Erin Akin Carroll

A few months ago, I was approached to take part in a blogger cleaning intervention hosted by Pledge. I recently wrote a post about some of the challenges of pregnancy and how cleaning in our house has fallen to my husband (or fallen by the wayside) and the good folks at Pledge saw that post.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working for Pledge helping them to promote this product– and they are paying me and offering me some very helpful advice on how to maintain a clean, baby-friendly home. This is the new Pledge Multi-Surface Cleaner. You can learn a lot more about it and a great contest for you at How I Clean Now.

You can read my blog posts, and the posts of four other bloggers who have some home cleaning challenges, at the How I Clean Now bloggers page.

We opened up our home to a video crew and those videos will go live in a few days so you can see me talk about my challenges and our problem areas. The lovely Trish Suhr will be offering me some very helpful feedback to try to get my house ready for Baby Boy Carroll and how to easily maintain a clean house once he arrives.

So if you want to see what I’m writing about and how I’m losing all kinds of control in my home because of pregnancy, dogs, and lack of energy, please check out the Pledge blog. And feel free to leave your cleaning tips as comments on that blog.

A year ago this week we returned from our fabulous honeymoon on Maui. We both returned to work and got back into the swing of things. I always had a long list of housekeeping type things in my head that I needed to do now that I was married: get new driver’s license, change name at social security office, change name at bank, get joint accounts, change name on insurance.

I can’t tell you the last time I saw my mom on Mother’s Day. It always makes me a little sad that I don’t ever get to celebrate my love and appreciation for her in person because we live so far apart.

This Mother’s Day she and my dad are on an Alaskan Cruise and then going to Los Angeles for a couple of days. Must be nice!

We have always had a very special relationship and I can see a lot of her in me. I can also see a lot of my dad in me. I remember a big argument that we had back when I was in high school and I asked her why she couldn’t just be my friend. Her response was, “Because I’m your mother. I’m not here to be your friend.” And she was right at the time.

But now things are completely different. I go to her with everything and she is my best friend. I still need advice and I ask her. If it’s decorating advice or relationship advice, I go to her. She is an amazing woman of God and I learn from her every day. Her patience and desire to give and provide for everyone she comes in contact with are truly inspirational.

She is the first person I call when something funny happens or I’m upset about something that happened at work. I know she’s always going to listen and because we’re so similar, she’s going to give me a response that either makes me laugh or gets me fired up! I’m sure she is driven crazy by the insane amount of times I call her every day.

So here’s to all of the mothers out there!