It Is Actually Happening!

We get paid on the last business day of each month. Getting a paycheck only once a month was tough, at first, because if money runs low, there is no more coming in a couple of weeks later. On the other hand, it makes budgeting a lot easier, and we don’t have to juggle which paycheck will cover which bills. During the first week of each month, I update Quicken for all of our various accounts. This month I was updating balances in our debt reduction plan and I looked back to this time last year.

We spent a lot of time in the last year feeling frustrated because it seemed like the balances never went down. Well, I am happy to report that despite that frustration, we have eliminated $12,000 in debt in the last year! I believe the true total of what we paid off is actually $19,600 because we had financed a few things that were not included in last year’s totals. Some of what we financed was what we consider necessary, like vet bills, some was justifiable, like my stand mixer that allows me to make all of our bread, and some of it was just frivolous, like tickets to a show.

So, despite a significant amount of slip ups in our plan, we have lowered our total debt by a very large chunk in just one year! It can actually be done, even on one income, even with four kids. If you are trying to pay off debt, don’t get discouraged if your balances don’t seem to be going down. If you make a mistake and purchase something you shouldn’t, don’t give up. It really can be done, and you don’t have to be perfect, or live Little House on the Prairie style to do it.

Laundry Tips and Tricks

Laundry is one of my most hated household chores. There are 6 of us in the house, and the two youngest still have occasional potty accidents, so sometimes they can go through more than one outfit a day. The laundry can pile up very, very quickly. When it would get really out of control, we would spend a whole day doing load after load of laundry. We would get so fixated on washing the clothes, we wouldn’t be folding or putting the clothes away. Now instead of a huge mountain of dirty clothes, we would have a huge mountain of clean but wrinkled, and un-sorted clothes, which is better, I guess…sort of.

 

Staying on top of it all

When I started my One Month Challenge last month, I put doing a load of laundry on my daily task list. In order to make sure everybody has the right clothes when they need them, I went a step further and made a schedule based on what days the kids have or don’t have after school activities, so that their laundry gets done on a day that they are home after school to put it away.

For our house, this means:

Monday:  N

Tuesday: M and O-they share a room, a hamper, and often their clothes, so they share a laundry day too.

Wed: Linens

Thursday: L

Friday: Mom and Dad

Saturday: no laundry

Sunday: Catch up-for when there is an extra load or two that didn’t get done.

For the past month, this has worked really well. The older kids never run out of uniforms, we don’t run out of towels and Mike always has appropriate work clothes available. This system also makes the folding and putting away easier, since everything in the basket goes to the same place. My kids don’t have many white clothes, but what they do have, I tend to set aside to add to the larger whites load on Friday.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

To save money, I make my own laundry soap. It only takes me about 20 minutes to make a batch that lasts us about two months. That two month supply costs maybe $2.00. All of the ingredients are found in the laundry detergent aisle. Sometimes the washing soda and soap can be hard to find. I only know of one store in our area that carries washing soda, but they are also available online. I started with the recipe from LivingOnADime.com, but I have since altered it a little to work better for my kids’ stains.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

6 C      Water

½ bar   Fels Naptha soap, grated

½ C     Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda)

¾ C     Borax 

Heat water and grated soap in a large pan until the soap is fully dissolved. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Heat until powders are fully dissolved, stirring frequently. Keep a close eye on it because it tends to boil over (although, the spilled solution does a pretty good job of cleaning the stove top.) Once completely dissolved, boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat. The mixture should have a honey like consistency. Place one quart of hot water into a 3-5 gallon bucket. Add soap mixture, and then enough cold water to make 2 gallons. . (Before my first batch, I measured 2 gallons of water into my bucket, and marked the level with a permanent marker.)  Mix well. Let stand for 24 hours.* Solution will gel up.

To use, stir well and use ½ cup per load.

If it doesn’t reach honey consistency, or gel up, it will still work. It will not suds up.

*This detergent will separate, so it must be stirred before each use. Pour it into liquid detergent bottles before letting it stand, and then just shake it up before each use (Be sure to leave some space at the top for shaking.)

We saved ½ gallon plastic Pace picante sauce bottles to store ours in, any fairly thick plastic bottle with a handle will work fine.

Stain Removal

Speaking of stains, I don’t buy commercial stain treater anymore, so here are some things I use to deal with various stains on clothes:

SAFETY DISCLAIMER: Most people know not to mix bleach with ammonia, but it is also dangerous to mix bleach with vinegar and lemon juice, so do not add bleach to a load using any of those items. As a rule, do not mix bleach with anything but water.

I have not tried some of these tips, they are compiled from around the internet.

Ammonia is not recommended for very delicate fabrics or fabrics with latex in them, because it will dissolve the latex.

ALL PURPOSE wet a bar of Fels Naptha soap and rub the bar directly on the stain. This works particularly well on grease stains, and is very economical. One bar of soap has lasted me over a year.

BLOOD Hydrogen Peroxide or baking soda paste+

CAR GREASE dishwashing soap

CRAYON WD40 let sit for 3-5 min, Rinse, treat with dishwashing liquid, Rinse,  use stain pre-treater

GRASS Hydrogen Peroxide

GUM hot vinegar, set 1-2 min then scrape or freeze then chip off

INK Rubbing Alcohol or hairspray

RING AROUND THE COLLAR Rub shampoo into stain, launder as usual

SKUNK pre wash in skunk smell solution*, then launder as usual

SWEAT pre treat with white vinegar, or baking soda paste

            OLD-  1:1:1 solution of baking soda peroxide and water let sit for 30 min

                        1 Cup white vinegar in machine, soak 30 min

WAX scrape off excess wax  then pour boiling water over spot

+BAKING SODA PASTE 6Tbsp baking soda with ½ cup water

*SKUNK SMELL SOLUTION 2 cups hydrogen peroxide, 8 oz baking soda, a   couple of squirts dishwashing liquid and a gallon of water

To make clothes wash more easily, soak overnight in a 1 Tbsp Ammonia  to 1 Gal water or use ¼ cup Ammonia for a full washer.

Challenge Update

Week one went really well. I met my goals each day and was really thinking this was going to be easier than I thought, until...

Week two arrived. The second week it was a bit tougher to get out of bed in the morning. I still managed, but it took a lot of self convincing each day. I still met my goals everyday, so yay me!

Week three was a mess. On Monday, our Rabbi and friend passed away suddenly, and it hit the entire family very hard. I managed to keep up on Monday, but I didn’t do any laundry or dishes the rest of the week. I did manage to get up on (or almost on) time each day, got dressed, and the kids’ lunches got made each night with the exception of the night following the funeral, but that was about it.  Fortunately, since I had been keeping up with laundry the previous two weeks, there wasn’t too big of a mountain. My husband got the laundry caught up on the weekend while I was out selling cookies with my Girl Scout troop, so I was able to start the last week on track.

Week four was not as off as the previous week, but I still didn’t get fully back on track. We lost another family friend this week, so I wasn’t in a very gung-ho kinda mood. Laundry got done, but it didn’t always get folded and put away properly. The dishwasher mostly got emptied, but sometimes I had the kids do it afterschool. The good thing about all of this is, I am still motivated to keep going. In the past, after losing ground like this, I would just quit. But I am not going to quit this time. Today is the last day of my challenge, and I am on track to meet all of my goals for the day.

Overall, I think my challenge went well. I am waking up at 6am every morning, even on the weekends. Today I was even the first one awake in the house! Even my bad days are more productive than they used to be, due in part to getting dressed in the morning. The laundry is under control, and even when I slip up, it doesn’t take much to get it back on track.

Now that I have finished my first challenge, I hope to add 5 new things to do/change each month. My next goals are more self improvement focused, rather than household focused. In addition to keeping up with my previous goals, I want to:

No nail biting. I have had this terrible habit for as long as I can remember. I am in a wedding in July and would like my hands to look like they belong to a female without having to pay big bucks for acrylics.

Portion control. I want to keep my meals down to something that could reasonably be called a single serving, and stop eating out of boredom, especially right before bed.

Put my clothes in the hamper as soon as I take them off. I tend to just drop them on the floor outside the bathroom or next to the bed with the intention of putting them in the hamper in the morning, but that rarely happens.

No dining out. Well, with one exception. We have tickets to a show in April, and we are likely going to meet up with friends before or after, so I am allowing for dining out that one day.  Even though I am making an exception, we are going to eat at home before the show, so that any dining out can be a small snack, or just a drink. We don’t go out much, but it always seems to happen more than we planned.

Work on this blog more. I am challenging myself to work on Better Mom for 15 minutes a day, even if it is just coming up with post ideas.

One Month Challenge

It has been a little more than a year since I started this blog and nearly two years since I began my journey. I haven’t updated as often as I would like, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been making progress. Things are much better than they were when I first began. The house is in better shape, our finances are in much better shape (off the top of my head, I can’t remember the last time we had an overdraft) and there is some semblance of a schedule around here.

The progress I have made is great, but I had really hoped to be further along by now. I often have a really good day or two where I get tons done around the house, but then if I slip up even a little bit, everything seems to fall apart and I have to start over from square one. In addition to that, it often feels like the more I get organized and cleaned, the harder my youngest works to undo everything I have accomplished! It can be very frustrating.

I have read, from several sources, that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Since breaking a bad habit usually involves replacing it with a good one, I figure it takes 21 days to break a bad habit as well. I have been thinking about this a lot lately because I have many bad habits I need to replace with good ones. I keep waiting for a good time to start a 21 day challenge for myself. Of course, a “good time” never really comes, so I can sit around and not change anything, while pretending that thinking about it counts for something. Now is as good a time to begin as any, so created a challenge for myself.

I have made a short list of five simple habits I would like to have, and starting Tuesday, February 22(today), I am going to do those 5 things every school day for one full month. I went with a month instead of 21 days because the habits I am trying to create or improve are mostly school day or school night specific, so they don’t really apply on the weekends.

My five goals for each day are:

Get up at 6am. I currently get up just before 7am which gives me just enough time to do my kindergartner’s hair before she gets on the bus to school.  She gets dressed and has breakfast with her dad, but he can’t do hair. If I get up an hour earlier, I can spend a little time with my husband before he has to leave for work, and I can have a full cup of coffee before I have to wake the older kids to get ready for school.

Get dressed right away. There are many days where I drop the kids off at school while wearing pajamas. (I don’t get out of the car, so nobody sees me.) I usually manage to put some kind of real clothes on by the time I get my kindergartner off the bus, but spending the day in pajamas sends my brain the message that the day hasn’t started yet. I am hoping that getting dressed first thing in the morning will help me have more productive days.

Do a load of laundry. Laundry is probably my least favorite household chore, and with 4 kids, it piles up really fast. If I do a little bit everyday will really help keep it from getting overwhelming.

Empty the dishwasher. I already do this a lot, but not daily, and having a place to put the day’s dishes keeps them from piling up.

Make the kids’ lunches while I make dinner. My kids take their lunch to school every day. I try to make them the night before, so that there isn’t a rush to do it in the morning. The problem is, sometimes I get so tired, I skip it. When I make dinner, I am in the kitchen anyway, so it is a great time to make the lunches, and then I don’t have to worry about forgetting, or getting too tired later in the evening.

When I originally decided to do this challenge, I thought, “Hey, if this works out, I can blog about it” but after a while I realized, that putting it out there and letting people (all 3 if them that read my blog)  know what I am trying to do will help remind me to stay on track.

Needs vs. Wants

Many years ago, I had a neighbor who would come over every month to use our phone so she could call the phone company and get her phone turned back on. Each time, she was in a panic because her husband was in the military and was required to have a working phone at home, so she was afraid that he would get reprimanded if his commanding officer tried to contact him before the phone company got it switched back on. This same neighbor would get take-out food several times a week, and always had cable service with premium channels. Somehow, I never really felt sorry for her when she would regale me with tales of their financial woes.

As I have mentioned once or twice, saving money, whether you need to reduce your debt, save for a large purchase, or just live within a small budget,  really just comes down to determining needs versus wants. A person’s basic needs come down to food, water, shelter and clothing. I could survive by eating rice and beans, drinking only water, having only 2 or so outfits to wear, and living in a one room shelter. I’m not saying it would be a fabulous existence, but it could be done. With that in mind, almost everything I own is a luxury. For me, the realization that I have so many things that I don’t truly need, helps me deal when I can’t afford to buy something I want.  

We live in a society that puts a high value on material possessions. We are bombarded by advertisements that try to convince us of all the luxuries that we need. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of us don’t need any of these things. Nobody needs a high definition television. Nobody needs a television at all. If you are trying to pay off debt, you do need to control your spending.

For me, a few luxuries make the other sacrifices easier to swallow. It comes down to deciding which luxuries are worth it, and which ones aren’t. For example, I don’t need a high speed wireless internet connection in my home. It is very nice to have, and it allows my husband to do some of his work at home, and allows me to have this blog, so we decided that a broadband connection was worth the expense for us. It would also be nice to be able to access the internet from my cell phone. I could find the cheapest gas prices nearby and get driving directions when I lose my way. In the end, I spend most of my time in my house, and I don’t travel to places I am not familiar with very often, so I couldn’t justify the expense of a data package for my phone.  

Which expenses are worth it for you, depends on your particular financial situation. If you are only making minimum payments on your debt, and you have trouble buying food and paying utilities every month, then you really have no business spending $60 a month on satellite television service. On the other hand, if you have and are following a debt reduction plan and can comfortably pay all of your bills, spending $20 a month on a Netflix subscription can make it a lot more tolerable to skip that movie night or dinner out.

I have found that many of the luxuries that we cut out of our budget we have been able to replace with less expensive alternatives that are almost as good, or sometimes even better. The more your expenses exceed your income, the more things you need to cut. It isn’t always easy and it isn’t particularly fun, but neither is being $40,000 in debt (and that does not include a mortgage!)

Excuses, Excuses

Since I have started to try to live more frugally, I have had a few conversations with friends and family about financial struggles. One thing I have noticed is that no matter what our individual situation entails, it seems there are 2 possible solutions. If your income isn’t enough to cover your expenses you either need to find more income, or reduce expenses. Going out and finding a 2^nd job or a higher paid position isn’t that easy these days, but I don’t personally know anybody who doesn’t have at least some areas of their budget that they can reduce.

For me, as well as most people I talk to, getting started on making better financial decisions isn’t always easy. Sometimes, making excuses for why we can’t stop frivolous spending can be all too easy. Here are some of the excuses I have heard, or have, at some point, tried to use myself.

It was such a good deal.

While it can be a good idea to stock up on things you need when they are on sale, buying things that you do not need is a waste of money, no matter how much of a “good deal” it is.

My self esteem is tied up in getting my hair done, pedicure, manicure etc.

First of all, I believe that true self esteem comes from being proud of who you are, and what you do, rather than from how you look. While a new outfit, or hair-do can give you a temporary mood boost, that will fade, and if you aren’t happy with the person that you are, that outfit isn’t going to fix that. I often struggle with self esteem issues, and have turned to retail therapy to make myself feel better. The thing about it is, when the end of the month rolls around and we don’t have the money to pay that bill I forgot about, or to buy that box of diapers that we need, suddenly those retail therapy purchases don’t make me feel so good.

What does make me feel good is getting all the way through the month without accidentally overdrawing our checking account, or sending one of our credit cards an extra payment. Sure, it isn’t as glamorous as a pedicure in the short run, but in the long run living within our means is helping my kids learn to be financially responsible, and is helping my family move toward home ownership.

Why should I cut back on this when you spend on that?

When one spouse uses the other spouse’s financial missteps to justify their own, it can wreak havoc on a budget. Saying “well, she bought that new dress, so I can buy this new phone” is a lot like misplacing ten dollars and using that to justify throwing another ten in the trash. It can be tough when backslides happen, but instead of deciding to backslide further, learn from your mistakes and keep moving forward.

When spouses aren’t on the same page about their financial situation, it can be even harder to get your debt and spending under control. I am a stay at home mom, so my husband is the sole wage earner for our family. However, I am the one who pays the bills and balances the checkbook. If I didn’t talk to my husband about our finances (and if he never asked,) he would be mostly clueless about our debt situation. If your spouse doesn’t see the need to save money and get out of debt, you have to show them the reality of the situation. Write out a monthly budget to let your spouse see exactly how much income you have, and how much you spend each month. You might want to point out areas of spending that could be reduced. If your spouse is resistant to cutting back, don’t expect them to be willing to cut out all of their luxuries at once. Even stretching out the time between haircuts for one extra week will help cut costs. If you and your spouse have been in the habit of using each other as an excuse to spend excessively, you may need to present cuts in a format of, if you give up this, I will give up that. Hopefully having the numbers laid out in a calm, rational way will allow your spouse to see the need for frugality. Even if it doesn’t and they insist on eating lunch out everyday, you can still save money on the things you can directly control. Every little bit really does help.

I buy things for myself because I didn’t have anything growing up.

It can be very tempting to indulge your inner child, especially if you had to go without a lot growing up. If your financial situation is causing you stress, or you are in danger of losing your house, or car, you have to stop indulging the child that you were so that you can take care of the adult that you are. Odds are pretty good that your indulgence helped get you into debt in the first place. In order to climb out of debt, you have to stop frivolous spending. Period.

I have reward points that will expire if I don’t use them.

I currently have a $10 reward check from a store credit card. It expires at the end of this month, if I don’t use it I lose that “free” $10. Last time I was in this particular store, I didn’t see a single item for less than fifteen dollars. If I insisted on using up my gift check, I could buy a fifteen dollar item and save ten bucks, so it would only cost me five dollars plus tax. On the other hand, I could not get anything and it would cost me zero dollars. It doesn’t cost me anything to let that check expire, but using it costs me money.

The trick to moving towards a frugal life style is being completely honest with yourself. Once you get past the excuses for spending, you have to learn to distinguish between needs and wants and between can’t and won’t. That is the part that really seems to be a barrier for people. We are constantly inundated with information telling us all the toys and gadgets we need. When you really get down to it, your needs are very little, and the vast majority of everything else you have is essentially a luxury. Once you wrap your head around how many luxuries you really have, it makes it a lot easier to cut back on the frivolous spending.

Grocery Savings and RECIPES

The original intent of this blog was for frugal living tips and ideas. I am by no means a frugal expert, but I have been working towards a more frugal lifestyle for about a year now. I believe getting organized is a major factor in living frugally. If your stuff is organized you save time by not having to endlessly search for the things you need and you save money by not buying duplicates of an item you can’t find. That said, updating about how I organized this or that in my house has gotten boring for me, so I can only imagine how boring it is for readers (both of them.) With that in mind, I have decided to skip some organization conversion chronicling and move on to some of the money saving tips I have been using.

Like many families, groceries are one of our biggest expenses. At the beginning of the year, my grocery budget was just about equal to my rent budget. This is due in part to a ridiculously low rent payment, and our grocery budget does include non-food items like diapers, paper goods, cleaning supplies etc. but it still makes for a very large grocery bill. Over the past few months, we have managed to cut $100-$150 out of our grocery spending each month. Of course, so far, NONE of this extra cash has been applied toward reducing our debt because the house and cars seem to sense that we have some extra and greedily find ways to use it up. While it is frustrating that we haven’t been able to apply the extra money toward paying off debt, at least we had the cash to pay for repairs and didn’t have to go deeper into debt to pay for them.

The very first thing to address when trying to cut down food expenses is waste. In my home I see a few types of food waste.

1. Food going bad and having to be thrown away before it gets used.
2. Kids throwing half of their meal away
3. Parents (that’s me) eating twice as much as we need to feel satisfied

Issue number one can be prevented by keeping better tabs on what we have in the pantry and refrigerator and occasionally planning a meal around an ingredient that is about to expire. I have also found that vegetables that have wilted to a point where I wouldn’t serve them fresh can often still be used to make broth. This can apply to freezer burned veggies as well. Milk that is past drinkability can still be used for cooking and baking and can even be used as a substitute for buttermilk in recipes. Of course sometimes food is too far past its prime to be salvaged no matter what you were going to use it for. If your milk resembles yogurt, I wouldn’t recommend making pancakes with it. When we do have produce or bread go past all hope of salvage, it goes in the compost pile which then helps fertilize our garden, so at least it isn’t a complete waste.

Issues two and three can be handled the same way, portion control. Portion control is probably the thing that saves me the most money on groceries. I used to take a recipe meant to serve four and automatically double it to feed my family of six. This wouldn’t be a big deal if we had two portions left over for lunch the next day, but we didn’t. Either I would give the kids large portions and half of it would get thrown away, or we would eat all of it, sometimes even after we were full. Now I either increase a recipe just enough for six, or I prepare it for four and add an extra side to our meal to make sure everybody gets enough to eat. If I do prepare enough for 8, I try to pack up 2 portions for lunches before I serve everybody. I give everybody small portions that are less than I think they will eat. That way if they aren’t hungry (rare), or don’t really like it (less rare), there isn’t as much waste.

Portion control can not only cut down on waste, but it can save money by stretching your food supply. The biggest example of this is meat. Americans as a whole eat WAY more meat than we actually need. If I am using boneless skinless chicken that needs to be cut up and added to a soup or casserole, I will usually use just one breast for the entire meal. If I am serving chicken breast as a main dish by itself, I will use no more than 4 (sometimes even 3) to feed the whole family. Usually for this type of meal, however, I use thighs and legs and each person just gets one piece. Where I am really able to stretch my budget is with ground meat. We pretty much only buy ground turkey, but it would work with beef too. We get a 5lb chub of ground turkey each month. Using my 12 inch sauté pan, I cook the whole batch using dried minced onion, garlic powder, season salt, and paprika as a general seasoning. I then divide the cooked meat into 12 portions and seal it up using my food saver and throw it in the freezer. Once sealed, I spread the meat out in the bag to make as thin of a package as possible. This way it is not only easier to stack and store, but it also defrosts much faster. Each one is less than ½ a pound, but it still manages to be plenty for most meals. Because the meat is already cooked it saves me time in the kitchen during the hectic dinner hour. We use these mini-portions in spaghetti, for casseroles, and in any recipes that call for a pound of ground beef.

As a busy mom, I am a big fan of the one dish meal, whether it is a stir-fry a casserole or whatever. I almost never buy things like Hamburger Helper® or similar boxed meals, but I found a recipe for Hamburger Buddy that is essentially a homemade version that is fairly simple to make and is much healthier. Of course, I used turkey instead of beef and I used one of my mini portions rather than a pound. The recipe calls for a food processor to finely chop the veggies. This works well for hiding vegetables from picky eaters, but I have also made the recipe by roughly chopping everything with my Pampered Chef ® Food Chopper. It wasn’t as sneaky, but it tasted just as good. My kids really liked it and it has turned into a very adaptable recipe.

You can make many variations of this recipe with the following formula:
1 lb ground meat*
3-6 cups vegetables
4 cups liquid (broth, water or a combination)
2 cups dry pasta (small pasta works best. My favorites are shells and elbow)
Seasoning
Thickener (I have used ¼ cup sour cream, cheese, and flour or cornstarch mixed with a couple ounces of reserved broth)
One of my family’s favorite of these adaptations has been dubbed Cheeseburger Buddy. I don’t measure ingredients unless I am following someone else’s recipe, so I am guestimating on all of these measurements.


1 lb ground turkey or beef*
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 small onion, diced
1 15 oz can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
1 2 lb. bag frozen chopped broccoli
4 cups chicken, beef or vegetable broth
2 cups whole wheat shells or elbow macaroni
½ cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 slices American cheese
¼ cup sour cream

In a large sauté pan, brown the ground meat with the garlic and onion until there is no pink left. Drain fat. Add can of tomatoes, and broth and noodles. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally until pasta is partially cooked but not yet tender. About 5 minutes. Add frozen broccoli, Stir to distribute, cover and cook another 3-5 minutes until pasta is tender. Add cheeses and sour cream and stir until cheeses melt and create a sauce. 1-2 minutes. Serves 6.

*I use one of my mini-portions of ground turkey

I quit?

And now I have reached the part of my quest where I give up.

I had just spent the better part of two days working on cleaning and organizing. I am very aware of the fact that there is a LOT more ahead of me. The clean shiny surface of my newly organized counter tops was helping me stay motivated to finish the task. After dinner, I left the house to visit a friend. When I left, there was an hour and a half until bedtime, and the girls had just finished their bath.

I came home late and headed straight down the hall. I peeked into my room to find my husband, Mike, hunched over asleep at the computer. I continued to the laundry room to start a load of the kids’ uniforms for school the next day. When I returned to the bedroom, the hubs was awake, and in the process of getting ready for bed. We chatted a bit, and I asked him if he could transfer the load of laundry to the dryer when he got up in the morning. He said, “Of course” and we headed to bed.

In the morning, I woke up just before Mike headed out for work. On my way out to the front room I was greeted by my early birds, M and O. I shuffled into the kitchen to discover a sink full of dirty dishes, and a dishwasher full of more dirty dishes. It was picture day at M’s school, so I sighed in frustration and got busy getting her started on her day. Once the little girls were having breakfast, I went to wake up my older daughter. I noticed that I could not hear the dryer running. Sure enough, Mike had forgotten to put the kids’ uniforms into the dryer. With only 50 minutes until their ride to school arrived, I was not confident that the clothes would dry in time. I made sure to clear the lint trap and got the dryer started.

I made another attempt to wake up the older kids, and checked on the younger ones at the breakfast table. After washing hands and faces, I started getting M dressed. The older kids were still lying in bed, but a final, much louder wake up call got them up and moving. I assigned my oldest with the task of serving up breakfast for herself and her brother, while I started the daily drama of brushing M’s hair. After much crying and protest, M was ready for school and looking appropriately adorable for her picture. At this point, with 30 minutes until the carpool arrived, I remembered that I had not made the kids’ lunches the night before. I rushed into the kitchen to quickly throw together some sandwiches. I finished the lunches in a mere 5 minutes.

Urging the kids to finish breakfast, I went to the laundry room to check on the progress of the load in the dryer. Finally! Something was working in my favor. The laundry was dry, or at least it was close enough. I grabbed an outfit for each kid and went back out to the front. After repeated reminders and urges to hurry, the kids managed to brush their teeth, get dressed and brush their hair. The carpool for the older kids and the bus for M arrived just as I handed out the lunches. After another burst of activity getting everybody in their respective rides, I carried O back inside and collapsed on the couch.

I haven’t even had my coffee yet.

I was frustrated. I was angry. I was feeling, once again, that nothing I did mattered. Why should I bother? It just gets undone anyway. I was knee deep into a pity party of epic proportions. I had a cup of coffee, or three, and started to feel a bit better. Not do the damn dishes better, but make a loaf of challah and a pan of lasagna better. By the afternoon, a sudden unexplainable wave of exhaustion hit me, so when Mike got home I went to lie down.

When I woke up from my nap, Mike had done all of the dishes and set the table for dinner. Have I mentioned that my husband is awesome? I realized that this process is going to take time for all of us. I can’t do this all by myself, but I can’t expect my family to suddenly have good habits just because I want them to. If I give up now how will they learn? (Oy, that sounds so cheesetastic!) I can’t give up just because one day went badly.

Onward.