Organizational tips to help keep your home spotless:

A clean home equals a clean mind. The best way to keep your home truly clean is to do a little bit of cleaning every day instead of letting it pile up. Developing these habits will prevent any critters from finding their way into your home, and will also decrease the spreading of germs and allergens in your home, helping your family stay healthy. It also encourages kids to establish strong habits of picking up after themselves and creates a greater sense of responsibility.

We’ve assembled a list of recommendations for how often you should be cleaning the different areas of your home.

Every day:

• Wash countertops and appliance handles with disinfecting spray/wipes
• Eliminate any clutter that has accumulated and put in proper location
• Clean all used dishes and wipe up any spills that have occurred
• Sweep floors
• Take out the trash
• Straighten up and make beds
• Hang up all wet towels or hand towels and allow to air dry completely

Once a week:

• Wash and fold laundry
• Wash all hardwood and tile floors
• Vacuum carpet and underneath cabinets
• Dust shelving, furniture, and light fixtures
• Wipe down toilets, showers, and sinks with proper disinfectant
• Clean mirrors
• Wash all pillow cases

Once a month:

• Empty the refrigerator, wipe down shelving, and throw out any expired items
• Dust the baseboards, fan blades, and air vents
• Clean the inside of microwave and oven
• Hose down and disinfect the bottom of trash cans and underneath the trash cans
• Disinfect all doorknobs
• Wash all bath mats
• Dust underneath all furniture

Once a season:

• Clean pantry and throw out any expired items
• Steam clean carpets
• Wipe down blinds and wash curtains
• Wash windows and window screens
• Clean out bedroom, shoe, and coat closets and throw away or donate items you no longer want
• Wash or dry clean duvet covers, throw blankets, comforters, and throw pillow

We hope you’ve found this information to be useful. Do you have any advice for keeping your home tidy? We want to know! Like us on Facebook and subscribe to our blog for more helpful tips and tricks.

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The 7 Best Things to Do in Orlando (That Aren’t Theme Parks)

Though Orlando is best known for its vast array of theme parks, it gets old pretty quick. Personally, I’d rather avoid the theme parks — too many kids and too many crowds.

But since I’ve seen and done everything there is to do in Orlando, trust me when I say there’s plenty of places to visit that can help you avoid both the kids and the crowds, especially if you’re looking for a great happy hour. Yep, there are many things to do in Orlando that definitely don’t involve theme parks. Here are my favorite things to keep you chilling in your own age bracket for a stress-free stay in Florida.

1. Kick Things off With Wine (That You Made)

Yelp.com

Let’s set the bar at age 21. For those of us who love to DIY and drink, try The Corkscrew Winery. It’s been a hit every time I’ve done it. Great for friends, dates, family members – you name it.

The gist of the place is that you can sign up to learn the wine making process right there from your seat. I’m surprised at how I can get immersed in the wine-batching process and learn how the pros get those grapes into the bottles. Plus, the end of the wine-making course, each guest leaves with their own bottle! Great perk.

These events are more intimate and are a complete antithesis to the crowds typically found at Orlando’s theme parks.

2. Need a Shoe Repair? Or Maybe a Beer? How About Both?

The bar’s original form from the 1940s. Instagram.

Let’s keep the drinking theme going. I can’t help you if you actually need your shoe repaired, but I do know of a speakeasy and eatery in downtown Orlando that looks exactly like a shoe repair shop. And that’s because it used to be one! It’s called Hanson’s Shoe Repair — the venue itself is one of the oldest downtown buildings in the area. And Andrew Hanson’s family-owned shoe repair store is one of the best-kept secrets in Orlando.

What’s cool about it is that isn’t as uptight or spendy as some other Orlando spots. The fact that it’s still standing in Orlando is awesome enough, but the new owners kept the name of the original shop. They’ve got a great beer menu and, if I do say so myself, a truly amazing Cuban sandwich.

3. The Store That’s Got Everything

One of my favorite shops to visit If you need to add a bit of the magic to your Orlando trip, there are more options than the Magic Kingdom.

North Orlando is home to the strange and wonderful Carmine Oddities Boutique, home of an infamous two-headed mummy and a variety of historical occult books. Whether you’re into learning about sub-cultures or just want to make first contact, there are a ton of super interesting trinkets, books and much, much more. Over the years, a lot of the items from the shop have begun to fill out my home. It’s worth a trip if you’re in the area — every time I’m visiting family, I make my way over there and end up walking away with something new.

The shop is open Tuesday through Sunday, and you can even make an appointment. Keep in mind it opens by 10 A.M., and it closes at 6 P.M. on weekdays (and 8 P.M. on the weekend).

4. Winter Park, Orlando’s Fun Neighbor

Winter Park Village, HotSpotsOrlando.com

If you want to try and get just outside of the city for a little bit, Winter Park is one of my favorite spots to visit. There’s just always something to do. Located north of Orlando, the city of Winter Park is known for its arts initiatives, shows, and small-town vibe. Some of the planned events in Winter Park include:

• Dance lessons
• Music jams
• Rummage sales
• Community cleanups
• Movies in the park
• Fishing tournaments

I’ve found that the people are especially friendly too, if you’re feeling chatty after a few beers. It’s a great place to stumble upon a random dog show or neighborhood parade.

5. Rent a Swan-Boat on Lake Eola

For anyone visiting Orlando as a couple, this one’s another great date idea. It might seem like a tourist trap, but it’s actually quite charming and totally worth doing just for the great view of the water. Lake Eola is located in downtown Orlando, so it’s the perfect thing to kill some time before happy hour or scheduled events. The lake itself is home to many different types of birds and, if you’re visiting Orlando in the spring, you’re sure to see some baby swans flapping about. Rent a swan boat and paddle your way around the water. Bring a bottle of wine with you, maybe even the one you made at Corkscrew. It’s a great way to see downtown from a new perspective and avoid the crowds.

6. Take a (21-And-Over) Guided Ghost Tour Through St. Augustine

trolleytours.com

This one’s a bit weird, considering it’s a ghost tour and a pub crawl run by a church. But that just lends to the authenticity! The church of St. Augustine offers a Haunted Pub Crawl and Paranormal Investigation that guides “spirits with the spirits” while searching for new haunts. From their website:

“Ever since opening to the public, there has been an immense number of reports of paranormal occurrences, continuing to this day. The old well in the gardens has been the center of many strange happenings; you’ll learn more about this during your investigation. Through research and archival records, stories of deaths and strange events on the property have been found. A number of psychics and paranormal researchers have investigated the property and reported bizarre findings- but no public programs have been allowed until now…”

It’s one of the most fun things to do in Orlando simply because of how it guides you from bar to bar with new visitors and locals alike. Attendees will explore the town’s most notorious haunted caverns where it is alleged that the honorable Judge Stickney stalks the graves nightly and searches for the bodies buried alive during the post-Civil War typhoid outbreak. Just your average night!

7. The Best Theater and Cabaret Performances are Local

One of my absolute favorite venues for local theater is The Mad Cow Theatre, where local actors collaborate to put on raucous, riotous plays and musicals that are sure to have you in stitches laughing. As a bonus, if you’re in Orlando in May, the Mad Cow Theatre puts on the Orlando Cabaret Festival – now in its 15th year! – which you can’t miss if you love pure, musical entertainment in cool, intimate spaces.

Whatever you, your date or your family end up doing, just make sure you don’t sell yourself short. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to do in Orlando that has nothing to do with a certain mouse. Explore it – just like I did!

How to Unpack After Moving House:

There is so many tasks that you have to do if you want to prepare for a move. While you may have an idea of how you want your move to go, you may find out that the actual act is nothing like what you imagined it.  The whole relocation process can be the best thing you can do or it can be the worst thing, depending on who you are working with and what you have to do. It’s important that you find one of the best moving companies before you even start moving anything. You will need to pack up your home, your life. Now you will have someone helping you do that. The success of your new home will be determined by who well you organized your move.

Make the move seamless

You hope that you don’t run into any problems during your move and if you do, then you will need to make sure that you can deal with it. However, you can make this move a lot better for yourself if you hire the right professional moving company to assist. You can hire a group of friends to assist you with your move in hopes of saving yourself money however you may find that you have a stack of cardboard boxes that are mix matched and lots of stories to tell instead.

Stay organized

It is best to be organized when you start packing. Pack and label each box as per the room. Thus, it is best to pack each room before moving on to the next. Similarly, it would be much easier when you unpack as each room’s things would be unpacked in an organized way.

There is a certain way that if you unpack your boxes, you will know where everything is with a few organizational tips that have worked so well in the past. If you packed your boxes up quickly, you most likely will need a new system to unpack your boxes to ensure that everything goes in the right room. The only problem when you unpack is that it could take twice as much time to do what you need to get done. The length of time that it takes for you to unpack will depend on several factors; the number of boxes you had to move, the number of people helping you, whether it is professional movers or just friends, and the number of special items that you had to pack with special care.

Houzz Tour: An Earthship Adventure in New Zealand:

The word “sustainable” in real estate is overused. However, when homeowners Gus Anning and Sarah Rowe began exploring how to build a home for themselves and their three children, they really dug deep — literally and figuratively — for a building type that was genuinely self-sufficient for energy, water and waste. After three years of research, two years of planning and nine months of building, their home — dubbed Te Timatanga, or “beginning” in Te Reo, one of New Zealand’s official languages — was unveiled to viewers in the first New Zealand season of the television show Grand Designs.

Photos by Peter May of The Flying Kiwi

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Sarah Rowe and Gus Anning and their children Bryony, 14, Toby, 12, and Whio, 4
Location: Hikuai, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand 
Size: 2,580 square feet (240 square meters) on 2½ acres (1 hectare); four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an atrium
Building designer: Harriet Pilkington of Young + Richards

Like many people, Rowe and Anning knew the overarching principles of sustainable design: using the sun to warm the house, collecting their own water and utilizing recycled materials to lower the house’s embedded energy. It also helped that they were starting from an ideal place, as Rowe’s parents had given them land nestled in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Coromandel mountain range, with the perfect north-facing orientation and a gentle slope. 

The community, just over an hour from Auckland, is in an area known for its many alternative lifestyles. This worked in the couple’s favor, as many of the skilled craftspeople, helping hands and materials serendipitously came their way just when they needed them.

Their three years of research found its focus when the couple came across the movie Garbage Warrior, which focuses on the biotecture of Mike Reynolds, the American founder of the Earthship building system. The passive-solar homes use natural and recycled materials to create a thermal mass that stabilizes temperature, paired with renewable energy and water systems. 

The family’s first piece of luck was Anning spotting a passenger on the ferry he skippered wearing an Earthship T-shirt. Turns out there was a hands-on building session with the Earth Building Association of New Zealandrunning in Christchurch that summer. Not deterred by the fact that it was already booked up, Anning turned up at the site. By the time the organizers realized he was an interloper, he was already working with the tools. The couple also visited an early prototype house, the Gubb home in Ngaruawahia. They realized that it takes a lot of work to build a modern home to meet today’s building codes.

Ceiling reeds: Brustics; pendant light: David Trubridge

Although they had the perfect site, the couple recognized that the rainy Coromandel weather posed more challenges than the desert environment Earthships are usually built in. Right from the beginning, the pair was in discussions with their local council, which was keen to make sustainable housing doable in the community. Earth houses built from mud bricks or straw were already not uncommon, but the couple’s plan also involved filling recycled tires with earth and using a passive heating and cooling system. 

As it happened, their chief council contact had just completed training in sustainability and linked them up with consultant Graeme North. He worked as an adviser to Anning and Rowe’s architectural designer, Harriet Pilkington, and as peer reviewer for the council to ensure the building met code.

In one of his (many) past lives, Anning had won an architectural designer award, so the couple were happy to sketch out their first ideas for the house before calling on school friend Pilkington to refine the designs and create working drawings for council approval. 

The first principle of the Earthship — “a machine designed to collect heat and distribute it,” as Anning says — was the atrium. With its wall of windows angled at 70 degrees (that angle is determined by latitude) it collects the sun that comes into this front section of the home. The bedrooms and bathrooms are aligned along the length of the corridor behind the atrium.

The combination of windows above the bedroom doors, underground venting tubes behind the rooms and Velux windows along the atrium allows the homeowners to draw cooling air around the rooms in summer or admit and circulate solar gain for winter heat. 

The couple decided the private rooms would have glass walls so they could enjoy the atrium fully. The curving plant beds are sufficient for privacy and provide an attractive view.

They also veered away from Northern Hemisphere designs by opening up the kitchen and living rooms to the outdoors for the indoor-outdoor living Kiwis crave.

At the western end of the house, Pilkington included nearly 645 square feet (60 square meters) of covered terrace — a gorgeous spot for viewing sunsets and sheltering from the sometimes-rainy summers.

Anning and Rowe decided early on to turn the construction of their home into an Earthship workshop, to share skills, get the job done quickly in the summer and contain building costs. Over the summer of 2015, dozens of paying volunteers were schooled in the techniques of stacking some 1,100 tires, filling them with clay dug from the site and plastering them to form the walls. The volunteers were led by project managers Ben Garrattand Rosa Henderson (of Sculpted Earth), whom Anning had met at his first Christchurch workshop. Rowe worked part time while feeding the workers and laboring alongside them; Anning tapped contacts for resources and finishes.

The southern side of the house is dug into the bank, with layers of waterproof membrane carefully inserted between land and tires to ensure no moisture seepage. The subfloor was lined with mussel shells (a local waste product, adhering to the couple’s philosophy throughout the construction process) and more waterproof membrane before concrete was laid. 

For the interior walls, the family scored secondhand mud bricks that were left over from a friend’s earlier building project. Nothing was wasted: Even the broken bricks were mixed into a slurry for plastering the walls.

Pallet furniture: Industrial Design NZ; mud bricks: Solid Earth

Accumulating enough tires for the build took around six months. Rowe and Anning had watched a loaded tire truck drive by their property for weeks before catching the driver at a local cafe and negotiating for the tires that were destined for the garbage dump. Like many participants in the project, the driver was delighted to carry and stack the four different sizes of tires, happy that they were not going to become landfill.

Naturally, the kitchen was to become the heart of the home. In addition to a gas oven (fueled by gas bottles, the only energy brought in from outside the house), Rowe and Anning were determined to have the modern version of the old-fashioned Rayburn range. In the winter its attached pipe system heats the house’s water — there is always a pot of stock simmering on the stove — but the house is so warm the heat is more for psychological comfort. 

Kitchen benches and doors: NZ Totara; Rayburn range: Classic Cookers; copper sink and faucet: All Things Copper; pendant lights: Mr Bead, Mr Ralph; all other wood:MacDirect

Beams for the roof came from Natural Log Homes, a company from New Zealand’s South Island that works with local Douglas fir. When the family was puzzling over roofing systems, their architect, Pilkington, introduced them to the concept of structural insulated panels. Commonly used for industrial coolers, the 8-inch-thick panels bond roofing metal, an insulated core and a ceiling panel in large sheets that Anning says were “awesome” to install and keep clean.

Insulated panel roof: Metalcraft Group

Despite its super efficiency, the family wanted their house to feel warm and homey. They, and their visitors, rave about the embrace of the house.

This Maori carving, called a pare, sits above one of the set of bifold doors outside. It is by Rotorua carver Natanahira Pona, who was selected to represent Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa is the Maori name for the country) at the World Wood Day celebrations in Kathmandu, Nepal last year.

The couple worked with solar consultant Jasper Campbell of Metalcraft Roofing to settle on the best system for their home. At the moment, they do not use batteries to store excess power but feed it back to the utility company’s grid. While they have not signed up for any monitoring studies, Anning and Rowe are still fine-tuning their energy use, determined to get their monthly bill, currently about $50 for hook-up charges, down to zero. They plan to do this by upgrading appliances and checking out smart meters and other systems as they become more affordable. The wood fire is purely for ambiance, as the house stays a consistent warmth (and dryness) year-round. 

Firebox: Woodsman

Anning and Rowe say they are still working on achieving their sustainable dream. Their next project is to cover the concrete floor. Impending winter weather and budget meant that they left the floors as concrete, instead of their preferred rammed earth. They are now investigating building their own kiln to make and fire floor tiles from earth from their property. In the meantime, the black-oxide-stained concrete is good for solar gain.

Rowe and her friends foraged for bottles to make the plastered feature walls, carefully selecting and cutting the glass to create soothing swaths of color that enliven the walls around the atrium and their en suitebathroom. The custom hexagonal doors were built by Bob van Pearce.

As well as providing a year-round tropical ambiance, the atrium garden is an essential part of the water system. Rainwater is used for cooking and drinking, and the greywater from laundry and showers is filtered into the planter, which starts shallow at the front door end and gets deeper as it runs through the house. 

River rocks and peat moss filter the flow (with plenty of Daltons potting mix, customized with coconut husk), and a small bilge pump recirculates the water back to a raised kitchen garden. After greywater is used for flushing the toilets, the black water is fed into a worm farm septic tank system. This uses worms and other natural means to process the waste and turn it into fertilizer; this is then further purified and treated, and then returned to the soil and used to irrigate the 20 heritage fruit trees in the orchard. 

Sewage and wastewater system: NaturalFlow

The plants’ photosynthesis produces oxygen for clean, healthy air, as well as moisture to help maintain comfortable humidity levels year-round.

All the bedrooms in the home open onto the atrium. Again, the couple was lucky to score old French doors that were being thrown out from a vacation house renovation, to add a sense of charm and history to their home.

The master bedroom en suite wall was another labor of love by Rowe, helped by friends and children.

To continue the natural feel of the house in their bathroom, Rowe found terrific random stone tiles for the floor and shower walls from Island Stone. The vanity features recycled and raw timbers.

Using organic materials for fixtures more commonly made out of plastic or enamel was part of the couple’s ethos. Here, the basin is petrified wood, sitting on another custom-made vanity.

The mix of colors was carefully considered by Rowe as she assembled the bottle walls.

Seen here, the main family bathroom opens to the luxuriant garden, through a feature wall complete with another custom-made hexagonal-cut door and surrounding glass.

The walls are finished in a tadelakt plaster common to Morocco and North Africa. The traditional flat lime plaster is waterproof enough to be used as an exterior finish or in bathroom wet areas, and it has the smooth curved look and natural tints that complement the mud-brick walls in the rest of the house. The plaster was burnished to a smooth finish over three days in a satisfyingly hands-on process. 

Stone sink: Pacific Baths & Basins; plaster walls: Rockcote Marrakesh, Resene

The children’s rooms are big enough for desks and hangout areas, and enjoy great natural daylight from the atrium windows.

They also present distant views of the mountain range through the sloping glass. The build required some new thinking from many of their suppliers, but Anning says companies such as Metro Performance Glass helped him solve problems with the angled woodwork and runoff to the ground.

Since it appeared in the first New Zealand season of Grand Designs, the house has attracted a lot of attention. Anning and Rowe are full of praise for the support of their local Thames Coromandel District Council and are so thrilled that they have been able to host tours for building managers from councils around the country. 

The couple also has been renting out the house on Airbnb during past summers while they travel. (Anning spent the summer with the Antarctic Heritage Trust restoring Hillary’s Hut.) Visitors are captivated by the serenity surrounding the house, as well as by the house itself. Anning says most people can’t get over the lack of light pollution and are entranced by the stars in the clear skies.

While the couple did not want to stint on systems and finishes — Anning estimates the finished building cost at around $80 to $93 per square foot — the innovative energy and water systems mean that running costs for the house are minuscule. But what has really delighted them is the quality of life in their Earthship: the comfort of being surrounded by earth and natural materials, as well as the glorious sense of solidity and connectedness. And they are pretty sure they face a lifetime of helping other people build their own Earthship dreams.