Meal Planning And An Organized Life

Some of my twin mom friends are really great at being organized, or at least they are better at being organized than I am.  It's probbaly always going to be a struggle for me and always going to be a work in progress, but I get motivated by these moms to keep working at it.

I am in the process of working on my menu for March.  I have never done even a weekly menu plan before, but am now truly motivated after spending the day with my mom after her lymph node biopsy only to come home and not have anything ready for dinner for me to take to work or for my family to have.  Thankfully my husband is able to cook a couple of hot dogs and broccoli for the kids.  If I had a meal plan in place, I could have been better prepared.  With my mom now mostly likely having chemo and radiation, I'm sure that we will be spending more time with her to help out since I am home during the day and everyone else works.  Since I go to work at night, it will be even more important for me to have a plan in place for meals.

Right now I am trying to get a bunch of recipes together to put on my monthly plan.  I plan to have breakfast lunch and dinner mapped out, but can be a lot more flexible with these meals.  I will have a few crockpot recipes as well as some easy/quick recipes that I can easily make before I leave for work, or that my husband can make after I leave.  After I get my meals planned, I will make a shopping list and make sure that I follow it and go shopping after I have satisfied my hunger.  This weekend, I went shopping just before supper, and what a mistake that was.  I bought a whole bunch of foods that I shouldn't be eating and now it will either go to waste or I will need to eat things that I don't want/need to eat.

I am hoping that I can plan meals that are healthy and that the kids will like.  After I get my meals organized, I am going to move on to more areas that I need to get organized, like cleaning the house, laundry, etc.  That way I won't feel like I am doing it all at once and I won't get so overwhelmed that I just put it off over and over and over.  Hopefully this will mean that I have more time to do fun things with the kids like salad spinner spin art, rubber stamping using the new stamps that I got for the bargin price of $.97  and $1.97, coloring, painting, and many other fun play things.

Amy