The last few weeks have been those kind of weeks. You know, the ones where you are barely hanging on to the day-to-day maintenance of the house, feeding your family and keeping your sanity? I can’t even say why really. I know that I always get a little thrown off when there is a big event ( I think this build up then difficult-to-rejoin-life-again habit runs in the family).
It was Collin’s birthday at the beginning of the month and his amazing Auntie Mandy and soon-to-be Uncle Jon came to stay with us. I was a little thrown by the immense amount of clean up, shopping/meal planning and new-found viruses that descended in the week following. All in all though it wasn’t that bad.
I guess if I had to place blame on my lack of organization these last few weeks it would be on my lazy and wonderful choice to just not care for a while. To laugh with my newly two-year-old son and ever so supporting husband. To not judge myself because I come home too tired at the end of a long day to write an inspiring and thoughtful blog post (though I swear they are up there…floating around somewhere).
The benefit has been that I have found that burning bright in Collin’s eyes is a new light. It is as if the spirit that was in him from birth is just now exploding out of him. The jolly head bops that always accompanied any musical interlude have now given way to full-fledged dance moves (seriously I swear he choreographs this stuff!) He is just more HIM than he ever has been and I have been relishing getting to know him these last weeks.
In honor of keeping it simple this Sunday I am now working on ways of organizing my life so that I am able to get done what I need to do, what is most important to me and what keeps the rhythm of the family humming along. While leaving time to continue to rediscover my son everyday (and maybe my husband too if we’re lucky) First off for me was to simplify my meal planning.
We have been eating a mainly vegetarian, sometimes vegan, locally grown, as-whole-foods-as-possible-due-to-time-and-financial-constraints diet for a while now and we really have been putting more effort into it since the beginning of the year. This has been great fun, but planning a menu can take me two hours and it is complicated to try out new recipes in the hour I have between arriving home and putting dinner on the table. To that end I have mocked up a simple meal plan, dinners only, to help me keep a rhythm without getting boring. I was inspired by the “Organize your whole life” series that has just started over at Modern Parents Messy Kids (great site, btw!). Through them I found this great post that was right up my ally, this is the main template I used to make my own meal plan (minus the shopping list on the side, I use my phone for this). This organizing thing is not my forte and I’ll never claim it to be. I just want to figure out a plan that works for us!
Any advice? What has worked for you? How do you decide what needs organization and where you should just simply get rid of!?!
Thanks for reading! Happy Simple Sunday 🙂
The Emerging Mamma 