Creating Home ~Sweet~ Home: Part One

In all of the craziness over the past few weeks (FIL passing away, one sickness after another and a cough that has just hung on) I have actually managed to finally get my new weekly schedule in place. For years Sundays have been a disorganized mess.

Recently I read (on a blog maybe??) about Sundays being a calm day with little to no work being done..essentially a day of rest. I was challenged to figure out a way to make that happen here. I also have felt for a while that I have been domestically letting my family down, especially in the area of cooking and doing weekly grocery shopping. We fell into a nasty rut of running to the store daily for that evening's meal. We hated the inevitable question, "what do you want for dinner?" My husband was the one to go to the store then come home and fix the meal...oftentimes because I was too busy with something else. I realized that I was always putting that "something else" before my family. So I ordered a book called "Large Family Logistics" and was inspired by the very first moment I opened the book. I decided to get back to weekly menus and once a week shopping. Each day in our week now has a theme...Monday=laundry, Tuesday=Kitchen, Wed=office, Thurs=town day(errand running), Friday=cleaning day, Saturday=maintenance day, Sunday=the Lord's Day.

This week was not a full week following our new plan, but the few days we implemented the changes really made a dramatic difference in our home. My husband seems relieved at each mealtime, which gives me a great feeling of accomplishment. Our Sunday was also hugely impacted by the new schedule. I started on Saturday making sure things were super clean and had a crock-pot meal cooking for Sunday afternoon. I did our weekly grocery shopping on Saturday evening. I also purchased paper plates, plastic cups and plastic forks for use only on Sunday. Those 4 things set the stage for a transformed Sunday. Before there would have been 2 stops at Walmart on Sunday and an hour or more meal preparation on Sunday afternoon. Then dishes were left for Monday morning as we would rush out the door for evening church services. Monday was the biggest nightmare and was dubbed "dig out day" for obvious reasons.

Today there was only 1 quick stop at Walmart for a Thank You card. Our afternoon meal took less than 10 minutes to prepare. When we were finished, we tossed most of our dishes into the trash :) The rest were quickly loaded into the dishwasher. As I write this, there is nothing left for Monday! There were no drastic changes implemented, but several small changes that made a huge impact on our daily living! Be watching for Creating Home Sweet Home: Part Two~Renewing my Spirit