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It’s no secret that I’m not the most organized person on the planet. This is why I love Grove Collaborative. Not only do I get items shipped directly to me each month on autoship, they also help keep me organized. I’m a total sucker for bins and baskets and anything I can throw things in. I like to be cute and APPEAR organized. So bins are my favorite.

So I’m totally excited to share this free offer with you (every now and then this is a writer’s perk, I get access to deals I can pass along to my readers, yay!). Anyway, when you place your first order of $20 from Grove Collaborative using this link you’ll get this free caddy filled with Mrs. Meyer’s dish soap, hand soap, and lotion — plus free shipping!

Seriously, I love this caddy. It’s so cute in our bathroom filled with all the girl’s hair STUFF.

Here are five other creative ways to use your Grove Collaborative caddy: 

1.Mini herb or succulent garden

I think my tallest kiddo is going to do this with my new caddy, my thumb is too brown. But if yours is green, just add a few inches of gravel or pebbles for drainage, then a layer of potting soil, and your plants.  Another benefit of the caddy: The handle makes it easy to carry your plants to the sink for watering!

2. Garden tool organizer

Here’s a gardening hack for all my green thumb friends: Turn your Grove caddy into a garden tool organizer! Fill it with a cute pair of gloves, trowel, pruning shears, hand rake, and kneeling board. Easily carry your garden tools around the yard.

3. Hair tool organizer

We’ve got this one in play. Our remodeled bathroom is super cute but low on storage space. I just stashed all the things that were overtaking the area in the caddy and I look super organized. Ha! We all know the truth. 

4. Pet toy holder

My cats are just as messy as my kids. Fill the caddy with all the toys that are under your feet. The best part is the animals can reach right in and grab them. 

5. Ice chest

This caddy is just the right size to hold ice and a few bottles of wine or lemonade. It’s easy to carry outside, and so much cuter than a plastic cooler. 

Here is how to get yours for free!

1. Sign up for Grove Collaborative here. New customers will receive these freebies:
   • Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap
   • Mrs. Meyer’s hand lotion
   • Mrs. Meyer’s dish soap
   • Grove cleaning caddy
2. To receive this offer, your order needs to be a minimum of $20. Choose the combination of products and scents you love and receive your first box within a few days.
3. You made it! Click Finish & Pay and place your order.
4. Existing customers won’t miss out. You will receive a free Grove Collaborative scrubber sponge just for ordering through this link.

Tip to save: Once you have submitted your Grove order, you will be signed up for the free 60 day VIP trial. For 60 days, save even more with free shipping, free gifts, price matching, exclusive sales and personal service.

 

 

OK friends. Let’s talk Mother’s Day.

Before you read what I am going to suggest, I need you to know I love my kids. I cherish time with them. But my favorite tradition doesn’t involve them at all. Don’t hate me.

And also know I went through so many versions of Mother’s day before settling on my favorite plan. 

The cold breakfast in bed surrounded by kids as they “help” you eat the food they made. And really you’re OK with it because you’ve legit never saw a bowl of cereal with that much milk in it and you weren’t super hungry for eggshells anyway. 

The mad gift buying and then trying to travel around to celebrate all the moms in your world and being plumb exhausted at the end of the day.

The getting the kids ready for Sunday Mother’s Day mass only to have this process reinforce your suspicion that you have indeed completely run out of patience.

There is beauty in all this I know. As moms, we are so good at finding the joy in the sticky smiles and homemade cards and the blessing over the moms during church. I love those parts with all my soul.

But we moms also know that with this beauty comes the sitting in the middle of an argument about who actually made most of the breakfast.

We also know we might find a kitchen that needs so much cleaning when we walk downstairs.

We know that they lose interest in our day being all about us within roughly 30 minutes and that we are bound to find ourselves yelling, “It’s Mother’s Day FOR THE LOVE. Can you not stop fighting/pick up your stuff/give me 30 minutes of quiet on even MY OWN DAY?”

And the pressure of the day to be perfect would often leave me feeling disappointed and exhausted because of all the expectations. Trying to make it all special while also mothering (or trying to avoid mothering so you can rest…but let’s face it if we are in range of the kids we are mothering no matter how much our husband tries to shield us) can spiral us out of control. As can the waiting for our families to read our minds and make our day perfect for us.

So, my friends, I think I have the answer. My family has settled on the best Mother’s Day tradition and if you can pull off a version of this I swear your day might be filled with the joy you imagine it can be.

Here’s how it works.

First. I am super lucky to have found myself living in the same town as 2 of my 3 sisters and my mom. I know, it’s the best. And every Mother’s Day we take the gift pressure off and have just one gift to buy my mother, a book we think she would love. So the gift pressure is totally kept to a minimum, score.

Second, my sisters and I ditch our families and take my mom shopping, out to eat and sometimes we even throw in a pedicure. I am out of my house with the moms I love the most doing some of the things we love the most. Total win.

Throughout the day we present my mom with her books, she is the star of the show after all, and we also try and be sure and get her an amazing card which she then uses as a bookmark for her Mother’s Day read. The goal, of course, is to make her tear up with the most perfect card. Sibling rivalry without the fighting…another win.

By the end of the day, I return home to my own celebration, or maybe a celebration that also includes my awesome mother-in-law if I’m lucky.

My family has had time to get their acts together, to make some food, to make sure the house is clean-ish and to get all the sibling angst out of their systems.

I am totally filled up and rested after my day away. I am patient. I am able to find the joy. I have a bag filled with TJ Maxx deals to focus on if my kids cannot stop arguing about who sits next to me.

This tradition makes my Mother’s Day predictable (read: easy on our fabulous husbands) and fun. Find that thing that will be the same for you. Then nail it down and call it a tradition. As in “Of course I can’t wait to celebrate with you guys but Carol and I always go to a movie on Mother’s Day. It’s a tradition. See you later!”.

And my friends, maybe the thing that fills you up is being with your kids all day, hats off to you. Go for it.

But if you want to spend your Mother’s Day doing a little something to celebrate you and your favorite moms, a little getaway might be just what the doctor ordered. Carve a little corner of fun for yourself to rejuvenate and reflect on how lucky you are to be a mom in the first place. And a chance to miss my kids always makes me more thankful for them, I’m pretty sure that’s just science.

Don’t be afraid to do you on Mother’s Day…it’s your day, you can own it. Or at least a few hours of it. And the sound of your people yelling, “Mom!” when you walk back in the door will be all the sweeter when you return.

 

In real life, I love to pass along my favorite things and I love to get a deal and share it with my friends. It’s just so fun.

Today I get to share one of my favorite things with you right here on the interwebs. It’s a little thing called Grove Collaborative and the folks there are making my life so much easier. And this month you can get FREE STUFF just for trying them! I love this awesome company because they committed to bringing you the best products for the environment. Plus their auto-ship keeps this family going because we all know how I am with ordering dishwasher pods.

Right now, new customers simply place a $20 order on Grove and get:

Free Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap

Free Mrs. Meyer’s dish soap

Free Mrs. Meyer’s hand lotion

Free Grove Replaceable Head Dish Brush (super useful and looks cute on your counter)

Free Shipping & 60 Day VIP Trial

Existing customers, we haven’t forgotten you. Click through my link and you will get free Grove walnut scrubber sponges, which I love.

Also, Mrs. Meyer’s is the best smelling natural cleaner out there. My current favorite is Basil…I think it smells like Colors by Benetton. Who remembers that perfume? Anyone? Or am I old?

Just use this link to order! It’s that simple!

I’d love to hear how much you love your stuff when you get it!

 

 

**FYI we make a little something each time you shop through our link. You won’t see many like this from us, but from time to time we will pass along only the deals we think are awesome and that are actually things we love and use.

Dear Lord

Deliver us from halfhearted lunch-packing and complete lack of backpack checking. Please see us through the nights when the sun is up later than our kids and yet they have to go to bed because the bus is inexplicably still arriving to pick them up each morning.

Please carry us through the endless stream of May-induced special events and programs and projects and help us to see that they are special and fun and not indeed designed to kill us all.

Please give us the strength to keep our eyes on our kids through baseball games, choir concerts, award ceremonies and soccer matches. Let them feel the love that propels us to sit in on those hard bleacher seats, even while we stealthily play a round of Candy Crush on our phones. Because really, we are barely hanging on and our distraction doesn’t mean our applause is not genuine. We have just seen them do so many of the things this year and our eyes are tired.

Please Lord, keep us from completely throwing in the towel and packing old Easter candy as a main lunch attraction. Help us to at least upgrade to prepackaged yogurt and applesauce and the occasional Little Debbie snack cake. For we must maintain some standards.

In the moments when we are sure we cannot maintain our sanity and help with one more history timeline, one more math sheet or one more book report, please remind us that there is a teacher on the other side that has to grade that thing and make us merciful and remind us to toss a prayer their way.

May teachers, too, be merciful when we ask for a third permission slip to the end of school field trip as of course, we’ve lost the first two. And when we forget pajama day. And when our kids are wearing pants that are too short because we’re barely sliding through to shorts season. And also when my kids tell you that they were up eating ice cream and playing the iPad until 9 p.m. last night. They are unfortunately telling the truth and therefore may not be at the top of their game because the bedtime struggle is real. Please forgive our sins and know that they are sins of utter and total desperation.

Please dear God, let the sports jerseys and overdue library books appear out of the various piles when summoned. Let the clean socks and underwear multiply like the loaves and fishes. And let everyone agree that frozen pizza and waffles five nights a week is a valid new nutritional plan that may lack in variety but will at very least certainly not kill us before June.

And most of all, please dear Lord, let us make it through May without completely losing our minds, our children or the will to go on. Because all three are being called into question tonight.

Amen