Grocery Getaway

Out of all the required, mundane tasks of running a home, buying groceries is my favorite.

When I come home with my bounty, I try my hardest to recreate a grocery store in my own kitchen. I organize the food items according to which aisle they came from. That way, when it's time to make dinner, I feel like I'm grocery shopping again.

I am always disappointed with the disregard my family has toward my grocery system. When I get the cabinets fully stocked, everyone else acts as if we have won the grocery lottery. 2 boxes of cereal get opened on the same morning (instead of doing the respectful thing and finishing one box before opening another), tortilla chips get opened way before it's mexican dinner night, and they assume we get free refills on the carton of milk.

Making the most of Monday.

Even though I do the same thing every day of the week, Monday just seems harder. I think it's the reality of my husband going back to work in the real world and leaving me alone and defenseless against our little people.

Aside from simply keeping the kids alive (not happy, entertained or clothed-just alive), meal planning, grocery shopping, food prep, cooking, and keeping the kitchen clean is my biggest task. There are 5 of us (for now) and we all eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at home everyday. I'm pretty picky about the food I serve to my family, I don't settle for heat-and-eat-food-flavored-products, so it takes even more time to cook from scratch.

Losing 500 things

I'm always trying to think of ways to be better organized or run our home more efficiently, but I'm really not very good at it. Our house isn't large at all, and we are adding new family members at a high rate of speed. The more people that live here, the less room we have for "stuff". To be perfectly honest, I get tired of looking at it.

Bad Ideas

I've had a lot of bad ideas. One of my favorites was when Beckham was about a month old, and I had been awake for about 3 weeks straight (you think I'm exaggerating). I woke Adam up in the middle of the night to tell him I planned on blacking out all the windows in our house, keeping Beckham awake for 24-48 hours, and re-introducing him to daylight after I had "reset his clock". It sounded good at the time.

Home Made Laundry Detergent

Supplies needed:

- 20 Mule Team Borax
- Arm & Hammer washing soda (NOT baking soda)
- Fels Naptha bar soap
- 5 Gallon Bucket
- Kettle or Large pot for boiling water

Storage Solutions

I am still reading various articles about organization, trying to figure out which ones might work for me. I came across Michelle Duggar's method for keeping her storage garage organized, and it's brilliant!

Swiss Cheese, Week 2

I've been "just doing something" for a week now, and I think I'm getting the hang of it! As I'm writing this, all three kids are in bed, 2 out of 3 kids got a bath, the kitchen counters and dining room table are wiped clean of dinner crumbs, the floors are swept, house picked up, and the trash is not over flowing. This is major improvement.

Swiss Cheese, Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of household management using the Swiss cheese method: Putting small holes in a project instead of going at it "all or nothing". Not good.

Home organization, or lack thereof

I've got a few people fooled into thinking I'm organized. Those people have never been inside my house.