My Toilet Brush Blender

John has decided that he wants to get more than 5 a day into his diet. He’s been saying it for a while but now that January is upon us, the motivation levels are still high. It can be hard to fit it in when you’re busy running around town. John doesn’t eat fruit at the best of times, other than bananas really. Not that he doesn’t like it, I think it is just an effort for him to remember to get it in. But every time we go to a shopping centre, he loves going for a smoothie, especially ones with peanut and muesli in them. An obvious solution then was that the best way to pack as much fruit and veg in is to make smoothies.

Problem- we are a bit low on cash at the moment and don’t want to fork out for a blender, so we decided to make our own homemade one. Off to Morrissons we went in search of fruit, veg, yoghurt, juice, muesli and something tall to blitz them in (we already have an Asda hand blender £4.79). Morrissons is the closest supermarket to us but it is a bit anemic in the kitchenware aisle. We couldn’t find anything there, when lo and behold, I got the brainwave to look in the bathroom section. Yes ladies, I managed to use my baby brain to find a toilet brush and holder that would make the perfect size receptacle for making smoothies in (minus the brush).

We picked up several boxes of frozen fruit as well as fresh fruit. It’s much cheaper and it is great for Esmé too. Just a handful, de-frosted for a few seconds in the microwave is a great addition to her morning porridge. It’s also handy when we are down to bare cupboard day and have no fresh fruit in the house. Frozen fruit and veg is much cheaper than fresh and is of them same if not better nutritional value, as it is frozen within hours of harnessing. Also for those of you still breastfeeding, it’s a great way to down those additional vitamins and minerals as the baby pinches a fair amount of your own. Okay Home Economics lesson over.

Off home we trotted with our spoils. The toilet brush holder is the perfect height to make smoothies, without a single drop of splash back and all for the princely sum of £3!  And the brush, well we threw that under the stairs; I’m sure it will come in handy at some point. Ever since, John’s been like a giddy scientist experimenting with all sorts of homemade smoothies. He’s even blending in veg with fruit while retaining the sweetness. We both feel a lot healthier and have more energy. And there you have it- £7.79, a blender on a budget.

A tip for you- always drink smoothies through a straw to avoid the acids in the fruit staining your sparklers!

I've Coined a New Working Mum Concept- Baby Pooling!

Well there I was all excited, thinking I had coined a new phrase ‘baby pooling’, but when I Googled it to see if it already existed, it seems some Chinese mums have got there before me. I say that, but there is only one tiny paragraph I could find on baby pooling and somewhat dissimilar to the idea I had in mind. I thought that this idea would be all over America with city moms etc. but apparently not, so I will take all the credit!

My ‘baby pooling’ concept comes from a slightly different angle. The Chinese article was about sharing the parenting of children. Mine is about allowing you to have the best of both worlds- staying accessible to your child during the day and earning money/pursuing your freelance career at the same time.

When Esmé hit 7 months, the end of maternity leave was looming closer and closer. Many of my new mum friends were heading back to work and were feeling quite emotionally torn. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to go back to full time teaching and that I wanted to focus my time building my writing career.

As a freelance writer, work is very flexible. I can work from home while Esmé is napping, in the evenings and on weekends when John is home. However, there are those times when I have just gotten into a certain frame of mind and the creative ideas are rolling when I hear the wake-up cry from upstairs. This is what led me to come up with the idea of baby pooling. You’ve heard of car pooling I’m sure? Well my idea for baby pooling is that mums who work from home can pair up with other mums and baby share.

Here’s how it works: You meet at an agreed daily time, I think work hours work best so that you can stick to a routine, which keeps you in a professional frame of mind. You might decide to meet at 9am at one person’s house. One mum looks after both babies from 9am-12 noon. While she is with the babies, the other mum is working in another room. At 12, everyone can have lunch together and have some play time/ story time etc. Then from 1pm-4pm the other mum works for her 3 hours. This would give each mum 15 hours per week without any daycare costs and it would mean that breastfeeding mums could carry on feeding. You would just pop your dependent other on the boob for 10-15 mins and then back to work you go. The hours could also be tweaked so that mums with older children could pick them up from school. Or the mum ‘in charge’ for those hours could do the school run if the mums lived in the same school district.

This is something I am looking to set in place as work picks up pace. The concept works well for mums like me, who just need a laptop and internet connection to work. If there are mums who need their own home base to work from, hopefully they would be able to pair up with a mum who is more flexible in terms of location. What do you think ladies? Is it something you think could work for you- a daily timetable, access to your child at any point during the day, no day care fees, continuing to breastfeed on demand?