Stopping the backsliding… a family of four no longer living beyond their means

Honeysucklelou2

Happy belated birthday 🎂. Enjoy reading your menu plans and food purchases. 

Bluegreen143

Had a productive chat with Red re chores yesterday. I realised that in my shiny new routine I’d inadvertently taken on loads of extra housework. It’s madness for me to attempt the organised mum method which relies on finding 30 minutes a weekday to clean (on top of daily chores) as I don’t have the time really and also, why did I think I should add that to just my list 🤣  so I’m officially giving that up! 

I should say that Red is in no way lazy and is a highly productive person - it’s on me that I had added all these new tasks to my list trying to be a super housewife even though I work nearly FT 🤦‍♀️ 

We’ve made two big lists for the whiteboard instead - a daily list (broken down into morning, afternoon/evening and anytime) and also a weekly list with actual cleaning on it. We’re planning to tick off weekly tasks as we go, trying to both do as much as possible through the week to keep the weekend clearer. But anything not done on Saturday morning we’ll do together then. 

I know some would actually allocate their husbands jobs to make sure it gets done but I know Red will likely rattle through the list faster than me now it’s up there so I didn’t feel the need. And that’s fine if he does rattle through it tbh as I do more of the daily work like laundry, helping with homework, tidying up and cooking. 

debtfreewannabe321

My friend used to have what she deemed "blue" jobs and "pink" jobs she wouldn't touch the lawnmower or the bins for example which I found really funny, and he wouldn't touch the hoover it seemed to work for them though.
I used to follow fly lady and there was one thing I tried to stick to every day with that one- clean sink at the end of the day and the bin bag tidy (Think that's what it was called) where you put your favourite music on and a timer and spend 10 minutes rushing round grabbing rubbish- I used to carry a bin bag and also a basket. Basket was to throw in anything in the wrong homes (usually the floor) and bin bag for rubbish. It helped and the kids when small would actually help with this one sometimes...there's lots of tips and methods out there for quick tidy sessions maybe look them up and make it a fun thing to do with kids after dinner and before bath time?

Bluegreen143

debtfreewannabe321 said:

My friend used to have what she deemed "blue" jobs and "pink" jobs she wouldn't touch the lawnmower or the bins for example which I found really funny, and he wouldn't touch the hoover it seemed to work for them though.
I used to follow fly lady and there was one thing I tried to stick to every day with that one- clean sink at the end of the day and the bin bag tidy (Think that's what it was called) where you put your favourite music on and a timer and spend 10 minutes rushing round grabbing rubbish- I used to carry a bin bag and also a basket. Basket was to throw in anything in the wrong homes (usually the floor) and bin bag for rubbish. It helped and the kids when small would actually help with this one sometimes...there's lots of tips and methods out there for quick tidy sessions maybe look them up and make it a fun thing to do with kids after dinner and before bath time?

Thanks, it’s not actually tidying or daily stuff as such, as we’ve gotten into good habits with tidying, kitchen cleaning, making beds, laundry etc and we do make the kids help us. It’s the cleaning - basically my house is reasonably decluttered and fairly tidy (at least the downstairs is) most of the time but then underneath that it’s really quite dirty 😨 to be frank we could really do with a cleaner but we can’t afford it for now, clearly. I’ve never had a cleaner before either and am probably battling resistance of thinking I “should” be able to manage myself and not need to pay for help. 

Got a Tesco shop today, £110 spent on groceries. Also spent £15 (from personal budget) to buy a gift for my friend’s daughter’s first birthday, as we are going to the party.

Struggling a bit with how much I’m trying to fit in, as I mentioned. I was rolling out wraps in a mad rush last night at 5.30pm thinking “there must be a better way!”. I like cooking from scratch but I think I need to be realistic about time available during the school term. Today I was making pesto (for a future meal) at 8.30pm while legitimately knackered! 

The difficulty is that healthy + tasty + convenient usually isn’t also cheap. This is partly why our grocery costs got so high over the past year - me losing my non working day on a Friday so becoming much more time-poor. 

My friend was just telling me about her super easy meal planning system using Hello Fresh and it was quite seductive but I shudder to think how much we would spend!

Spendless

What about paying for a 'one off' deep clean. It's worth your sanity. Then it would be easier to keep on top of. Yes that you no longer get a child free term time day is going to have a knock on effect over what is achievable. 

themadvix

Wraps are quite labour intensive to make. Can you not switch to a no-knead loaf? Lots of recipes out there! Or I use Dan Lepard’s approach which takes longer (2.5 hrs?) but very little of that is hands on as you only knead the dough for 8 stretches at a time. (Or look for a secondhand bread maker). I’m fully with you on not wanting to compromise on homemade bread without the UP ingredients though.

Floss

Spendless said:

What about paying for a 'one off' deep clean. It's worth your sanity. Then it would be easier to keep on top of. Yes that you no longer get a child free term time day is going to have a knock on effect over what is achievable. 

I did this last year after having BC surgery & radiotherapy, it has made it so much easier to keep my home clean.

Floss

themadvix said:

Or look for a secondhand bread maker.

That's an excellent idea, then you can other things while your dough is made.

Also, try using Hello Fresh on an offer for 4 weeks (Stacey Solomon often has them on her Insta) and then cancel, but use the recipe cards which are really easy to follow. They give you exact amounts, and there are some child-made recipes too. It might give you a chance to get your cooking / meal planning mojo back.

Bluegreen143

Thanks all! I can (and do) make loaved of bread, but that doesn’t really work with fajitas which is what we were having 😅

It’s not that my cooking mojo is missing per se, in that I’m making a home cooked non UPF meal every night, without takeaways or beige oven food (ie we make our own pizzas or fish goujons or whatever even if we are having a treat meal). It’s the “extras” like making bread/pittas/wraps or hummus/salsa/pesto or whatever myself (things I could be buying) which I struggle to fit in. I’m making sauerkraut just now, it’s not time consuming as such, but it’s extra mental load and time/mess in the kitchen. But to buy bits like that means adding more processed food/additives back in or you have to spend a fortune on the best quality ready made version. There are wraps you can buy from Tesco which have no additives, just flour, salt and oil, but they cost three times as much as normal wraps! 

If we get to a good place in our finances I think I would like to free up some of my time with a regular cleaner because ultimately my time is better spent on the cooking from scratch (and kids homework/reading/education which is my other weekday afternoon task), rather than me doing all my own cleaning but buying convenience food etc. And I do earn more by working five days than I would if I worked four and saved the cost of the cleaner. But we aren’t there yet! 

joedenise

Would it work to make a large batch of dough at the weekend and then freeze in usable portions?  At least that way you could get out to defrost the previous day and not need to make the dough from scratch every time.  Perhaps you could even freeze wraps ready rolled and interleaved with greaseproof/freezer paper.