Like many families, we have a front and a back door. We have set up staging areas at both doors. It is easy to do this at the back kitchen door because not as many people come through that door and at our house there is a small “mud room” type area that is perfect for hanging up jackets and taking off wet shoes. We put up two identical boards with a line of pegs on them. One we put up at kid height around 3 feet up on the wall and the other one we hung up at about the 7 foot mark. This way the kids could easily hang up their own coats and begin taking care of their own things very early on.

We also put in a lower coat rack by the front door as well. The front door can be a little trickier because that is where most of your company will come in and you don’t really want a big pile of coats and shoes right there that they will have to step over to get into your house.

In this regard, whether it is the back door or the front door you want to make sure there is a place where the kids can easily take off their wet shoes and put on a pair of slippers. ( we want to make sure to keep their feet warm in the winter - and just about every kids I have ever met has loved their very own slippers ). The one thing we had to watch out for was a build up of shoes at the front door. If your child has more than one or two pairs of shoes then you run the risk of shoe buildup and that needs to be managed - but mom can definitely help with that.

The second and almost most important part of this staging is a cute basket or plastic bucket or some kind of container for a stack of inexpensive glove liners. You can often find these at WalMart for $1 sometimes 3 for a $1. They come in a variety of colors and typically one size fits most. If you get mostly the same color then you don’t have to worry so much about making the perfect match. If you lose one glove it is not as bad as if the gloves were one of a kind.

You could set up individual containers for each kid so that they could put their favorite hat, scarf, gloves in their very own box too. In our busy family with lots of kids going all different directions at all different times we opted for the community box of gloves. Then we put a shelf up above the coat pegs and put winter hats up there.

When the kids were big enough to gear up on their own but still not old enough to always remember we did put up a sign by the back door - HAT GLOVES BOOTS - it really helped them get into the routine of going through the mental checklist before running outside.

It may take a little bit of work to set up your system initially but once you have it set up it will save you so much time in the long run. Not to mention how many runny noses it will save in the long run too.

We would love to hear from you.  Do you have a favorite book you would like to share with other Stay at Home Moms?  Leave your comments below and check back here for our January selection

The younger kids mentioned a couple of lego toys and a couple of books they wanted to read but the older kids just wanted to spend the day snowboarding and in lieu of gifts our oldest son wanted us to donate to Child’s Play so that other kids spending the holidays in hospitals would be able to have something to do while they are there. Our other son chose Habitat for Humanity as a favorite charity as he has seen first hand the good it has done getting several very deserving families with young kids out of dangerous apartment complexes and into their own homes.

It was a thrill to hear them talk about their favorite charities. I had no idea this group existed. But it makes total sense. My kids are gamers and Child’s Play is a charity that puts video games into hospitals so that kids that are staying there can have games to play while they are getting better.

My kids other favorite charity is the American Cancer Society Relay for Life and in particular the Children’s Cancer Research Fund.

We keep a list of favorite charities on Stay At Home Mom throughout the year and so if there is a charity that you would like to tell us about please leave a comment below.

Also remember that along with great charities and good work that so many people are doing there are also scoundrels out there and very poorly run legitimate charities that spend more money on administration than on the actual charity. Check out any charity before you give your money to them. One way to do this is to visit Charity Navigator and looking into your favorite charity before giving. If your favorite charity is not listed there you can request information from that individual charity and also recommend it to the various charity listing sites.

We always had in the back of our minds that the kids could always return to the public school system if the educational challenges became too much. But with the Internet and, surprisingly, the support of our local school district our children not only met these educational challenges with great success but they totally thrived.

We now have a mix of homeschooled and publicly educated children ( each child is unique). All of our kids have lots of friends and participate in many community services. They often receive phone calls from various people in the community asking if they are going to participate in different events because they are hardworking, polite, and basically wonderful people to be around.

So, today it was with a great deal of disappointment to turn on The View and be totally and completely insulted by one of the hosts. I have watched the View for several years and I rarely agree with everything they talk about but I always believe that it is a great thing to be able to discuss topics that you may not agree with and be able to do it civilly and leave the discussion on friendly terms. But this morning Joy ( who is supposed to be a comedian ) made very insulting comments about homeschooled children. I am not a sensitive person in general and no one needs to call the WAH-mbulance, but there is no reason for this host to be so condescending to a group of the population that is doing some great work and contributing to the country.

I have loved Barbara Walters ever since Gilda Radner first uttered the immortal words “Hewwo, I am Babba Wawa”. And the way that she was able to break through in the news world and interview all of those world leaders was an inspiration to me as a young girl growing up. It gave me the belief that a dedicated, intelligent woman could accomplish anything she set her mind to. So, I am going to miss Barbara.

It is a great country that we live in and one of the great thing about it is that we have the right to vote, and the right to watch what we want to watch. I turned off the TV after Joy’s insults this morning, sent an email to The Viewmaster, and will not be turning that show on again.

It reminded me of a test a friend of mine did last year. She was getting very depressed so she decided she would turn off the TV news for one month. She still got her news from online sources but did not watch TV news. After one month she was no longer feeling that same depression and has only occassionally watched TV news since.

When our kids were smaller we would take TV vacations. We told the kids that the TV was working extra hard lately and so we had to give it the week off and we would turn off the TV for the week alltogether. It was pretty funny because the kids would complain for the first day and a little bit on the second day but by the third day they were usually into a pretty good routine and really didn’t complain at all. On one particular TV vacation I decided to wait until they asked to watch the TV again after the week was over before we turned it back on and we ended up going for over two weeks before any of the kids asked to watch anything on TV.

Now that our kids are a little bit older I have been a little more lax about the TV because they are all so busy with other activities but this mornings insult reminded me that turning off the TV is not only good for the kids but it is also good for us grown-ups too.

Here are some books that helped us.

Living Outside the Box: TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets


The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life


Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling


Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It