May Round Ups: Consumables

In line with our moving/transfer theme this week, I'm going to point you in the direction of our Consumables Tips Round Up found here:

http://hardshiphomemaking.blogspot.com/p/consumables.html

If you think it's missing a blog post, please let me know.

At present, the consumables perpetual round up includes the following posts:

PCS 101: Lesson 1

What should I put in my Consumables?

More Consumables Tips

Secrets to a well-stocked pantry

Tex-Mex Overseas

Having a Fur Family in the Foreign Service

Doing Dishes Without a Dishwasher… or a garbage disposal

Tip: Grind Your Own Spices

One of My Favorite Things to Pack in UAB 

Your Laundry Tips

Homemade Coconut Milk

Substitutes for plastic wrap, parchment paper, and tinfoil

Homemade Chocolate Chips and Dipping Chocolate

Homemade Brown Sugar

Substitute for baking powder

How to Make Homemade Yoghurt

Easy Peasy Homemade Powdered Sugar

Karo Syrup Substitute

Easy Fabric Gift Bags Tutorial

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Pancakes

May Round Ups: Moving Prep

It's that time of year again. Time to pack up and move on. So today I am highlighting both our "Moving Prep" and "Organization and Clutter Control" round ups. (As usual, if you see a post I have forgotten to add to the round up, please let me know. Thanks!)

Our perpetual Round Up of all things moving prep related can be found at:

http://hardshiphomemaking.blogspot.com/p/moving-prep.html

The Organization and Clutter Control Round Up is at:

http://hardshiphomemaking.blogspot.com/p/organization.html

Currently, these Round Ups contain the following posts:

Move Prep

Staying Organized During Your Move

PCS 101: Lesson 1

PCS 101, Lesson 2: Schools, Shipping Pets and Choosing a Car

Maximizing a Small Outdoor Play Space

Transitioning Dogs to Post

Preparing to move: What you need to know about your new house

Having a Fur Family in the Foreign Service

Car/Property Insurance

How to live with really hard water

Foreign Service & the Special Needs Child Part I

{Undinging Your Drexel} Regular upkeep and covering up the small stuff

{Undinging Your Drexel} Almond Sticks and Crayons

What to do when the toys are in HHE?

Consumables Tips Round Up

Organization and Clutter Control

Staying Organized During Your Move

Trash to Treasures - Creating a portable crafty stash

Educated Sorting

Gifts that don't have a shipping fee!

May Round Ups: Kids

As part of my time as Admin this month, I am rounding up some of our prior blog posts to make it easier to find the information you need. Today's Round Up is all about kids. We've got stuff to do with kids, how to move/travel with kids, snacks for kids, etc. This will be a perpetual Round Up that you can find here:

http://hardshiphomemaking.blogspot.tw/p/kids.html

You can also access it by clicking "Kids" on the header on our home page.

If you see a blog post I should have included but didn't, please shoot us an email and I'll add it.

Thanks!
-Becky

Little kids and water overseas

Kids on planes (preschool version)

Living without Running water

Homemade Pedialyte (Basic Oral Rehydration Solution)

Keeping the kids entertained on travel

How to Overcome Jetlag with Small Children

Kids activities with toilet paper rolls

Handling Fruits and Vegetables: Sanitary Tips

Foreign Service & the Special Needs Child Part I

Eating "on the road"

Airline roundup

Community Service Overseas

Five Easy To Prepare Vegan Snacks for Kids

What to do when the toys are in HHE?

Using a Travel Binder

Staying Organized During Your Move

Painted Sugar Cubes

Coat Hanger Puppets

Airport roundup (children)

Evacuation 101: Part I

Evacuation 101: Part 2

Evacuations Epilogue

Homemade Journals

Maximizing a Small Outdoor Play Space

Kid Snack: Banana Peanutbutter Dippers

Auntie Anne's, at home

Guest Post - "She told me I should throw my baby off the plane..."

Food Processor Ice Cream

Easy Way to Grow Green Onions and Celery

PCS 101: Lesson 1

PCS 101, Lesson 2: Schools, Shipping Pets and Choosing a Car

Impending packout? Relax :)

Recordable Storybooks

Preparing to move: What you need to know about your new house

Cinnamon and Sugar Cut-Out Snacks

Q&A Getting rid of stubborn stains

Using a Travel Binder

(This guest post is from Michele at GlobeHoppers.  Michele is currently living in Amman, Jordan.  The original post can be found here. -Admin)

Building a Travel Binder

I know that everyone has a different way of traveling.  Some book an airfare to where ever is affordable and hop on board with some clean clothes tossed in a backpack, a passport, and a credit card.  Others, like me, plan each detail with printouts, notes, highlights, and tickets on top of the passport and credit card.

It’s no secret that my husband mocks my binder.  I let him have his fun because I also know deep down he appreciates it almost as much as I do, if for no other reason than the binder’s existence means that I am a calmer and more pleasant traveling partner.

There are six of us when we travel with six different sets of needs and wants, so for me it makes sense to plan a vacation that caters to everyone.  I know perfectly well every activity won’t make everyone happy, but I figure it’s much like food or exercise:  If at the end of the week you can say everyone had some fun, then the trip was a success.

The one thing I can’t stand is waking in the morning and having no idea what’s going to happen that day.

Now, don’t get me wrong, just because I have a plan doesn’t mean those are the only activities allowed.  If we get sidetracked, if something catches our eye, if an opportunity arises, you can bet we change directions.  But to leave it all up in the air gives me hives, so I don’t.

To begin, I find a binder and fill it with page protectors and a set of dividers.  The number of page protectors and dividers depends on the length of the trip, the newness of the location, and the interests of the family.  The binder doesn’t matter.  A new one that can double as a final “scrapbook” is fine, or any old school binder the kids don’t need is just as good. 

One with a cover slot is great for keeping a calendar (several copies come in handy as dates and locations change, it saves from erasing everything or crossing out items mistakenly written in pen), and the first few page protectors are reserved for flight reservations and airline tickets.

The next few pages are for hotel/cottage/apartment reservations. Check out your favorite hotel sites, VRBO, and HolidayLettings to start. And if you need a car, add in that reservation too.  If you’re going to use public transportation, look around for deals or travel cards.  Big cities like Chicago and London offer transportation passes which are an outlay of money at first but save quite a bit in the long run.

For this year’s trip, my dividers are marked for locations.  We’re visiting England, Wales, and Ireland so it’s broken up as such.  If you’re staying 3 weeks in one place then breaking the book up by time might make more sense.  However it works for you is how you should go. Let me also say that my binder is not just for international trips.  When we travel for home leave with 4-6 weeks to fill I make a binder.  If there’s a road trip coming up, a spring break, really any trip that involves more than a few days away and/or multiple stops, I organize it.

The rest of the binder is for the fun stuff: pack in all your ideas to play, to relax, to visit friends, to sightsee.

The best place to get recommendations for can’t miss activities is word-of-mouth.  Ask your friends and family and co-workers.  Chances are if you live overseas for work that you know someone who knows someone who has visited your chosen destination.  Use social media, I find begging for ideas is particularly profitable on Facebook.

Search the internet with lines like your city/state/country name plus “off the beaten path,” “unique sights,” “unusual restaurants,” “with kids,” “underground music scene,” “must see,”  “leprechaun museum,” “brewery tour,” to weave through a maze of sites and bring up an interesting variety.  While doing searches for London there are the typical suggestions of Buckingham Palace and the London Eye, but we’d like to see 221B Baker Street and the Greenwich Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory.  Since we’re not staying within the city and we are renting a car, we also have the areas around the city to explore.  One search led me to a place I was glad to stumble across, a cemetery north of the city where Michael Faraday is buried.  A cemetery isn’t on everyone’s list of fun activities, but I’m pretty psyched.

If you’re headed to a small town, search for “festivals,” “fairs,” “games,” “local sports,” or “specialty foods” and see what comes up.  Oftentimes, tickets for local team games are cheap and game are way more fun than watching major league teams.  Every area is famous for some form of food, so find out what it is and indulge.  As long as it isn’t deep fried butter sticks you’re good.

If you are headed to a big city, check what sort of visitor passes it may offer.  Some cities offer flat rate passes that cover entrance fees to a number of sights you may already have on your to-do list.  Some cities offer these passes wrapped with a transportation package, so it’s well worth looking in to.  Again, the outlay may be large at first, but the ease of use and the accessibility to your activities makes it all worth it.  Remember, you save money at the end, as long as you use the cards to their full extent.

When you find things that pique your interest, print out the webpage or email, photo copy it from a guide book, scribble a note with info from a friend, anything you need to do to keep the information handy and current.  Slide it into a page protector in whatever section it fits, highlight the important parts like opening and closing times, and move on.  Look for activities that are quiet, adventurous, perfect for the youngest, ideal for the oldest, indoor, outdoor, good for bad weather, near the place you’re staying, and a good distance away. It’s helpful to have more ideas than days to account for rain and whether someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

I also like to pre-purchase tickets to save money, but this can get a little hairy if you’re trying to stay organized yet flexible.  A couple of items on my list for this summer require pre-purchased tickets and I admit I’m holding off, though I can’t do that much longer.  If I have to preorder so does everyone else, which means decision time approaches quicker than I’d like. 

This is when the calendar comes into play for a rough outline of day-to-day adventures, with a few items hard-lined in.  These things require a little faith to jump in and order the tickets and hope it all works out.  I recommend not hard-lining anything the day you’re scheduled to arrive or the day before you leave.  To be safe, don’t schedule anything the day after you arrive either.  Take into account possible delayed flights and probable jetlag.  Even if it’s something awesome like visiting friends, be kind to yourself and allow a day of low-key entertainment to decompress from travel.

As tickets and confirmation numbers arrive in your email, print it all out and add it in to the binder.

Organize it all according to your calendar and it is complete and ready for take-off.

But The Binder is not done yet.

Now that you are on vacation and the binder is in your bag at your fingertips, holding show tickets and ride passes and restaurant recommendations, use it as a depository.

Postcards, ticket stubs, journal notes.  Shove them into the page protectors as the days pass by.  Once you’ve flipped through your 300 photos and printed the ones you like, slide them right in as well.  The result can end up any number of ways, though my two most common are 1) to leave the whole thing as it is and place it on the bookshelf as my travel memory or 2) get all creative and create a scrapbook.  The beauty of the binder is that it’s not an envelope or a box or a paper bag.  It’s orderly and the contents remain clean and uncrumpled.  For those that enjoy scrapbooking but may not have the time right now, the binder patiently waits until the kids are back in school.  You’ll never forget in what order you went on rides, or how old your grandmother turned on her birthday, or whether the food was really as great as you remembered.  It’s all there waiting to be rediscovered and reminisced.

My binder.  I never travel without it.

Living without Running water

We had a great question come in: 

How do you plan to live without running water?

In the writer's case, the city is turning off water at regular intervals due to water shortages. Lots of things can lead to losing water though. Maybe someone will forget to pay a bill. Or loss of electricity will also mean loss of water if your house has pump system. In other places the issue might be plumbing or pipe issues. That can happen just about anywhere. In fact our first Foreign Service water outage was while visiting friends who were on training in Arlington. The point is, it's a good thing to plan for. Here are a few ideas I sent to our questioner. Please add your own ideas in the comments. Thanks!

-Stockpile in drinking water (and cooking water); get more than you think you need. At our last post we already had water delivered for drinking and cooking. We knew how much we usually used in a week and just added a bottle or two to that. If you store it yourself, make sure to check on guidelines on how to store water. Maybe that is something we'll address in a later post. Most health departments, etc. have guidelines. 

-Put regular water in old water bottles, juice bottles, etc. If you treat it with a bit of bleach or boiling, it can be used for washing dishes, counters, kids, etc.  We just used regular water for this at both of our posts so far because it was decent water for washing. 

 - If you know a water outage is coming (or might be coming) clean the house and do all the laundry beforehand if you can so you can forget about it for a couple days. 

(We lost water every time we lost electricity so whenever a big rainstorm was coming I tried to get all the laundry and cleaning done in advance.)  

-We had a kiddie pool we filled with water when we thought we might lose water. It gave the kids a place to cool off and to rinse a bit. It also gave us water to use for flushing toilets if needed. (See below for more on that.) 

-We're in Taiwan now and we fill cooking pots, bathtubs, etc. every time a hurricane/typhoon is coming, just in case. Standing water of course attracts mosquitoes but should be okay for a day or two; though you might want to skip bathtubs if you have a little one in the house.

-I know it isn't green but this is when I sometimes pull out the paper plates

-Towards the end of the tour I did just leave town once. I was just done dealing with it. It's not always an option but one way to cope. 

-If you can and you know that water turn offs are planned, I'd stock in some pre-made, freezer type meals too, and wash a bunch of fruit/veg in advance, just to make life easier.

-It's kind of gross to think about but the toilets use a lot of water. You can flush them with a bucket but to make the water go further you can choose to only flush solid waste. We designated one bathroom as the "stinky potty" and had our kids use that if they could. Luckily the toilet water doesn't have to be clean at all so you could just fill several storage totes with water and throw them outside  bringing in buckets to flush with. Or you can use pool water or something like that. 

 IN ALL THESE CASES, I'D MAKE SURE CONTAINERS ARE SEALED OR COVERED SOMEHOW. 

Two reasons: mosquitoes and keeping young kids and pets from drowning. We do fill bathtubs now that our kids are older but we couldn't have when they were smaller. We used storage totes with lids then and put them somewhere the kids couldn't access. 

If you're the one who doesn't have water, I am so sorry. It can be miserable. It makes me really grateful for our running water every time we lose it for a bit. Good luck! 

Everyone else, please add your advice in the comments. Thanks!

Preparing to move: What you need to know about your new house

So you have your housing assignment for your new post. What next?

No matter what you’ve been told about “all” of the housing at your new post or what you asked for to fit your needs, there are some questions you might want answered. Not all of them apply to everyone everywhere, but depending on where you’re going, you might want to ask some of these things before you pack out so you can decide what to include in your shipments -- keeping in mind, of course, that assignments can change.

Bathrooms

            Are shower curtains necessary or are there glass doors? If you need to provide shower curtains, what sizes do they need to be?
            Is there bathroom storage (cabinets or shelves)? If not, can the GSO add some? If not, are such things available locally? If not, what are the measurements of the space you need to send cabinets or shelves to fill?
            Are there electrical outlets in the bathrooms? (If not, you may need extension cords.)
            Are there defined color schemes (wall or floor tiles) that should limit color choices of shower curtains and bath mats?

Beds

            How many and what sizes?

Bookcases

            How many are provided? What kind of space is there for any you might want to bring with you?

Curtains

           Are there curtains in place? Do you need to provide them? (Find out whether there is a curtain allowance and, if so, how filing and reimbursement work. Before buying anything you think you’ll be reimbursed for, make sure it meets any color or fabric requirements.)

Electricity

            What is the voltage? What kinds of outlets – how many prongs and what shape? – are there?
            Are outlet adapters included in the welcome kit? If so, how many? Are they readily available at stores near the housing?
            How many power converters (aka transformers) does the embassy/consulate provide?

Floors/rugs/carpets

            What types of flooring are there?
            Does the embassy/consulate provide rugs or carpets?
            If not, what are the measurements of rooms where you’ll want/need them?

 Kitchen

            How big is the oven? Will American-size baking or muffin pans fit?
            Is there room for an island?
            Is there a microwave?
            Is there a dishwasher? (If not, will the electric circuits support a portable model you want to bring with you?)
            Are any cabinets or shelves provided open or enclosed? (If they’re open, you might want curtains to cover them.)
            Are there drawers for flatware and other items? (If not, you may want to consider bringing an island or cabinet with drawers to hold such things.)

Living room furniture

            Is it Drexel Heritage? If so, which upholstery color scheme?

Outdoor space

            Is patio/balcony furniture provided? If not, are good and affordable options available locally?
            Is there a yard, lawn or garden you will need to maintain? If so, are a lawnmower and tools provided?

Pets

            Where is the closest place to walk a dog? Are there seemingly acceptable areas nearby where dog walking isn’t allowed?
            What is the easiest and most affordable way to purchase pet supplies (local retail, pouch/DPO, consumables/HHE)

Storage/closets

            How much storage is there? Shelves or hanging rods?
            If you need/want to bring wardrobes, how much space is there for them?
            Is there space to store/hide things you want to bring but might not have to? (Consumables or other foodstuffs/children’s clothing for additional seasons or years/crafts/bulky Christmas gifts)

Vacuum cleaners

            Are they provided? (If not and you bring your own, consider bringing extra bags and belts.)

Walls

            What are they made of? What is the best way to hang things? Do you need to bring tools/supplies to do this yourself? (Not all embassies/consulates provide this service.)

Welcome kit

            What’s included? What has to be returned?

Thank you to the members of the Trailing Houses group on Facebook for their contributions to this list!