Category: Housework

Good Ideas: Meal Plan Folder

Published on by Kim1 Comment

I love hearing about a great idea! Don’t you?

Recently, a friend shared her method for keeping track of meals for her family. It was simple and sweet, covering what she needed in a way that was easy to access.

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A yellow file folder had all seven days of the week written in black marker on it. Under each day was a sticky note with three meals written out. At the end of the week, all she has to do is remove the sticky notes and start over.

The plan is to eventually have the breakfast for each day of the week be the same, so then it could be written on the folder also. Then, the sticky notes would only need to have lunch and dinner on them, saving one step each time.

Also, the sticky notes can be stored inside the folder to be reused in the future, giving meal ideas and saving time writing them out again.

The folder is kept with several other household folders, keeping bills and school records and such ordered and within reach during the week.

I love it! Perhaps you will too.

Notes:

  • The same process could be done by hole-punching the folder and including it in your household binder, if that is your tool of choice.
  • Once the breakfast is included on the folder itself, smaller notes (i.e., 2×3 instead of 3×3) could be used for lunch and dinner plans.
  • You could also use the really small sticky notes to have lunch on one and dinner on another for each day. That would let you re-use individual meals easily when you did your meal planning.
  • If you plan two weeks or a month at a time, you could have two or four folders set up and ready to go.

Unpleasant Duties

Published on by Kim2 Comments

“Disorganization, procrastination, addiction to technology, or refusal to do unpleasant duties tends to stress us more than diligence, organization, decisiveness, or self-denial.”

Reset by David Murray has a good point here. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot sometimes? Putting off things we need to do, leaving the mess because it’s overwhelming, not mopping the floor for a month because we really hate it?

Most of us would agree that we don’t like stress and its effects on us. We’ve even heard, and tried to ignore, the health horror stories of how stress makes you sick over time.

BUT

Has that made a difference in how we tackle life?

  • Making an hour to plan out two weeks of meals will cut out the daily stress of answering “What’s for dinner?” with “I have no idea!” for a beautiful 14 days.
  • Creating a cleaning routine and racing yourself to finish the daily section will take the stress out of housework piling up and add a little bit of fun to your day.
  • Going to the grocery stores for the main shopping with a list and a plan saves time and constant decisions in the store.
  • Biting the bullet and cleaning out that closet you try not to see will give you access to storage and a more peaceful environment. Then you can exercise tiny bits of effort to maintain the order and hold off the chaos from coming back.
  • Having a current to-do list and calendar keeps the day on track and gives you the comfort of knowing where you are going and what you truly need to do.

Just one of these steps will help you and your stress level and the peace of your household. It will take some effort up front, but that work will pay off over and over after that.