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ideas for how to streamline household responsibilities?
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Our family has been going through a lot of transitions the past few weeks. My DH is attending seminary as a full-time student and working part-time on campus each week. I’m also completing my B.A. through the same university, mostly online, but with evening classes for 6 weeks out of each semester, while working 32 hours a week (plus 90 minute daily commute, 4 days a week) and homeschooling DD. As you can imagine, I’m trying to make the most out of each minute we have together and housework has been taking a backseat most days. There’s no dishwasher in our new apartment, so it’s also eating an hour a day just cleaning up at the end of the day.
Throughout the past year, I had been making more meals at home, and DH and I are both losing some excess weight with the increase in healthy meals/decrease of processed foods and chemicals in our diet. We’ve been feeling better, more energy, etc. as we eat better. I don’t want to give this up, and also need to keep up with laundry (DH does help with this), cleaning, etc. However, there are only so many hours in a day. Does anyone have any tips on how I can juggle all of this over the next two years?
And before you say plate’s too full . . . my total tuition and fees at a $6000 a semester Christian university was $46 this semester, after grants and scholarships. Next term, I will actually have a $26 credit at the bookstore, and pay no tuition or fees. I believe that God has given me this opportunity, and I want to make the most out of this that I can. We have so much student loan debt that I will always have to be bringing in a secondary income, and this degree will give me the opportunity to easily double my current income, or eventually work part-time for the same amount of money I make now working 32-40 hours a week. And if I put DD in school, I would rarely see her, because I don’t get home until 8 p.m. three or four days a week, and work every other weekend. I would miss the morning hours I have with her each day, and the half the day on the three days a week that I am home. She does have plenty of opportunities to interact with other homeschooling families in our area, even if I’m not the one facilitating it. So I’ve got to figure out how to make the most of this season of life while we’re walking through it.
Thanks for reading, and I would welcome any opinions.
April
Hmm, For streamlining what about moving to using paper plates? I know it seems backwards, spending money on that, but it would save a lot of time dish-wise. The other thought I had (and that I would probably do personally) is fill the sink with water before a meal and toss all dishes in there to be washed right away. If they have to sit a bit they’ll soak and be really easy to clean.
How old is your daughter? You could recruit her to help with chores including dishes and laundry if she’s old enough – my 6 year old does her laundry, so does the 7 and 11 year old, plus they wash laundry for the little ones who share their bedrooms. It’s doable with just a smidge of training.
April, I am in a very similar situation only I have four children ages 10-4.5. I work 40 hours a week from 4 pm to 1230 am with a 30 min commute each way. Plus I am studying so that I can work at home doing medical transcription. We homeschool in the morning have lunch and I try to study for an hour before getting ready for work. I have the flexibility of only studying when I have time but that is what is taking me so long to finish because it seems something always comes first. Dr., dentist, dirty house, etc. I struggle with the laundry every week as DH sometimes helps and sometimes doesnt. But my kids do SO much around the house. Dishes (and yes DH uses paper plates alot:), garden, cleaning their rooms and rest of house. Even my four yr old helps fold laundry. Do you have one day that you don’t have to go anywhere? Can you do all the laundry in one day? Can you cut down on laundry? Have DD where same clothes two days if not dirty. We do. You didn’t mention how old she is but if she can help, let her. Also, and this is really hard for me, but lower your standards. My four year old dusts the living room but he is new at it and I don’t always have time to check him. Yesterday I found cobwebs that have been getting missed so I showed him how to get them. It takes time.
Also, when I totally can’t stand it anymore, we have a cleaning day and we don’t do school. I figure if I don’t keep my sanity I won’t be any good to anyone!
Hope this helps. If I think of more things I post again! Good luck!
I second paper plates. And we each use the same glass all day (we drink mostly water). I also second kids’ help. It helps me to have a regular cleaning time that we’re generally home (for us Sat. mornings). Kids and I can clean the house in 1 1/2 hrs. or so.
Do you use a crockpot? Somebody here posted this great idea: http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/02/freezer-cooking.html. In about 2 hours you can package 12 crockpot freezer meals (more like close to a month for a sm. family using leftovers). I use organic veggies, grass-fed meat, etc. to keep it healthier. Then serve fresh fruit/veggies w/it (simple cut up fruit or salad, broccoli/carrots w/dip, frozen org. mixed veggies, etc). I’m terrible w/meal planning, but using this idea and making out a schedule w/other family favorites has helped tremendously. I don’t follow a schedule exactly, but just having several meals listed (posted on fridge) w/ingredients needed helps a lot. When I go grocery shopping I just glance at the list and write down the ingredients I need for the meals I want to make over the next week or two. Just what we do. Hope you find a system that works! Blessings, Gina
Thanks for the crockpot link! I’ll have to check that out! If I can pre-make meals for the 4 days a week that I’m working 10 hours, that would help a lot! Then I could spend an hour with DD before she goes to bed, and DH and I can work on homework later in the evening without being concerned with a lot of clean-up. It would likely leave plenty of leftovers for lunches later in the week as well! 🙂
DH is really picky about the veggies he eats. DD and I are not. He will eat salads, so maybe I’ll ask him to be responsible for making those on the nights that he doesn’t like the veggie we’re eating.
We have some paper plates leftover from our move. (DH suggested we pick them up the week before we moved, so it was one less thing to deal with while we were packing every waking moment.) We could try that until they are gone and see if it helps. The bigger thing seems to be the pots and pans using during meal prep, but if I do soak those during dinner, they should be easier.
DD is a young 6, and loves to help, but hasn’t been given much responsibility outside of keeping her own stuff picked up. Maybe it’s time to add some more to the mix for her. The washer and dryer are a set of stairs, and I don’t want her personally lugging the laundry baskets up and down the stairs, but she could be more involved with folding and putting things away.
Thanks, ladies!
April
Another meal prep and dish cleaning time saver is this: If you use cooked ground beef or cooked cubed chicken for many meals, buy it in bulk (this saves on the grocery budget too) and cook a whole lot at once. I will cook 5-6 lbs. of each at one time, then bag it up in 1-2 lb. freezer bag portions. Then you would not believe how quickly and how neatly you can put together a meal!
You can use this in virtually any soup (pull out that crockpot!), chili, for many pasta dishes, which can easily be one-dish meals (salad on the side), and also with casseroles if you like those.
One of the messiest parts of meal prep is often browning/cooking the meat, so if you do it in bulk and then freeze in meal-size portions, you clean it up one time instead of say 6-10 times. This also helps me greatly on those nights when I need a meal and fast. I can get a lasagna or stir fry or soup on the table much faster using these pre-cooked frozen meats (chicken or ground beef). They freeze great too!
I agree that your DD can help. And you could do some of these chores together, so that you are spending quality time together while getting some chores knocked out too.
I have used this system for years with great success. Maybe it would help you too. On each weekday, choose one chore you will do no matter what. For example, Monday is always laundry day here. Now I do laundry on other days sometimes too, but Monday it is always the day I get any waiting laundry done. Tuesday I always go to the grocery store. Again, sometimes I go on other days but I know I will go on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, I launder and put back on bedclothes (we have a king bed, two queens, two doubles, one twin and one crib!). Yes, that is a lot of sheets to wash! Now my oldest two sons do their own bedclothes now, but I do the others.
On the note of sheets, I decided years ago to do away with the top flat sheet on our children’s beds. They just have their blanket and the fitted sheet. No, it doesn’t look like something out of a magazine but it cuts down on the laundry for me and makes it easier for them to make their beds.
My DD is 6 and she has many chores incl. making her bed, feeding and watering the cats, unloading the dishwasher, handwashing the dinner dishes on her night (each weeknight our oldest 5 have dish duty so that they clean up the kitchen one night a week), sweeping and/or vacuuming the hardwood floor after a meal, dusting, cleaning the glass on front and back doors, putting away her clean landry and helping to fold it/hang it up, etc. She loves to help and would gladly do more, but these are the jobs she can do with very little to no assistance. I would say it is time to give your DD more jobs.
How old are your children April? This year I am increasing the amount of chores my children are responsible for. Not to the point of being overwhelming, but enough that I feel like they are contributing to the smooth running of the household. I picked out things that “bugged me” the most…meaning the chores I absolutely need done for the house to function, to assign to them. Sometimes the rest just has to slide.
I also started paying my oldest dd to make meals 3 times a week. This frees me up to get some work done (I work from home).
Another thought…if you can find some simple meals with easy prep and minimal cleanup that would help. Have you ever thought of freezer cooking? Double a recipe and freeze half for a later time. Some people also prep all their food on the weekends for the coming week.
Pink
Choose your busiest time of day meal to use paper plates. I use them for lunch, and if they don’t get anything on them but crumbs, I shake those off and use for the afternoon snack too. 🙂 I also use Amazon subscribe and save program to buy the plates in bulk. Free shipping and discounted price, plus less hassle for me to get at the store. I also recommend it for other items too, like trash bags, laundry soap, etc.
I’m a huge crockpot fan, and I usually just throw in the ingredients in the morning and it’s ready by evening. If you don’t have one, a crockpot with a timer is ideal.
HTH!
I would echo a lot of what others have said here. We do a lot of what we call “mega-cooking” which means cooking up extra of everything we cook. If we cook up burger, we cook up enough for at least 6 meals and save the rest for later. Another way to do this is to use “bases” of things you use frequemtly. Simply make up a bunch of each of these on a not too busy day! Bases might be cooked burger, cooked chicken, pasta or brown rice (or both), and salad fixings! With those in the fridge, you could make taco salad, chicken ceasar salad, cheesy salsa chicken and rice, chicken burritos, spanish rice, etc. So, decide how many times you want a salad that week, and make that much salad fixings. How many burger meals, how many chicken, etc. Make them all up at the beginning of the week, and you can make pretty much any meal in about fifteen minutes with almost NO mess! And when the prep work makes no mess, your six year old can wash the dishes!
As for laundry, the key for me is to not have enough clothes out that I can ever “afford” to get behind! My dd who will be six in a few weeks, and loves clothes lol, has three pairs of jeans, three pairs of capris/shorts, six shirts, and 2 Sunday dresses. That keeps her good for a week when it gets crazy and we only get to the laundry once that week. It also keeps her room from becoming a clothing disaster! As long as she keeps her clothes where they belong, she gets to pick her clothes each day. If she doesn’t take care of her clothes, then I pick her clothes. In the past I have used a cloth shoe thing that hangs in the closet. I have put one day’s worth of clothes on each shelf. I only have to do it once a week, and she knows exactly what to grab each day! The pile on each shelf includes panties, socks, belts, anything needed for her to get dressed. Then a dresser might not be needed too!
LDIMom talked about doing specific things on specific days. I try to do that too. I live twenty minutes from the grocery store, so I have been getting groceries on a day I am in town anyway, Tuesday for me, for years! It is even more helpful for me to do this when I am home. I have a specific focus for each day, I once heard it called a “pivot” which made a lot of sense to me. When I get to that moment when I say, “Ok, what next?” I go to whatever my pivot is for that day. Pick your “pivot” that is the biggest hurdle, maybe laundry or cooking for the week, and make that your pivot on the day you are home most. If there is a day that you are only home for an hour or two, your pivot could be giggling with your daughter, or making sure school is ready for the week. Does this make sense?
Most of all, enjoy your daughter! There will be plenty of time in the next 12 years to make sure academics get done. My kids do very little formal schooling until they are between eight and ten years old. Most of them have taught themselves to read by then and are “at grade level” for math, simply because they lived with us, played with numbers, and didn’t have worksheets to stifle their brains LOL. I have 2 daughters who have graduated, and if I could do one thing over, I would let them play more, take them outside more, go to the park more, and not have such a focus on “learning” even from great books. My oldest taught herself to read before she turned five and I let her spend too much time reading, when it would have been better for her developmentally if I had made her take her nose OUT of a book, and play. Charlotte Mason, BTW, queen of living books, agrees
I hope this is helpful. If you’d like me to clarify anything, you can email me. (Moderator note: E-mail address removed so it won’t get picked up by spam bots. Please use the private messages system.)
Debi Z
You’ve really gotten some great ideas here. I LOVE my crock pot and would not be without it! Freezer cooking is also a lifesaver. One thing I’ve been doing recently is prepping all my veggies before the week starts. It takes me about an hour to chop onions, wash, tear, dry, and bag lettuce, cut carrots and/or celery, etc., but saves time when it comes to making the actual meal. I like to use glass jars to store them, but you could also use baggies. And we’ve been eating a lot more salads since I started this. It’s so easy to eat salad when the lettuce is already washed, torn, and waiting in a gallon-size Ziploc bag! Another thing I’ve been doing is grilling up chicken at the beginning of the week, enough to last me all week. A grilled chicken salad is a super easy and quick lunch or dinner whenever the chicken is already cooked and the lettuce is ready to go.
My dd has recently turned 7, but as a 6yo, her responsibilities around the house included: making her bed each morning, emptying bathroom trashcans, wiping baseboards and blinds, using a light-weight vaccuum on tile and wood floors, shaking rugs outside, watering the garden, attending to pets, and some dish washing. As Tristan said, a little training can go a long way, even with little ones. And they LOVE to help!
One other thing I may mention is just considering having less stuff overall. Our family has been on a 2-year journey of evaluating our “stuff” and prioritizing it. We currently have about half the stuff we had just two years ago, and we are currently getting ready for yet another garage sale. And we WERE NOT hoarders or anything before! It’s amazing what happens when you can take an unbiased look at your things and part with them. We now live in a home without a lot of extra stuff, thus giving us more time as a family and to relax because we don’t have so much to clean or keep organized. I quit holding on to things just because “I might need this some day”. If it goes longer than six months without being used, it’s gone. If I don’t absolutely love it, it’s gone. If I’m sick of moving it to clean around it, it’s gone. If it’s simply there to take up an empty space, it’s gone. If it’s not a representation of who we are as a family, it’s gone. Pretty easy to see how we have a lot less now! And it’s amazing how much less mental clutter I seem to have whenever the physical stuff is less.
One other thing you might consider if you can afford it is to hire someone to come and clean your house twice a month or so. You can take care of the daily stuff like washing dishes, laundry, keeping the kitchen and living spaces tidy, but having someone else come in to mop, dust, clean bathrooms, etc. can be a lifesaver! We were blessed enough to have this two summers ago, and I can’t tell you what a difference it made in my stress level. In fact, we could still have this little luxury, but we are pinching all our pennies right now in preparation to hopefully build a home in the near future. I realize not everyone can afford this, but I wanted to suggest it since you mentioned that your schooling is paid for and that you do bring in a second income.
Hope you find some solutions that work for you!
Lindsey
Thanks again, ladies! I love the idea of precooking a lot of the meat, and pre-chopping all of the veggies! We use a lot of peppers and onions throughout the week (for things like fajitas), and it seems like every other day I’m re-washing the chopping boards. In addition, there are nights we don’t have salads because it’s just one more thing to do to chop everything. That would increase DH’s veggie intake if we had them every time they were menu, with the veggies already chopped and ready to go! 🙂
I work every other weekend, but on the ones I am off, I could easily spend one afternoon doing these things, with DD helping me.
I would love to have someone come in and clean, but it’s just not feasible. DH’s income is only 10 hours a week on campus, for 14 weeks per semester. After taxes, it will only amount to about $1100 between now and the end of the year.
We did donate/give away a lot of things we no longer use before we moved in here, since we were losing about 20% of our living space. But now that we’re here, I do think that another round of it is definitely in order. 🙂
Thanks again!
April
If having someone come in to clean would be a big help, you might be able to figure out some bartering! There are lots of things to barter with, be creative 🙂 You could find a friend who has a daughter a year younger than yours and giver her your hand me down books, toys, clothes, etc. in exchange for 4 hours of cleaning a month!
I need tips on storing all of those chopped up veggies so they don’t spoil! I’m thinking that our old, old fridge may be part of the problem (it’s old….as in, my parents bought it new around 1967), but I find that when I cut up green peppers, for example, and store them in the fridge, they are starting to get slimy within 2 or 3 days. I can’t chop up things on Monday and expect to use them in an omelette or eat them raw on Thursday.
Can anyone give me specific tips for properly storing those cut-up vegetables so they last longer?
Sue, I too have had that problem! Plus, cut up veggies start losing their nutrition content quickly! If I did cut up veggies, I would just do it for 2 days worth!
Wished I knew how to keep them fresher and more nutritous too 🙂
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