I am going through a long and sentimental (bordering on mawkish) ending of sorts. It involves a 20-year-old Coleman pop-up camper.

My wife and I bought it new just after we were married. This was well before we had the twins, well before I even dreamed that was on the horizon. It’s old and worn now, ravaged by time, memory, miles and many backyard sleepovers. I am trying to figure out what to do with it as it’s barely roadworthy.

We were so delightfully young and naive when we purchased it. For weeks we looked at floor plans, considering size and amenities, before finally deciding on a smaller one that could be towed by my six-cylinder Chevy S-10. A smaller size would also make backing it up easier. Truth be told, I suck at backing a trailer. This one proved small enough it actually be hand-pushed into a space when necessary. It never occurred to us we might be camping with twin toddlers or giant teenagers, so we based our needs on just us. It contained no toilet and an interior set up to accommodate just two newlyweds and a guitar.

The camper’s been in our backyard for some time now. The boys like to hang out in it as the WiFi reaches that far. I’ve got to put it down before … well, I can’t.

You see, when we bought the camper, I purchased a nice leather-bound journal. I put it in a drawer inside the camper and vowed to write a bit about every night spent in it. And I did. The writing is not very good, few metaphors or deep insights, but the years are covered, each trip dutifully noted. Through the pages, the boys grow up, I age, the relationship with my wife deepens and a continuity and connection is established. Over the years, it has held the stories and hopes of a young family growing together. Stories of thunderstorms and frightened toddlers, scraped knees and sleepless nights. Hopes for the future in the minds of 6-year-olds and my hopes for their lives moving forward.

I am very glad I bought that journal. It sits to my left as I am writing this right now.

I spent a couple of recent evenings in the old camper, looking through what was in it when I came across the journal. With a curious urgency — fueled perhaps by the beers — I put it with the pile of things to take into the house.

Here’s the thing. The “ending” of that old camper is a new “beginning” for that journal. It is done with its long present and now can begin to show me my past: a past where I hoped for my boys’ future. It is so strange how, as one writes in diaries and personal journals, how prescient we can be. There’s an entry from 2011, written of an early morning at a state park in central Ohio, where I say: “The boys are getting along surprisingly well. They rarely fight or bicker and are good friends, it seems. Who knows how long that’ll last, but I really hope it does.”

How could I know then that, nine years later, they’d still be best friends?

Or, that at the time I was watching the beginnings of what I think will be a lifelong friendship?

How, perhaps, would I know that camping and bonding in the close quarters of that little camper would help that along? Maybe I had helped it through sheer happenstance and in a leather-bound journal I’d noted it. Now I can look it up.

Recently, a fellow father and writer on this website purchased a used camper. He solicited advice from a social media group we are in. I typed a long answer — advice on gear and the such — but I deleted it. The real advice was too ethereal and came from a place I’m at now, a place he’ll get to, a place he already is. Camping, like so many other family adventures and hobbies, is about memory-making. Their worth can only be revealed later. However, at the time you’re making them, you still somehow know that even if you don’t realize it then.

About the author

Bill Peebles left a 30-year career in the restaurant business to become a stay-at-home dad to twin boys. He writes a blog, I Hope I Win a Toaster, that makes little sense. Bill also coaches sometimes, volunteers at the schools, plays guitar, and is a damn good homemaker. He believes in hope, dreams, and love … but not computers.

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This blog post, first published in 2020, is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Did you know that what we call the “fall colors” of leaves are actually their glorious “true” colors? The leaves don’t change to new colors in autumn but instead revert to their original colors. I learned this years ago when my oldest daughter asked why the leaves change color.

As a way to bond (and hide my ignorance), I suggested we search the internet together for information. We found that, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “the four primary pigments that produce color within a leaf are chlorophyll (green); xanthophylls (yellow); carotenoids (orange); and anthocyanins (reds and purples). During the warmer growing seasons, leaves produce chlorophyll to help plants create energy from light. The green pigment becomes dominant and masks the other pigments. … As days get shorter and nights become longer … the fading green allows a leaf’s true colors to emerge, producing the dazzling array of orange, yellow, red and purple pigments we refer to as fall foliage.”

Equipped with this knowledge, we annually observe the emergence of fall colors differently. It’s a richer, more wonder-filled experience for our family. I thought of this phenomenon and its relationship to parenting while reading Alexandra Horowitz’s recent book, On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation.

In the book, Horowitz takes 11 neighborhood walks with different experts to experience the same scenes with different eyes. The results are remarkable. Horowitz realizes “I had become a sleepwalker on the sidewalk. What I saw and attended to was exactly what I expected to see” and nothing else.

From a geologist, she learns “limestone, a popular building material, is full of the shells, remains, and other traces of ancient animals. … Taking this in, my view of the street was entirely changed: no longer was it passive rock; it was a sea graveyard.” From a field naturalist, she learns “even when you see no bugs before you, even when the ground looks still and the air looks clear, they are there.”

Learn through how children observe the world

Most relevant to parenting is what Horowitz learns about observation from her 19-month-old son. For him, a walk is “an investigatory exercise that begins with energy and ends when (and only when) exhausted.” An infant “has no expectations, so he is not closed off from experiencing something anew.” Also, the relative absence of language enables very young children to “sense the world at a different granularity, attending to parts of the visual world we gloss over; to sounds we have dismissed as irrelevant.”

Horowitz views a child’s acquisition of language in paradoxical terms. She acknowledges that language is key to a child’s development and navigation of the world. Hence, language could be compared to the necessary green pigment that fosters growth on leaves. But Horowitz also laments that the naming of objects in a child’s environment gradually limits his or her ability to observe and perceive additional aspects — or what might be called the environment’s true (and masked) colors — more fully.

She notes the bittersweet onset of language for her growing toddler. “I knew I did not have long before words, enablers of thoughts but also stealers of idiosyncrasies, muted his theatricality. And so our family had together created a fluid vocabulary of expressions, facial and bodily, that could be applied to a new situation,” she writes.

This poignant passage no doubt triggers every parent’s memories of those infant-to-toddler days when sounds were not yet words. One of my daughters at that age would repeat the sound “ta-doo” in varying tones. For weeks the family tried to discern the meaning of the sound. Then, one day, an older cousin simply said: “Maybe it just means ‘ta-doo.’” Somehow that settled the debate.

Improve your observational skills  

Every parent also remembers entertaining formulations from their children’s early language days. My older daughter once told me: “Dad, I’m a little bit big and a little bit little.” My younger daughter once wrote in her journal: “My dad has hair on both sides of his head and nothing in the middle.” That last one burned a little bit.

Selective attention is necessary for life, but parents should try not to narrow their attention too rigidly. Follow the example of very young children before language development. Try to maintain an open mind that does not allow habit and expectation to become blinders that restrict understanding.

A great way to embody this message might be a family nature walk this fall. Slow down and inspect the surroundings together. Keep a sense of wonder about all that reveals itself — like those “true colors” in the trees that the pandemic cannot cancel. Try to keep seeing the world with fresh, unmasked eyes.

Observe autumn photo: © Volodymyr / Adobe Stock.

How can you help develop the inner workings of your child’s brain? According to a new book, you must “think outside” our culture’s normal associations with the brain.

In The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, science writer Annie Murphy Paul declares the common metaphor of the brain-as-computer is flawed and limiting. “Our culture insists that the brain is the sole locus of thinking, a cordoned-off space where cognition happens, much as the workings of my laptop are sealed inside its aluminum case,” she writes. “This book argues otherwise.”

The book focuses on the problems such a “brainbound” perspective creates in modern schools and workplaces. But many of Murphy Paul’s well-researched insights have relevance for today’s parents, especially given our ever-increasing technological saturation. Indeed, technological devices often “isolate” both adults and growing children “from one another, sealing us within our individual digital bubbles,” she writes.

Benefits of eye contact, gestures, conversation

The key for parents is to think beyond the screen as much as possible when interacting with their children. Some of these strategies for “extending the brain” are instinctive, but Murphy Paul’s research often pinpoints the reasons that can help parents be more intentional.

For example, we know that from birth a baby starts tracking a parent’s eyes, and parents naturally return the gaze. But Murphy Paul explains the importance of eye contact is actually built into our eyes. “Such gaze-following is made easier by the fact that people have visible whites of the eyes,” she writes. “Humans are the only primates so outfitted, an exceptional status that has led scientists to propose the ‘cooperative eye hypothesis’ — the theory that our eyes evolved to support cooperative social interactions. ‘Our eyes see, but they are also meant to be seen,’ notes science writer Ker Than.”

Beyond eye contact, gestures are another bodily way to “extend” a young child’s brain development. Murphy Paul explains “linguists theorize that gesture was humankind’s earliest language …  all of us, then, are effectively bilingual.” She notes that “well before babies can talk, they are waving, beckoning, holding up their arms in a wordless signal: pick me up.” Parents help “translate” the child’s gestures. Growing children, therefore, benefit from an environment rich in both words and gestures like pointing. Gestures can be especially helpful when a parent and child read a picture book together, which is essentially preparing the child’s brain to “read” the outside world as well.

As young children age, their brains and social skills benefit tremendously from as much face-to-face conversation as possible. The reason? “The body is the bridge,” Murphy Paul writes.

During conversations, “the body acts as a critical conduit, supplying the brain with the visceral information it lacks. … When interacting with other people, we subtly and unconsciously mimic their facial expressions, gestures, posture, and vocal pitch,” she writes. “Then … we perceive what the other person is feeling because we feel it in ourselves.” Think of how the lack of body language often impacts the quality of e-mail or of what Murphy Paul calls the “stutter-stop rhythm of asynchronous text exchanges.”

Role of exercise, motion, nature in brain development

Parents can also bodily “extend” a child’s brain development via frequent exercise and exposure to nature. Movement while learning new information can actually improve recall (hence we “never forget how to ride a bike”). Other ways to capitalize on this connection might be to encourage children to use their fingers when learning to count, act out stories they read, and write their thoughts in a journal. As Murphy Paul states, “whenever possible, we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world.”

The value of exposure to nature in our increasingly digital (and urban) world cannot be overstated. In terms of brain development, Murphy Paul explains “children’s play is more imaginative when they are outdoors than when they are inside, research has shown; natural play spaces are less structured and more varied, and the props children may come across (leaves, pebbles, pinecones) have no purpose predetermined by teachers or parents.” Even if nature is hard to access, benefits can still result from home environments with natural light and growing plants. 

On a larger scale, Murphy Paul notes the paradox of nature’s effect in our high-tech age. “The time we spend scrutinizing our small screens leads us to think small, even as it enlarges and aggrandizes our sense of self,” she writes. “Nature’s vastness — the unfathomable scale of the ocean, of the mountains, of the night sky — has the opposite effect. It makes us feel tiny, even as it opens wide our sense of the possible.”

In her conclusion, Murphy Paul returns to the pitfalls of the brain-as-computer metaphor. “We should resist the urge to shunt our thinking along the linear path appropriate to a computer — input, output, done — and instead allow it to take a more winding route,” she writes. Such a route would embed brain-extensions into our family life as much as possible.

Parents do some of this instinctively, but Murphy Paul’s book is a reminder that while today’s technology has many benefits, it also tends to limit brain development linked to our bodies, environments and relationships. In other words, we don’t want our growing children to just “use their heads,” but to “extend their minds” as well.

Child brain development photo: © denisismagilov / Adobe Stock.

EDITOR’S NOTE: City Dads Group is working with longtime partner Dove Men+Care to create “how to” videos for the grooming products company’s “Dads Care” campaign. We will be featuring the videos and scripts our members appear in. This one features Jason Greene and his son, Corbin, of our NYC Dads Group talking about how to get your children to play outside.

With much of the country social distancing (or they should be), kids have become accustomed to staying inside instead of enjoying the outdoors, even during the summer. And parents, since we’re still trying to work from home and manage the weirdness that is daily life, it has become all too tempting to let them sit comfortably on the couch. It isn’t healthy though.

I have been a stay-at-home dad for 15 years and during that time, I homeschooled for three years. Even while schooling them, I made sure that play outside time was a part of our everyday activity. Not only are you helping them get that all-important vitamin D, but it helps kids with their social skills and increase their imagination.

Here are my three tips for getting kids to play outside:

1. Put it on the schedule

During normal school hours in school, kids have recess or gym class on their schedule. They know while they’re sitting there that there’s going to be a time for them to run around, scream and play.

Also having it on a schedule, reminds you to give them outside time so you just don’t breeze past it.

2. Be an active participant with your the kids

Your children are much more likely to have fun and go outside if they know the parent is going to come with them. Not only are you creating these great memories with them but you are creating a desire in them to want to be outside.

When we go out, we play a lot of games — badminton, catch, HORSE on the basketball hoop. We have a lot of fun together.

3. Plan ahead

On sunny days, you should know you have sunscreen on hand and put it on them. On cold days, dress appropriately. And don’t forget to bring snacks and a water bottle. If your prepared, you’ll probably stay out longer and have more fun.

Photo: © anekoho / Adobe Stock.

I remember being extra fidgety one Sunday morning while sitting in the stark white Presbyterian church of my childhood. I used to bounce my leg a lot when I was little — something one of my own sons does now — and my dad would pinch my knee between his thumb and forefinger to grab my attention so I would stop.

This particular Sunday, my dad had done this a few times, each with increasing pressure. It was an autumn day and the Cincinnati Reds — the legendary Big Red Machine of the 1970s — were in baseball’s playoffs once again, and I was distracted. I really didn’t want to be there.

Finally, my dad had to whisper between gritted teeth to stop fidgeting.

“But I’m soooo bored,” I whispered back.

His response still echoes in my mind some 45 years later, “If you’re bored, you are not paying attention.”

Baseball is life; life is baseball

I’ve been accused of watching too much baseball. I do watch a lot, almost every game the Reds play over the summer, and the All-Star game, and the playoffs and the World Series. Yeah, I guess maybe I do watch too much baseball, but I never find it dull.

“It’s so boring,” my friends say.

“It’s so slow, waiting around for the pitchers to pitch and the batters to adjust the Velcro on their gloves,” they lament. “There’s no action.”

I guess that’s how you could see it. But I see it differently. I find my attention drawn to the edges where my imagination makes it even more interesting.

Let’s take a look at that scene in the batter’s box. See that hitter there, waiting for the pitch? Ignore him. Look around him. Behind him. Around the edge of your TV screen. See those three boys in rally caps, age 8 or maybe 9, hanging on every pitch, waving their rally towels to distract the pitcher. Man, they look like their having a great night, staying up late and rooting for the home team.

Now a left-handed batter is up. Behind him there’s a grandfather and a little girl laughing and talking as he points to this base, that player, teaching her the game he’s loved for so many years. Do you see her hair ribbons? They are the team colors.

At another game, in the front row, an elderly man wears a pink cap to every game so his wife knows he’s at the game and thinking of her.

Now there’s a pop-up over the netting. Look at that crowd, all trying for the ball, hoping for a souvenir, and smiling and laughing and cheering for the teenage boy who snowcones it just at the last minute.

Now, ignore the tears in my eyes as he hands it to his little brother and the crowd oohs and ahhs at the sweetness of the scene.

Pay mind to the ball boys and ball girls handling those sizzling fouls up the lines then turning and giving it to the kid with bushy hair and an oversized glove.

Often the camera operators will pan the crowd and what do the find? Families. Friends. Young couples. Happy people. Serious fans. Maybe a team of Little Leaguers in their uniforms.

Now, let’s look again on the field. See that player with the giant biceps and the long face in the batter’s box? Watch as he hits a three-run homer the day he returned from bereavement leave for the death of his father, his biggest fan. Cry with him, watch the hugs in the dugout, hear the crack in the announcer’s voice. Feel your heart soar and break in the exact same moment.

Another game now on Mother’s Day. The boys on the tilt are in pink hats. Some of the bats are pink. The lineup is listed as “Wendy Votto’s son” and “Maritza Puig’s son” and so on. It is not at all difficult to let your imagination go and see all those athletes as little boys batting off tees, dropping routine flies and stealing their first bases. In them, you see your own boys and girls on the fields of their youth. Perhaps they even become you striking out to lose the big game, or accidentally making your way around the bases on an error filled grand slam.

On yet another day, a boy named Eugenio smacks his 48th home run of the season and sets a record for the most major league homers for a native of Venezuela player. See the pride in his face, the joy of his teammates as they celebrate with a bottle of champagne and sing his native national anthem. Look just one more time, see the little boy dreaming of this day? He’s still in that grown man.

Attention paid pays dividends

So, what makes baseball not boring to me? The stories. Good ones, happy ones, sad ones, ongoing ones. That’s why I watch baseball. It’s one long damn story and I am glad to be a part of it, from that first T-ball game I coached to the World Series games I’ll be watching soon — it is all one story and I love it.

I’ve been telling my sons for 14 years now “if you’re bored, you’re not paying attention.” I think it has worked. They are content looking out a window on a long car ride or sitting through a long Easter Mass.  I see them looking up, looking out, looking around the corners and at the edges because that’s where the stories live.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Peebles left a 30-year career in the restaurant business to become a stay-at-home dad to twin boys. He writes a blog, I Hope I Win a Toaster, that makes little sense. He coaches sometimes, volunteers at the schools, plays guitar, and is a damn good homemaker. He believes in hope, dreams, and love … but not computers.

Attention on the diamond photo: ©terovesalainen / Adobe Stock.

DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by Clorox®.

The great outdoors. Crystal clear lakes, night skies filled with shimmering stars, the crackling of a roaring fire and a slight mildew smell coming from your tent.

Wait, something seems out of place.

If you are like me, you are gearing up for a summer of outdoor adventures like camping. However, your actual camping gear may not be so ready having spent the off-season growing funky in your basement or closet. And nothing, other than pouring rain, can take the fun out of camping like gross gear.

Like most years, my family will be heading to a campground in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Sure, there’s a pool at the campgrounds and bouncy house, and – yes – that is a local brewery nearby that will help you match a beer to whatever you are planning on cooking, but I swear: IT’S STILL CAMPING! We still will be setting up our own tent, sleeping in sleeping bags, and roasting marshmallows over an open fire that most would describe as way too big. All that fosters a love of the outdoors in my kids like the one I have. It’s totally worth it.

A few days ago, I took out my camping gear from the basement to give it a quick check and I found out that last year I was not following the 11th point of the Scout Law – A Scout Is Clean. Yikes. My old Scoutmaster is slowly shaking his head in disapproval somewhere.

Not only was my tent, which I never aired out before packing it up last summer, rather funky smelling, but my portable stove was even more of a disaster. It was stained with a combination of burnt coffee residue and grounds from my first attempts at making so-called “Cowboy Coffee.” (Pro-tip: Don’t dump your coffee grounds quickly into the boiling water. It will fizz over like a science fair volcano.) I know how finicky my 7- and 10-year-olds can be when it comes to eating, so cleaning up this piece of camping gear would be Job One.

I used Clorox^® Clean-Up^® Cleaner + Bleach kind of in the same way that you would clean up your bathroom or countertop, like in this video:

The tent, on the other hand, needed more delicate care. It had seen many nights under the stars, having been places as diverse as the camp where the original “Friday the Thirteenth” movie was filmed and dead center field of a minor league baseball park, so it could have been on its last trip if I wasn’t careful. I found bunches of brown spots, indicating mold. Luckily, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. If it was black mold or if it had half-eaten through the tent’s nylon-like material, it would have been time to get a new one. But this was mild and it could be salvaged, thanks to Clorox power.

Following a solution one of my old Scoutmasters swore by, the process was simple and similar to a manual version of cleaning a shower curtain, like in this video:

With all of our camping gear ready now, we can go make some more awesome family memories this summer. I am also going to teach the kids how to safely start and care for a campfire. Fingers crossed.

DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by Clorox®.

Imagination knows no bounds. You give a kid a box, and the possibilities are endless. You give a child a toy, and you’ve just put their imagination in high definition (HD).

During the summer, that HD imagination usually involves some outdoor terrain. Tree branches become forests. Mud becomes molten lava. And dirt becomes, well, it’s usually just dirt, but dirt by itself is fun for most children.

And there is your summer dilemma: Who are you, as a parent, to say “no” to the inclusion of natural elements in your child’s story? I know my parents didn’t, and I’m thankful.

As a younger sibling, I traveled to many of my older sister’s softball games when I was little. You know what kept me occupied during those long hours? Just a few toys, a pile of dirt and my imagination. I would find the biggest mounds to climb and suddenly the stories in my head would race into reality. I buried action figures, poured water to make swimming pools, then poured pop to make lakes of acid rain, and even built fortresses out of mud. My playtime was filthy.

As a parent, I encourage my kids to do the same kind of imaginative play to keep boredom away. In fact, it’s been rumored I occasionally get in on the mess myself. I mean, someone has to show them an adventure with dinosaurs cannot be the same without the mud lava. And how can they know just how heroic their heroes are if they don’t allow them to be buried alive in the sand? After all, did a story really happen or a child really play if his or her toys aren’t inundated with all the dirt, grime and – well, icky-ness — of the outdoors?

I think not.

Imagination is not real but germs are

Imagination, combined with the great outdoors, is a dirty sport, and our children’s toys often bear the brunt of that creativity. Playthings require a cleaning afterward because germs, like villains, should never get away clean – they should just get away when you clean. And for our disinfecting and cleaning, we use Clorox® Regular-Bleach₂ with CLOROMAX®.

Want to see how it’s done? Check out this video about how Clorox can keep those hard, nonporous toys clean, germ-free and ready for repeat performances:

To review, it’s as easy as this to clean and disinfect toys:

Start by wiping excessive gunk off the item with a wet sponge. Then, pour 1/2 cup of Clorox^® Regular Bleach₂ with CLOROMAX^® into one gallon of water. Once you have your bleach solution, thoroughly wet the toy’s surface with solution or let it soak in the solution. Then, allow the item to stay in contact with the solution for five minutes. After the soak, rinse with clean water and let air dry. Then let the imaginative play begin … again!

Other great outdoor cleaning, disinfecting tips

And don’t forget outdoor play equipment, like plastic jungle gyms and slides, too! To remove heavy stains and soiling, like bird poop, from these items, try Clorox^® Clean-Up^® Cleaner + Bleach: Just hold the bottle about four to six inches from the mess, spray until thoroughly wet, let stand for 30 seconds and rinse or wipe clean. Poof – clean and disinfected!

Even a child’s wading pool (or is this your kid’s roaring ocean?) could use a dose of Clorox clean – just add 5 teaspoons of Clorox® Regular-Bleach₂ with CLOROMAX® per 100 gallons of water to help sanitize before the splashing starts. Remember, empty the pools daily and then refill and repeat your chlorination.

While some of this might seem only to be appeasing our parental paranoia about germs, the bigger part of the equation is this: clean toys and play equipment invites more play. It opens the door to future creativity. Maybe the toy encounters the same challenge, or maybe, just maybe, the story shifts and a new setting is selected — this time to a muddy swamp instead of a dusty desert. Either way, Clorox’s cleaning power and disinfecting ease has you covered.

Whatever the case may be, know that you can watch endless episodes of these shows without the worry that their stories will be canceled because of icky, germy toys. What comes next is everything.

DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by Clorox®.

Summer gets a lot of press. It’s full of sunshine and backyard shenanigans, days at the beach and family vacations. There are more songs written about summer than all the other seasons combined (give or take). Summer is doing OK for itself, I’d say or — better yet —  write.

However, when you live in Southern California, which I do, summer is often times more of a lifestyle than a specific stretch of calendar. For example, according to the internet, people in some regions of the country actually store their patio furniture for the winter (it’s true!), whereas our tables and chairs stay outdoors year round. That isn’t to say that we use them during those months, but they’re there. We can see them through the window, a steady invitation slowly covered by twigs, cobwebs and the assorted winter visitors who drop by.

The visitors are bird and they often drop by with their droppings. Yuck.

It turns out, the longer we stay away from the patio furniture the more inviting it becomes to our fine, feathered friends, not to mention lizards, squirrels and all the creepy-crawlies of the rainbow.

I like to think, generally speaking, that I run a tidy patio, weather permitting. But weather is a funny thing here and it wasn’t that long ago that we had a sudden weekend of sweltering heat interrupt our regularly scheduled sweater session (during which time the patio furniture was still being rented out as roost along popular migratory lines). It was also the weekend that we had house guests, the kind of people that don’t see the sun for months at a time in their respective homelands of the Pacific Northwest, and, as such, they saw a sliver of golden warmth and longed to bask in it. Their kids were in our backyard before mine were even awake.

I admit, I was embarrassed. I hadn’t really given the patio a lot of thought, what with the sightseeing and the season, but there it was, mocking me. Also, a kid’s elbow was dangerously close to fowl territory. I quickly assembled the group for a spontaneous hiking trip, and checked the weather to make sure there wouldn’t be any future surprises. It was cold again the next morning, and the furniture moved down several spots on the to-do list. All the spots, if I’m being honest.

Clean patio furniture with Clorox power, ease

So when that time of the year when I more or less ignore the patio furniture fades and cleaning becomes a part of my custodial chores, I reach for Clorox® Regular-Bleach₂ with CLOROMAX®. Also, a hose.

Check out this video on how to clean patio furniture with Clorox confidence:

In a nutshell (but never on a nutshell), here’s the secret formula:

• Just mix 1/2 cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach₂ with CLOROMAX® in 1 gallon of water.
• Thoroughly wet the surface with the solution. Allow it to remain on the surface for five minutes to kill all those nasty germs.
• Rinse with clean water and air dry. That simple.
• Finally, sit on the now-clean surface and yell inside for someone to bring you a beverage, repeat as needed.

Some might complain about having to clean an extra space, but sitting outside on a weekend morning, listening to nature hum, buzz and tweet around me while drinking coffee, reading the paper or watching the kids chase the dog around — that’s worth any bit of elbow grease (which, thanks to the power and ease of Clorox, isn’t much).

However.

HOWEVER.

If one was searching for a downside to this tranquil life outside, it would be that a nice clean patio lends itself to friends hanging out (that’s not the downside), and those friends, eventually will have to go inside to use the facilities (see Step 4 above). When you have two boys, that inside stinks. It stinks really bad.

Luckily, Clorox works there, too. In the video below you’ll find a great way to keep the stink-bowl clean, but for the counters, doorknobs and other areas they might touch on the way to and fro, I prefer to keep Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner + Bleach on hand. It’s the fastest, easiest way to keep surfaces as clean humanly possible (although I’m not sure the stench of said bathroom could be quantified as human). Seriously, what’s the deal, guys?

Just watch this how-to video for creating a sparkling clean toilet bowl:

When I think of summer I image blue, sunny skies and clean, crisp scents. I think of bare feet in the grass and smiles on the faces of my children. And then we sit a spell and let the days get away from us. Our now clean patio furniture shines with anticipation, and down the hall our bathroom is spotless, at least for the moment.

As the heat of summer burns off, the nights creep ever so longer, and the air turns crisp and cool, my family returns to our favorite fall tradition — a weekend camping trip.

Even with small kids, camping doesn’t need to feel like an impossibly miserable weekend sleeping on the cold, hard ground. With a little preparation, camping can become a fall favorite for your family too.

Camping starts with a tent

First, make sure you have the right kind of gear. Of course, you’ll want a tent. If you don’t own a tent, borrow one. Just make sure you practice setting it up in your own yard (and check you have all the parts) so you are not surprised or frustrated when you arrive at your campsite. While setting up, make sure your kids are involved in helping too. Have them help arrange the inside of the tent with sleeping bags, pillows and blankets. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even allow them to hammer in the tent stakes using a rubber mallet.

Food prep

A swimming pool is definitely the best/worst kid activity of the summer. For every drop of enjoyment a pool provides, there is an equal and opposite negative reaction (just ask Isaac Newton).

There is no better way to cool off and feel refreshed in the summer than flopping that beach bod you planned to acquire over the winter into an 83-degree shimmering oasis with your little ones. At the same time, a day at the swimming pool requires a near-constant reapplication of sunscreen on kids. Doing this three or four times without getting sunscreen in their eyes is tough – it’s bound to happen at least once and it’s not pretty when it does.

Goggles, snorkels and pool noodles are all great toys. Too bad it only takes about seven minutes before the lenses pop out, a strap breaks or someone takes a bite out of the noodle foam.

If you’re a parent cutting corners (and who isn’t in the summer?), a dip in the pool sometimes substitutes for a nightly shower or bath. Too bad that this practice can result in an unwanted green tint in your child’s hair if done too many times.

The worst pool scenario? Watch the kids who drink lemonade and soda all afternoon and never leave the pool to go to the bathroom. Now that’s gross.

A swimming pool is equal parts fun and danger. For every smile, there is a slick spot on the pool deck. For every perfect dive, a shot in the eyes with a squirt gun. Still, it’s important to remember to enjoy the pool. Enjoy the summer. Manage the hard parts. And always remember, all of this stuff beats a cold winter.

A slightly different version of this post had first appeared on Indy’s Child.