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As a mom, I’m sure you know all too well the need to take on many different roles or “hats” to ensure your family has everything they need day in and day out. Whether it’s being the family “doctor,” “chef,” or “accountant” in addition to “Mom,” finding product solutions that improve life’s daily demands are MUST-DOs on your never ending TO-DO list! If only you had insider access to discovering ways to get the job done right the FIRST time around, ultimately helping to transform life’s daily demands for the better ... Sound too good to be true?

I've found the perfect Santa's Little Helper to get me through the holidays this year. He's short, he's got an overbite, and he does dishes. Meet Pete, the scrubbing monkey! Not only does he leave pots shining, he does it all with a baby on his back. Yup, he's the ultimate baby-wearing kitchen assistant, and he is so invited to my place this Christmas.

Childcare provider, pot-scrubber, and adorable critter? All in one? And he's so thorough in his scrubbing, too! This is the ultimate Christmas present for the busy mom, right? I want one.

Cleaning the house usually leaves me awash with guilt over the potentially toxic products I’m using -- which means I’m a sucker for anything that says it biodegrades, or is safe for the environment, or doesn’t murder baby seals. But I’ve also got to keep my eye on my family’s budget, which often leaves me standing in the cleaning-products aisle of Whole Foods glaring at the various products and wondering which, if any, are actually doing any good.
 
This is why I listened carefully to a recent radio show about the Federal Trade Commission’s revamping of their Green Guides -- which left things as clear as (organic) mud.
 
If you’re wondering how trustworthy the environmental claims of your cleaning products are, here’s what I found out after a little digging.

This is hard to admit, but I feel like I’m not alone here: When I take my toddler and 1-year-old on play dates, I often feel like I can’t have the people over in return. For various reasons, we live in an apartment that’s pretty small, with no backyard. To make matters worse, neither my husband or I are particularly good at de-cluttering or cleaning. The result is that my home usually doesn’t look good enough for company, and I’m embarrassed to have people see that we pretty much live like college students.

But I can’t keep offering to meet people at the playground. Part of friendship is reciprocation. A huge re-haul is not in the cards: we don’t have the time, the money, or the energy. What, I wondered, could I do if my home didn’t feel ready for prime time?

These lucky triplets got a bedroom makeover!Celebrity designers and parents to seven kids Cortney and Robert Novogratz are back this weekend when Home by Novogratz premieres Saturday, July 16th at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV. In the new season, Bob and Cortney will take on new design projects and create more totally unique spaces, using their smart, funky, downtown-chic aesthetic.

Here's a peek at one of the Novogratz's recent room makeover projects -- a stylish and well-organized bedroom for the four-year-old Sternick triplets, who live in Hell's Kitchen, New York with their parents. Keep reading for more shots of the bedroom makeover, storage tips from Cortney, and a sneak peek at the season premiere of Home by Novogratz.

A friend of mine got a Roomba just for the hell of it, and found it made a perfect toddler babysitter: his 3-year-old would follow the damn thing around the house, chirping, “Woomba! Woomba!” as if it were his beloved pet. Myself, I never found the things to be all that useful as a cleaning device -- by the time I finish de-cluttering the floor, I may as well vacuum the place myself.
 
But a group of German industrial-design students saw an amazing potential in the Roomba: they attached lights to the automatically-piloted vacuum cleaners, and took long-exposure photographs of their journeys. The results? Gorgeous, Spirograph-like images of light sculptures.
 
Here’s how they did it. Don’t you wish your housecleaning left such a cool image?

Ever since Julia Child and her famous kitchen became a fixture of American TV, I think everyone has not only looked at cooking differently, but the use of pegboard too. Before it was maybe just something used to hang tools in the garage, but once Julia's husband Paul lined their kitchen with it and used it to display all those gorgeous copper pots, there was a bingo! moment where people realized they could use it in other parts of their home as well.

Although some may still think it looks too industrial or cheap (it is happily inexpensive!), take a look at these following uses. I think you'll be surprised to see its functionality and visual interest.

Nothing warms my geeky little heart more than the new issues of Consumer Reports. In the July issue, they looked at laundry pre-treatments and mentioned all the different stains they tried each product on – which made me wonder: What stains are bad enough to make the experts use them as examples?

And, you know, I have this great job that lets me be a nosy-noodle, so I called right over to CR and talked to Pat Slaven, the chemist who works as a scientist of stain removal. Seriously, that’s a job! Tell your daughters!

She unlocked the secrets of stains for me, which in turn gave me magic mom-style knowledge. These are the most stubborn stains -- and why: