OK, I just thought this was funny.

Today on "The Morning Blend," we talked about how to deal with kid clutter. I have to admit, I'm always happy in these instances that we're live at the studio and not live at my house. Unfortunately, my family is in some desperate need for help with kid clutter, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do this segment -- to show some options I'm going to try at my house.

There were a few pleasant surprises in getting ready for this segment.

1) Getting organized is really very affordable. The pieces I bought to contain kid clutter were very inexpensive. The three-drawer unit we showed came with wheels you could attach to the bottom to make it easy to move around, and it held a lot of stuff -- all for $9 at Target. Right now with students going back to college and cramming into dorm rooms, there are great sales on shelving units, boxes, basket and other containers to hold stuff.

2) There are lots of options to help your child customize his or her room's look. I brought in one piece of a system of interlocking white cubes that are designed to hold fabric bins. The bins come in a variety of bright colors, so you could stack up a few of the cubes and put a different color bin in each for a fun look. Again, these were from Target, and one cube -- which included the frame and the fabric bin -- was about $20, so very reasonable.

3) If you're low on floor space, you can always look up. From Target to Wal-Mart to your local hardware store, there are lots of choices for moving toys and art supplies off of the floor. I brought in a $7 bright-pink hanging organizer that could easily be hung from a hook on the wall or, even better, in the closet. Over-the-door fabric shoe holders also would work for housing Beanie Babies, toy cars or action figures. Close the closet door, and the clutter disappears.

So addressing the clutter is simple and affordable -- and now I just have to do it.

The link to the show segment will be available later today, and I'll post it here so you can see the pieces featured today. And if you have any great clutter-crushing tips, let's hear them!

Here's the link to the Morning Blend show.
 

A few weeks back, I posted the first part of this.

Here's the follow-up.

Our We Energies budget payment is going up from $192 per month to -- da, da, da, daaaaa -- $276.

Eighty-four bucks more per month, starting Sept. 1.

If you are on the budget plan and haven't gotten your new number yet, brace yourself. 

Yesterday I just couldn't wait for 7:30. That was the designated time my sister in California and I had set up to try our first e-chat.

Or iChat. Or webcam chat.

Whatever you call it, we were going to talk face-to-face with the assistance of digital video cameras.

And while I was excited to try this with my sister, I have to be honest and admit that the big draw was her babies -- my twin nephews, who are 20 months old. We decided we were going to put her little guys and my kids in front of the cameras and let them catch up with each other. We were all together last month in Door County, but prior to that, we hadn't seen the babies at all (other than pictures, of course) since last Thanksgiving.

That's way too long when kids are learning to walk and talk and just becoming their own little people. Way too long. 

A video chat seemed like a good way to make all those miles that stretch between us disappear, even if it was only for a few minutes or about the time two busy 20-month-olds are willing to spend in front of a camera.

My smart sister decided to sit her boys down for dinner right next to each other and set up the webcam in front of them. We had ours in the living room, with myself and my two kids smooshed on the couch.

A few keystrokes later and we were face-to-face. I'm sure many of you have done this before, and if you have, hang with me here as I describe this experience.

It kind of felt like the first time I got a phone call in my car. I had one of those old bag phones, a big clunker that you plugged into the lighter, and my phone rang and I answered it and I kind of couldn't believe that I was talking on the phone and driving at the same time.

Last night, I kind of couldn't believe I was sitting in my living room, asking my nephews what they were having for dinner and watching them hold up their sandwiches.

I kind of couldn't believe that my son scooted into the camera's view and the boys pointed and said, "Jack!" I couldn't believe that we were making silly faces and talking silly talk and trying to cyber-tickle them, all with the help of this little camera on my coffee table and a laptop.

It was nothing short of amazing.

Sure it was grainy and the images moved a little slow, but I'll tell you that despite those shortcomings, I've smiled all day about this.

And I just can't wait to get to do this again.
 

This is not an easy time to be a new mom. It seems something new is coming out every week or so that could threaten your baby's health -- and the information on what is best to do is rarely crystal clear.

Take this bisphenol A situation, for example. A few months ago, the reports were scary. Bisphenol A, commonly found in baby bottles and water bottles, was being blamed for everything from cancer to hyperactive children. The prevailing advice was that parents should get that stuff far away from their children.

A report released by the FDA in the past few days refutes those claims, and suggests that the chemical is safe for infants, children and adults.  

Just to be on the safe side, you can try to avoid products with bisphenol A in them, but that can be tricky. And now with these conflicting reports, is it important to be vigilant about this or not? How far do you go?

I'm curious about what the newest moms think. How are you handling this question? If you have thoughts on this, leave a comment for me.  

All the health experts will tell you to read the labels carefully when you shop to make sure you're buying the right stuff for your family -- and avoiding as much junk as possible.

But what can you do when you don't know if the L Rhamnosus and Acesulfame Potassium listed on the yogurt container are ingredients that are good for you or not? I just heard about a new web site called LabelWatch.com that lists all the ingredients in foods you buy at the grocery store and color codes them so you know which products are fair game to consume and which you might want to leave on the store shelf.

It breaks the ingredients into three categories -- beneficial, coded with green; OK, coded with orange; and cautionary, coded with red. Obviously you want more greens than reds in the foods you buy. If you click on one of the coded ingredients in the list, a box pops up with more information about why that ingredient is considered harmless or not.

There's also an alphabetical listing of food additives so you can search by that as well if there's one in particular you're curious about. 

It all sounds very scientific, but the site is designed in a fairly straightforward way, so it's easy to read. If you're a label reader or want to start doing it more diligently, it's a good place to get more information.

And FYI? L Rhamnosus? That's considered beneficial.

Acesulfame Potassium? Potassium's good, right? Apparently not this kind. Who knew?
 

Hey moms, we're in the final stretch! Most of us public-schoolers will be sending our kids back to school next week.

I made a big mistake this summer when I realized that I forgot to order my daughter's supplies through the mail-order service her school uses. By the time I remembered, it was too late, so I had to do the Target-Walgreens-Office Max shuffle to get everything purchased. No big deal, but I'll be quicker on the draw next year. (And I still have to buy the two boxes of Kleenex, dang it!)

Where are you at in the back-to-school process? 

If you've got little ones headed off to the class this year and you want to start them off right, shoot me an e-mail with your address and I'll send you two great books to get them ready.

Linda Desimowich and Stacey Kannenberg are the creators of "Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten!" and "Let's Get Ready for First Grade!" Both are yours if you're the first to my e-mail inbox. 

Happy Monday! 

Updated: I have my book winner (Congratulations Jackie!), but check back here periodically for other giveaways and freebies! I should have a few more coming this week.

This morning on "The Morning Blend," I shared a story that can serve as a cautionary tale to other parents whose kids are on their way to 'tweendom.

A few months ago I was thinking about the movie "The Nutty Professor" and how funny it was, and I realized my kids had never seen it and might enjoy it. I rented it and popped it in on a Saturday night for all of us to watch together over some popcorn.

Wholesome family fun, right? Uh...not so much.

There were so many parts of the movie I had forgotten about, including the scenes at the comedy club where Dave Chappelle rips on the main character, Sherman Klump (played by Eddie Murphy). Not a good thing to forget about -- it was pretty rough for young kids.

I also forgot about so much of the sexual content in the movie. My kids ended up walking away from it, bored because most of it was over their heads, and we were covering their ears and eyes at times.

In other words, mom made a bad call for the fun family movie night.

If you've done this -- or fear that you might in the future -- there's a great web site that can help you out. CommonSenseMedia.org gives you all sorts of information about what might be objectionable in current movies, DVDs, TV shows, games, music, web sites and books.

Had I looked at this web site, for example, I would have found out that they gave "The Nutty Professor" one star and this notation -- "A dumb, offensive movie -- a good one to skip."

CommonSenseMedia also offers this: "The movie's major problem, however, is its torrent of profanity, nasty insults (including fat jokes and racial epithets), and its misguided obsession with flatulence. The anally-fixated script, which is packed with smutty double entendres and jokes about "colon cleansing," may delight twelve-year-old boys, but parents may well be horrified that this is what now passes for family entertainment in Hollywood."

Yikes. The message here: Next time, check this site first.

 

My kids are too young to be on Facebook, but I'm not. According to most people on Facebook, I'm probably too old to be there, but oh well. I like new technology and my life isn't scandalous enough to make my Facebook page that interesting, so I think it's all good.

If you aren't on Facebook (yet) or are wondering what it's all about, you aren't alone.

Six months ago just about all of my Facebook friends (people who willingly admit that they know me and don't mind my face showing up in their list of friends) were either a) former co-workers of mine who are all about 15 years younger than me; or b) my friends' college-age kids who are all about 20 years younger than me; or c) nieces and nephews who are all about 25 years younger than me.

Today, I'm proud to say that at least one-quarter of my Facebook friends are my age or older, and more seem to be signing on every day. I'm a little relieved to have more people my age join me because I was slightly concerned that, based on my friend list alone, I might appear to be the type still living at home with my parents and trying desperately to hang with the cool kids -- and not realizing that the cool kids don't really want to hang with someone their mom's age. Ick.

One of the interesting sides of this online social networking revolution is what it is doing to live conversation. For example, if you have a college student in your life, you know that face-to-face communication isn't the first choice when dorm roommates are getting to know each other.

Nope, they find out each other's names, pull up each other's pages on Facebook or MySpace and start filling in the blanks on who this person is before they've ever even spoken or -- God forbid! -- seen each other.

Last fall I read this great New Yorker article about a new class being offered for incoming freshmen at New York University. The class was called "Facebook in the Flesh," and it was all about teaching the new students how to actually talk to each other, face to face.  

“Meeting new people face-to-face can be . . . intimidating,” a brochure for the class said. “This fun, interactive workshop will get everyone talking as we build social networks in person.”

Members of the class were challenged to pair off and have a six-minute real-life conversation in which they learned about each other. They were given a worksheet with pointers such as "Ask questions" and "Try to discover commonalities and/or connections with the other person." 

It's amazing to me that the technology could ever go so far in one direction that students of that age would ever need to be taught how to just hang out and get to know each other. I thought that was the whole point of college?

So for those of us (ahem) "older" people on Facebook, I guess this could serve as a bit of a wake-up call. Facebook is fun, but let's not get to the point where we need a class to help us relearn how to actually talk to each other. And if you agree with this, then please find me on Facebook and let's be friends.