Getting ready for a new day

Before kids bedtime have them get their backpacks ready for the next day and put them by the door going out to the car.

Have kids put up any toys or “stuff” they have taken out. It’s their room, it should be their responsibility. Even two year olds can do this.

Remember this! It’s not a kindness to do things for your child that they are able to do for themselves. It’s all part of learning. They should have growing responsibilities and growing independence all through their lives.

Get out clothes for the next day. Let them pick out and you approve.

If kids take their lunch to school, it should be made the night before and be in the refrigerator.

In the mornings get them in the habit of making up their beds before school and putting up their pj’s. Kids can start this at age 4 with Mom’s help. They should be doing it totally on their own by age 5. (Hint-Don’t correct their beds after they leave home. They learn that they can never do it well enough to please Mom. Just train them well. If it’s not magazine cover ready it’s OK!) Their room should be straight from the night before. This eliminates the needs for you to have any clean up in their rooms for the day. It starts out as a discipline for you, it ends up as a discipline for them.

Before and After Meals

Let your kids set the table. It’s helpful to you and helps them learn to serve others.

When meal- time is over each person should take their plate to the sink.

Assign one person to wipe the table and clean up any trash under the table. Ask another to put up any leftovers and wipe the counters.

Save some for later!

When preparing many types of food, it’s really just as easy to make two of the main dish as it is one. Keep some extra aluminum foil pans to put your “double” in. Put masking tape on the covered top of the dish. Write the name of the dish and the date. On days that you just can’t get to everything, or one of the kids is sick, you’ve got something that your family likes to pull out of the freezer. If your best buddy has a crisis one day you could take supper to her with no problem. Another hint is to use your own container, line it with foil and then add your food. Put it in the freezer until it’s frozen throughout. Then lift the foil and food out of the dish, put it in a zip-lock bag, label and freeze. When you are ready to cook it just drop the frozen food in foil back into the same dish it was prepared in and bake. Voila! No washing of pots!

Menu Planning

One day a week, make out menus for the week and your grocery list to go with it. Wednesday is a good day to do this because grocery ads are in the newspaper and you can see what’s on sale that week.

Make menus for whatever works for you. It can be just dinners or 3 meals per day. The benefit to this is you don’t get the 5pm panic of “What are we going to have for dinner tonight !?!” You don’t have to think and you don’t have to go to the grocery store. It’s all there. Just do what the plan says.

A Productive "Break"

Once every two or three months when I would get a few hours to myself, I would give myself a “break” by cooking for hours! I’d prepare two lasagnas and two meat loafs and two squash casseroles (or whatever else freezes well).

I might cook two chickens and cut up the chicken and put it in zip-lock bags ready for whatever I wanted to use it for. I would usually use the chicken broth to make homemade soup. When it is done, I would measure out how much you would expect would serve your family for a meal and freeze it! All could go in the freezer and when those hectic days come I did not even have to think. It was ready.

Welcome to my blog

This is a project that I have felt compelled to try. Many women poured into me as I was learning to be a wife and mother. My mother taught me so much and I have tried to do the same with my daughters. I am starting this blog out of a desire to be an encouragement to them, but I also pray that I may be an encouragement to other women. As Titus 2:4 states, the older women are to teach the younger women how to be Godly wives and mothers. I pray that the Lord will be glorified through my words as you read them and take them to heart. 

As with anything, take the good and leave the bad. I may have great advice or bad - I just hope that you will get ideas and tips on how to make your life smoother and more abundant all at the same time. Thank you for visiting my site. This is to you, from my heart and my home.

God bless!