Having It All
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006When we moved into the new house, I vowed to myself that I was going to change parts of myself for the better, starting the first day I woke up in the new house. It started with a simple commitment to make my bed everyday, and quickly spiraled into a level of organization that I honestly never knew I was capable of achieving!
I have never been a domestic goddess. Granted, I think I have always had decent taste in home decor and have made the spaces I had to work with cozy and homey, but I never really committed myself to making my environment clutter free and organized. And Lord knows, I NEVER considered myself a cook! One of the reasons I was excited about marrying Basil is that he is such a fantastic cook. He has kept me fed and happy for 6 years, which was fine by me!
But there is something about moving into a new house. It’s fresh start. And I dove in head first and started reading websites about getting your life organized. I joined a Yahoo! group called The FlyLady (uh, don’t ask! I don’t get it either), and adopted her method of creating a morning and evening routine that you commit to every day.
My morning routine looks like this:
1. Get out of bed.
2. Gather all laundry, and start the washing machine.
3. Empty the dishwasher.
4. Make the bed.
5. Cook breakfast.
6. Eat breakfast with Beckett.
7. Make Beckett’s lunch.
8. Get Beckett ready for school.
9. Dry laundry.
10. Straighten up the living room, dining room, and kitchen.
11. Fold laundry and put away.
12. Shower and get completely dressed.
12 things I am committed to do every morning. When I first wrote out the list, I thought, “I don’t have time to get all of that done in the morning!” But after tackling those 12 tasks, I realized that the majority of them take 5 minutes or less to complete. So, 12 tasks that start the day off right and help me keep the house in working order take up about an hour of the day. I can handle that! And I have been handling it really well. I have felt more ready to tackle the day, and it’s been really nice to crawl into bed everynight without having to wrangle all of the covers from the floor.
And I haven’t run out of clean underwear once since I started!
While I was researching getting organized and staying organized, I read about Once a Month Cooking. I looked through some of the sample recipes that were posted on these uber mommy sites, and way too many of them involved cheese that can be sprayed out of a can, or involved making 50 pounds of lasagna. So I kind of blew it off.
I asked about it on a forum that I frequent, and someone recommended I join Relish!, which is a weekly gourmet recipe club. For under $6/month, they send me a weekly menu of recipes, complete with a shopping list. This is great. But on their site, they also have a section with Freezer Menus. This is where my life changed, and I became a domestic goddess!
A couple of weeks ago I did my first freezer cooking session. I made 9 recipes from the Relish! collection, and then neatly packed them in freezer. Every morning during my morning routine, I would pull out something for dinner. And an hour before it was time for me to go to work in Hawaii, I would set the table, and make a salad or whatever veggie we were going to have with dinner that night. Then when Baz left to go get Beckett from school, I would grill or bake or sautee the main entree, and we’d sit down to dinner as soon as Beckett got home.
A few things happened.
1. Beckett started eating more at dinner. When we would start cooking when he got home from school, he would be so hungry by dinnertime that we would have already given him a snack, and he wouldn’t eat any of his dinner.
2. We started all sitting at the table and eating together. This is my favorite part.
3. We didn’t eat out for TWO WEEKS. A record for us.
4. There weren’t any tense moments at 6pm, as we stared into the refridgerator thinking, “Oh shit, what are we going to do for dinner?”
We enjoyed dinner alot. And had more time to spend after dinner playing together in the yard or shooting baskets. And we decided that we wanted to make freezer cooking part of our normal routine.
So, this past weekend, I cooked. And I cooked some more. I made around 15 recipes, and filled the freezer with a month’s worth of dinners. And they’re tasty, even if I do say so myself. I had fun cooking this weekend, and using our new kitchen. I can see myself spending many years cooking in this kitchen, and being part of the housework and the cooking makes me feel like this place is home.
Tonight we had spaghetti pie. And we sat around the table while Beckett told me all about his adventures over the weekend. And now the kitchen is clean, and I just saw my boys ride by on the lawn mower. I guess they’re taking care of that weed problem.
My life feels like it’s in some soft of order. I feel darn lucky. This must be what they’re talking about when women express having it all.
