Quick gardening update 🙂 today is laundry day, I only have few minutes to blog 🙂 

While enjoying a cup of my favorite cereal drink, I always make it a point to say good morning to my plants. And it never fails to give a smile on my face whenever I see flowers blooming from my garden.. imagine mornings with this:  

That’s an Okra flower..I have 3 active okra plants, flowering everyday and giving me okra fruit almost everyday.. harvest since Wednesday gave me more than ten okras, perfect for lunch today 🙂 (nilagang okra + pritong tilapia + bagoong na halubaybay with calamansi and sili!)

Aside from okra, beside my garden office/coffee corner  is a tomato plant.. I always look forward having breakfast with this:

ang hirap nya i-capture! tuwad, dapa at kung ano ano pa ang ginawa ko.. but these tiny flowers are really lovely. my photo did no justice to these flowers ahaha

The most interesting/ amazing thing happened on my garden is this:

That’s my sigarilyas and I am guessing that it will soon start to flower.. ayayay! I’m so happy when I found out.. jump for joy!

Sigarilyas is very close to my heart, my grandmother used to plant this. I remember as a child, we used to marvel at the sigarilyas vines as well as its fruit..I guess that’s another reason why sigarilyas is one of my (few) favorite vegetable.

My silis are very active too:

and starting to bear sili!!! waaaah

I am a fulfilled gardener this week!

but, I need to manage pests.. specially for my sitaw (which is strting to crawl).. someone mentioned about Marigold… where can I find those coin bearing plant?

I say practical and time savings because those two words best describe how I run my household. Practical in terms of finances because I have four kids.. and raising four kids financially is not easy, we have to be very practical in every aspect. Time saving because, again, with four kids, I have to spend little time doing the household chores, and more time with the kids. Years of being a home maker taught me how to save time as well as save money on the laundry department.

errr… allow me to use my local tongue with my 10 Practical And Time Saving Laundry Tips (oh yes, you’re welcome to imagine as if  Doña Delilah is doing her magsumikap ka spiel):

Ihiwalay ang panty, bra at medyas sa mga damit. Hmm not necessarily in that order, just make sure that yo have two laundry bins, one for clothes such as shirts, shorts and the likes and one for undergarments. Clothes and undergarments are washed separately, if you do not have a separate bin for each, you will have to separate each from each, which adds up to your laundry time. Another thing, dirt coming from clothes and undergarments are different too, if you do not have a separate bin for each, the smell and dirt would mix and you will end with dirtier clothes than you already have.

Ihiwalay ang Puti sa de Kolor. Just the same with the undergarments, separate the colored garments from white garments. If you can’t have too many different laundry bins for undergarments, colored clothes, white clothes, just make sure that when you do the laundry, do not mix colors. There are clothes that bleeds when washed and that can be damaging to your white garments.

Gamitin sa de kolor and pinaglabhan ng mga puting damit. That, I got from my grandmother. Is it a common practice? I asked some friends and they said that  they do that too. After washing the white garments, they use the laundry solution for the colored garments. But only do this if you think the laundry solution is still clean.

Ihiwalay ang paglalaba ng mga itim na damit. This, I learned the hard way. As I practice tip above, I noticed that our black clothes are slowly turning into white garments. White threads from white garments were left at the laundry solution and when I use it to wash the black garments, the thread stick to the black garment. Ang sagwa! 

Maging praktikal sa pagpili ng sabong panglaba. Oh yes dear! be very very practical, in a sense that you not only save money but time as well. It should always be quantity vs quality, with quality winning the game. Do not buy laundry detergent that’s cheap and yet you will end up using 2x the amount that you need. Use detergent such as Ariel Stain Lift.

Ariel was kind enough to let me try their newest product, Ariel Stain Lift with deep cleaning technology. As my boys wear white sando as pambahay, stains are inevitable. I usually rely on stain removal solutions for stains. And of course, that’s additional expense on our budget. When I use Ariel Stain Lift, it was effective that I no longer need stain removal solutions. 

Gumamit ng mg Produkto na makakatipid sa oras mo. Well, that one I learned when I had my third born and I still have no helper. I have seen innovative products on TV to minimize laundry time and I tried it and saw the result was OK. I think I have mentioned  how thankful I am to Downy for bringing their Isang Banlaw variant.

Sa pag gamit ng dryer, siguraduhing puno ito. It can save you a lot from paying high electricity bill, specially in the rainy days where washing machine drying is needed. Imagine if you have 3 loads of laundry that you can squeeze into two loads on the dryer, that’s one load save.

Kung ma-araw ay gamitin lang sandali ang dryer. Another tip when using your washing machine, if it’s sunny, use your dryer just a few minutes, just right amount of time to squeeze out excess water. During summer, I use my dryer for less than a minute each load.

Itiklop na agad ang damit at Ihanger ang mga palantsahin. This one, I still have to master but this is one of the best time saving tip I can offer. For one, folding the clothes as soon as it dries up will save you from wrinkles. I mean the clothes will not be wrinkled. Leaving the clothes that needs to be ironed in a hanger will also prevent it from wrinkling, making it easier to iron.

This year, as I face the challenge of being a full time home manager (my sister used to live me and helped a lot in the household chores) again, I will share with you more tips on home management and how to make the most out of your time. Saturdays will be about House and Gardening so expect to see more practical home management tips every Saturday (as well as photos of my garden).