How to organise everything in my life OS?

zippychick

Hi Jo-R:hello:

Hopefully you will soon find a way of working out your days - think trial and error will help a lot. I can't offer much personal advice being single myself, so will leave that up to the trusty OSers

This was discussed before - how to organise everything in my life OS so do have a read and check out the previous comments and discussion.

Also

What's your daily routine?

Housework routine?

Cleaning routine

Help with cleaning/house chores schedule

Meal planning and busy schedule

What's your grocery shop timetable

can you do OS and work full time

Moneysaving tips from full time Mums


I'm sure there are more threads - I'll have a think . I'll add your thread to the first link later, to keep the ideas together

thanks:)
Zip

Jo_R_2

Thanks, been looking through some which look quite useful so will come back to them later.

I think my main issue is the idea I have that because I am a stay at home mum, my house should therefore be immaculate:rotfl: Conversely, I have always said that I am a mum first and the house comes after - if there's time!:D

When DD1 was a baby, and to some extent even when DD2 was little, I adhered to a lot of principles I had: included HM baby foods, cloth nappies, HM food and batch cooking, baking our own puddings/biscuits/snacks, buying organic where possible which included toiletries, searching out these organic foods at independent shops and buying independent where possible, etc etc. If we were having pizza for tea it would be HM pizza and potato wedges, never shop-bought pizza and oven chips as I've always been quite principled about the food we eat.

However somewhere along the line much of this has disintegrated. Partly due to money and partly due to constraints on time (and currently energy!) Although I wouldn't say we ate unhealthily (it used to be a standing joke when I first met OH that I fed them too many vegetables rather than too few!), I'd much rather get back to some of those things I listed above that I let slip due to time - the money-related ones can wait for now, no need to do everything at once.

I have a slow cooker borrowed from the parents which seems like a good solution for sorting out dinners - the only thing I'm trying to get my head round is how to negotiate a 'meaty' dinner for OH with a veggie one for us using the slow cooker without getting two of the things!

I need to get back to meal planning - as manan has mentioned they do, I used to do a flexible meal plan for the week which meant I could adjust the meal for the day dependent on how much time I knew I'd have, and if I was feeling spritely (ah the joys of Lucozade!) or like I wanted to sleep all afternoon:o

I had been doing online shopping to avoid dragging any combination of kids to the supermarket which I found worked well on the whole. The only things I hadn't worked round were needing fresh things midweek - I'd find I'd spend our budget on the online shop then obviously anything else we needed would increase our grocery spending.

Baking is something I've previously really enjoyed, particularly as an activity with DD2 (aged 3.) This has really slipped recently but I have long figured that this would go some way to making a dent in the weekly shop as OH has three or four choc bars in his pack up (yes he does and he's thin as a rake - don't even get me started on his eating habits!) He actually loves it when he can stuff his pack up with cookies, bun cakes, muffins, biscuits etc.

Anyway I've decided to take on one step at a time - not sure what it will be this coming week, I really want to start making HM bread, and get back into baking, and sort out menu plans, so any one of those would be a good first step

flutterbyuk25

Do you have a breadmaker and slow cooker?

If so could you put them to come on overnight? that way you would just need to prep the ingredients when you get a spare 5-10mins in the day.

Also can you put things like the washing machine on timer too so that they can go on in night/early hours and you could get up 5 mins early to hang out to dry?

HTH!

x

zippychick

Jo - what about batch cooking? Maybe a day here and there would help take a load off ? You could pre make the pizza bases or pizzas, pasta sauce, spag bol, pies etc ? Is that practical? Do you have a friend who would maybe help you with some batch cooking? Yous could always chip in for ingredients and make double portions so you both benefit too?:j

Sounds like you have done an awful lot more than most so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it to be honest. It's just a matter of getting back into the habits

Oh, and for whoever asked - Laundry gloop

shankley4ever

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

I recently made 10 litres of laundry gloop at a cost of less than £2 which I think should last me for months and months and it's doing a great job as well.

oooh...I love my gloop ...makes my laundry fresh, clean and soft..and soooo economical too..

Puddleglum

I don't know if this will help at all, but our way of working out the meat eating veggie part is compromise. It is probably a compromise too far for some. I went veggie 25yrs ago (:eek:) and when I met DH he decided that at home he would eat the same as me and only eat meat when out. 18yrs later DS(11) and DD(9) are both carnivorous but we mostly eat veggie at home. Maybe once or twice a month I will include a little bit of meat in the meal and when that happens I eat it as well. This works well for us as I am not ideologically opposed to eating meat just the amount of meat which is eaten in Western countries.

BitterAndTwisted

nikki_angel wrote: »

Laundry gloop? Do you have a recipe?

I do! Found on this forum, most probably.

I have two different recipes, one with and one without borax/borax substitute. I made the one with borax:

Grate a bar of soap (I used Fairy household soap but you can use any really but I wouldn’t recommend using your best, scented triple-milled castile soap! Asda do four bars of white soap for about 20 pence and I’d consider using something like that).
Bring a large saucepan (not aluminium) of 1 1/2 litres of water to the boil.
Add grated soap and simmer till completely dissolved.
Add another 3 litres of hot water from the tap.
Let cool slightly and add 250 grammes of washing soda (soda crystals).
Stir until dissolved and let cool.
Pour into 5 litre container/s.

Use 100 mills/4 fluid ounces mixed with hot water and add to washing-machine drum.

OR

Grate a bar of soap.
Add to 1 1/2 litres of boiling water.
Stir until dissolved.
Add 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) washing soda and 1/2 cup borax/borax substitute
Stir until COMPLETELY dissolved. If it isn’t the mixture will separate once cooled.
Remove from the heat and pour into a bucket and fill with hot water from the tap to make up to 10 litres.
Add a few drops of essential oil if desired.
Stir.
Leave to cool and decant into container/s.

Also use 100 mills/4 fl oz per washing-load.
This will not make suds and is also suitable for soaking/hand-washing but it's bit hard on the hands so I wear rubber-gloves.

The borax acts as a bleaching agent to remove stains.
I used rinsed-out plastic 2-litre milk cartons.
Once cold this mixture will be rather thick (hence the term "gloop") so it would be best to decant it while still quite warm. To use I whip the mixture up with an equal quantity of hot water with a fork to dissolve it.

Jo_R_2

flutterbyuk25 wrote: »

Do you have a breadmaker and slow cooker?

If so could you put them to come on overnight? that way you would just need to prep the ingredients when you get a spare 5-10mins in the day.

Also can you put things like the washing machine on timer too so that they can go on in night/early hours and you could get up 5 mins early to hang out to dry?

HTH!

x

Yup I have both breadmaker and slow cooker, that's a thought I'll add to the list, thanks. The washing machine timer - I bought one a short while back but have had trouble getting it to work, gonna have another go as (sadly or not) I really like doing laundry!:D

zippychick wrote: »

Jo - what about batch cooking? Maybe a day here and there would help take a load off ? You could pre make the pizza bases or pizzas, pasta sauce, spag bol, pies etc ? Is that practical? Do you have a friend who would maybe help you with some batch cooking? Yous could always chip in for ingredients and make double portions so you both benefit too?:j

Batch cooking I think will be a necessary evil. I must confess to the fact that spare time usually = avoiding anything housey-related at the mo (or sleeping!) but in the long run it's really going to save a lot of time and effort AND pennies.

Puddleglum wrote: »

I don't know if this will help at all, but our way of working out the meat eating veggie part is compromise. It is probably a compromise too far for some. I went veggie 25yrs ago (:eek:) and when I met DH he decided that at home he would eat the same as me and only eat meat when out. 18yrs later DS(11) and DD(9) are both carnivorous but we mostly eat veggie at home. Maybe once or twice a month I will include a little bit of meat in the meal and when that happens I eat it as well. This works well for us as I am not ideologically opposed to eating meat just the amount of meat which is eaten in Western countries.

OH started off happy to eat veggie when we were at home... However as time has passed, he's been asking more and more for meat-based meals, or will add, say, bacon, or a chicken grill thing at the side of a veg meal. I'll be honest, I don't mind cooking it for him (mostly) but I hate the thought of him eating processed meat - I'd much rather search out some organic meat but no idea where to start or how to buy and use/freeze it so it's economical for us?

Soooo many things I want to address but just trying to start steady!

gizmo111

I have made veggie casseroles in slow cooker and then just roasted/grilled/steamed things like chicken breasts and pork chops and then added the meat to the plate for meat eater at point of serving. Not too much extra work and everyone gets a tasty cheap meal.

kinkyjinks

Jo_R wrote: »

I think my main issue is the idea I have that because I am a stay at home mum, my house should therefore be immaculate:rotfl:

I have a slow cooker borrowed from the parents which seems like a good solution for sorting out dinners - the only thing I'm trying to get my head round is how to negotiate a 'meaty' dinner for OH with a veggie one for us using the slow cooker without getting two of the things!

Hi there. It looks like you've been given some really good advice already but I understand completely where you are coming from. First of all, go easy on yourself with the tidy house. My motto is a tidy house is the sign of a broken computer lol. 3 young kids and another on the way is more than enough reason for an untidy house and like you say being a mum is way more important, the kids will grow up with memories of happy times spent with mum and forget all about a bit of untidiness, where as if you were hell bent on a tidy house, their memories would be full of stressed out mum, fewer happy times an an exhausted mum who had little time to spend with them.

As for the cooking, I had a similar problem before and it took a fair while to be able to jugggle it all, but I eventually worked out a strategy that worked for me, hopefully it might help you. There's 5 of us here, OH, DS1 and me were happy to eat anything at all, DS2 does not eat any veg at all (He's my stepson and his mum fed him junk for the first 12 years of his life and it's such a hard habit to break as far as the veg is concerned) and DS3 was a veggy for 5 years. Cooking 3 seperate meals was a nightmare, especially since I was studying full time at uni and commuting 40 miles a day and my OH did try to help with the cooking but errrr in his case practise never made perfect :rotfl:. With an initial outlay of time (which I imagine you don't have a lot of) and a bit of added expense to your shopping bill your life could be a lot easier in the future.

If it was me, I'd cook 2 packs of mince with the usual carrots and onions and use a gravy base. Out of that I'd expect to get 7 portions of savoury mince for the freezer and 1 meal for that night. From the 7 remaining portions you have a base for shepherds pie, mince pie, mince and pots, mince and dumplings. I'd do the same with another 2 packs of mince but use a tomato base ready for lasagne, spag bol, chilli etc. Those can both be cooked in the slow cooker, either overnight or first thing in the morning. You could do the same with a pack or 2 of stewing steak, or if he like sausages, sausage casserole.

Then look at what you can make for yourself and your DDs to freeze. I used to make a huge veggy lasagne and freeze some in portions, or you could make pies and freeze them. It really is just a case of looking at what you eat and what can be cooked in advance and frozen. So say on the day your OH wants some grilled chicken, that's the day when you and DDs eat from the freezer. My main aim was to only have to cook one meal a day and use the freezer stock for whoever I did not cook for. I know you don't mind cooking meat for your OH but if you explained how much effort it is to make 2 different meals a day (even if only one bit of the meal is different) and how tired you are, maybe he'd be willing to compromise and eat veggy at least once a week?

My freezer stock mainly revolved round my (ex :j) veggy DS and fussy DSS but in your case I'd probably revolve the freezer stock around your OH. HTH and good luck, you WILL get there slowly :beer: