Random thoughts before the caffeine has kicked in.
A couple of weeks ago, we got a little organized and made a meal plan. It wasn’t anything terribly special — just a list of what we’d make and eat for dinner for the next five weeknights. From there, we made a shopping list to ensure we’d have all necessary ingredients on hand then went out and bought them.
And it was one of the smoothest most well-fed weeks we’ve had in ages.
Gee, who woulda thought? :)
Being at-home with the girls full-time has been tricky recently, especially in the middle of a chaotic transition like this one, but now that the boxes are gone and this is, well, home, it’s time to move on to some basic household organization.
I looked around for some inspiration — there are people who make cutesy/fancy menu boards, other who download $3 phone apps, and folks who simply scrawl some stuff in a notebook. I ended up doing what I always do — turning to Excel.
Ten minutes later, I had a chart with seven rows — days of the week — and five columns — Learning, Cleaning, Cooking, Working, and Self. I think that covers just about everything.
Last night, I spent a little time sketching out the week. I started with food and picked out a couple of (easy) favorites recipes to scatter over the week. Then I moved to cleaning, throwing one room in each day, doubling up on some days by tossing in “floors” or “laundry.” Next up was Learning, which already included scheduled activities three days. We have a lingering seasons project to wrap up from last week, so I added that and a trip to the library today and gave myself until Friday to come up with something family tree-related to do with P (she saw something that triggered a conversation about them yesterday, so I want to grab that moment and use it somehow).
Working wasn’t hard to fill in — I’ve barely paid attention to anything work-related since July so my To Do list is a mile long. I’m keeping it simple — planning one(ish) thing for each day. Hopefully that will guilt me into doing something, even a small something, instead of passing out in my rocking chair, drooling onto my phone at 9 p.m. We could use some extra cash around here, so I need to start seriously laying some groundwork on various projects and ideas. And soon.
The last one, Self, was predictably difficult to fill-in, though I expected that. After looking at the other things I’d planned for the days, I know I would’ve skipped even thinking about myself had that big glaring empty column not been sitting there, staring at me. So I thought about the things I’ve been wanting to do lately and penciled them in here and there — reading Radical Homemakers, practicing some piano drills, picking up my crochet hooks, going to the *gasp* gym.
The Self goals are small (like the Working goals), but I figure that’s the way to start. I’ll get dinner made, keep the house from getting buried under a mountain of filth, make sure the girls are occasionally entertained and engaged, and do my best to keep my brain functioning at the end of the day. And if that proves impossible, I’ll shift the Working and Self stuff to naptime and recruit T-Bone’s help on the other tasks in the evening.
Either way, we have a family plan for the week. And with the publishing of this post, one task is already done, right on schedule ;)
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Early Bird Special is a quick dump post with whatever words or media are weighing on my mind and is published by 9 a.m. every Monday. Leave a link in the comments here if you’d like to join in with your own posts. I’d love to see what’s on folks’ minds in the first hours of the work week!
