of families have to move home during their first few years together. As your unit grows, your old home will lack the space and resources you need to function properly, and this will put a strain on everyone. When you decide to move, a lot of the work you’ve done in the past will be reset. For example, if you’ve signed your child up with local medical professionals, but move to a different town, you’re going to have to go through this process again to avoid having to go back to the old place every time the kids need help. There are organisations out there which are happy to help with this, though it will also be worth taking steps to make it easier for yourself. Making a to-do list will be very helpful, giving you the chance to forget about your mountain of jobs to focus on one at a time.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to start taking your family admin work more seriously. A lot of people struggle with this, finding it hard to know what needs to be done when they are trying to build a successful household. This sort of work is becoming more and more crucial in the modern world, and a lot of people are finding themselves having to put time into it.

Home

Making Our Current Home Work for Us

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Making Our Home Work for Us
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Next week, Sausage starts senior school. She turned eleven a few weeks ago and suddenly seems so grown up. She currently shares a bedroom with her sister, which was their choice when we moved in, but a lot can change in the space of four years and I think Sausage is craving her own space. It will be even more important when she has homework to do and needs a quiet place to do it, so we’re having a re-jig of the whole home, to make it work for us.

We have three bedrooms in our home – one for Husband and I, one for the girls and another which is used as an office/dressing room/junk room. Sausage is going to have the room that Husband and I are in so that she and BB have rooms which are the same size, while Husband and I will move into his office and the dining room will become the office.

Both girls would like their bedrooms decorated too, and their colour choices could not be a better illustration of their differing personalities. Sausage wants her bedroom to be purple with black accents, and BB wants hers to be even more pink than it already is! Everyone says they look alike, but I always counter that with “…but their personalities are VERY different!” We’re buying a new bed for Sausage as she’s currently in bunk beds with her sister, and she’s looking forward to choosing one.

At the moment, what we call “the dining room” isn’t actually used for anything close to dining. It’s where Sausage’s budgie, Bagel, lives, as well as the family’s bikes. Our shed isn’t massively secure, so we keep the bikes inside, but this will definitely need to change. As well as a bed, we need to invest in some sort of bike storage for the home, like a shed or lockable bike box to keep everything safe and secure.

We need to do a few other things around the house, too. Our kitchen floor needs replacing and we have the tiles, we just need to get around to actually laying them! Our upstairs bathroom is in a state of disrepair, just because it’s quite old, so we’re hoping our landlady will take care of some of that this year too.

I think the only room we’re not doing anything to is the living room! However, once we get all of the moving around and rearranging done, our home will work a whole lot better for us.

Home

Think It’s Time To Move House? Let’s Look At What You Should Do

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You’ve been comfortably living in a fitting home for a while now, and whilst it’s been a blast, you think the tenure here has reached its last legs. It would be lovely to stay here forever and not have to put in the effort regarding relocation, but that’s not the world we live in. As weeks, months, and years go by, your life changes and your situation changes. You’re a completely different person or a completely different family to what you were just a few years ago, and it’s time to find a place to suit your new needs.

If you’ve been through this stuff a fair few times before, then you’ll know all of the aspects it entails – and there are quite a lot, huh? Whilst it’s not a hugely troubling affair, it does need some thought. Let’s have a little look at some of the stuff you should do in the lead up to the potential move.

Plan Things In Advance

Like a lot of things in life, you should probably have a little plan of action written down for you and those around you to follow. If you are doing everything off-the-cuff, then it may get a little confusing as there are many steps.  Check out this moving home checklist from Pink Storage.

Get Your Home Ready To Be Sold  

When the current home eventually leaves your grasp, you’ll want more than enough money in return. If you can afford to invest heavily to hike the price up, then good for you, but you don’t always need a big overhaul – little aesthetic changes can up the value a lot. When it comes to actually letting go, you can go through the traditional process, or you can sell quickly. You can visit the Flying Homes website and others that are similar if you want to take a lot at how that system operates. It is good to make sure everything is looking fresh and smart before leaving as you don’t want potential buyers think it’s a sty!                                                                                                                                                   

Figure Out What Type

There are a bunch of different styles of house in the world, and it’s up to you to choose which would be best. Your initial thoughts are probably to find something similar to what you have now but upgraded or downsized, but there might be something unorthodox out there that suits you perfectly.

Look Up Movers

The whole thing takes a lot of effort – and physically is needed on the day as you’ll be on your feet lifting stuff. If you want some help, then you should probably research companies that handle this process for you so that you can kick back when you have the chance.

Don’t Stress!

It’s easier said than done, but this entire process doesn’t need to keep you on edge throughout. Sure, it can occupy your mind quite a lot as it’s a significant chapter in your life, but there’s no need to worry about it. The moving process is something everybody goes through, and if it were so difficult, nobody would get it over the line! It’s a piece of cake, so enjoy it as much as you can.