I’m a super-busy mom of five rambunctious kids (from age 11 all the way down to 10 months).  I’m not a big fan of housework so I’m constantly on the lookout for cheap and easy solutions that make my life a little easier and make my kids a little more responsible.  My blog focuses on sharing those tips with other busy moms around the world.
My own blog writing has been on the back burner over the last month due to an incredibly persistent flu bug that has made it’s way through my family over the last several weeks.  Consequently, I thought I’d share one of my favorite parenting tips when it comes to kid sickness…a simple hack for dealing with gross, used tissues.  It has saved me from tons of hassle – especially this month.
We’ve had more than our share of sickness lately.  Between the seven of us, we’ve burned through a lot of tissues.  However, mysteriously, I seem to be the only one that can manage to get them into the trash can.  I find used tissues stashed by the sides of their beds, wadded up near the couch and pretty much everywhere else a tissue box is stashed.  I hate picking up the nasty little tissues as much as the next Mom, so I came up with this simple trick for making a mobile trash bin for used tissues.
All you need to create it are two boxes of tissues and a few rubber bands.
  1. Open the side of one box and pull out the entire fold of tissues.  Place the whole fold into a ziploc bag – you’ll use it to refill for your other box later.
  2. Re-fold the flaps of the empty tissue box and place the two tissue boxes together.  Be sure to sandwich the side that has the open fold.
  3. Snap on two rubber bands to hold the two boxes together.
There you have it.  An instant tissue trash can!  Now you can send your child to bed (or anywhere else) with a box of tissues and a place to put the used ones.  Isn’t that great?  To empty the used tissues just pull off the rubber bands, reopen the side flaps and dump out the old tissues into the trash. If you run out of clean tissues before the cold breaks just open the side flap of the clean box and refill it with the tissues from the ziploc bag.
It’s a simple fix that costs almost nothing and will save you from picking up loads of germy tissues. Trust me, I’ve wiped enough little noses to know.  Just thought I’d pass it on.
~ Maria