Category Archives: homemaking

My basic Pesach cleaning schedule

homemaking, Pesach

This week I’m officially getting started on my Pesach (Passover) cleaning! I generally don’t do more than two hours of cleaning on any given day except when we turn over the kitchen.  It’s too easy to get worn down by all the work; I find breaking it into manageable pieces makes it possible to enjoy this time of year and all the attendant preparations as much as any other time of year!  The kids do a lot to help, and I don’t want them to get burnt out, either.  Some people like to start way in advance, but I’ve never found it beneficial to start too much in advance, since then you have to keep it in Pesach ready condition.  Our house isn’t large enough that I can easily limit areas for a long time in advance!

I feel that each holiday is best enjoyed when the focus is on that holiday.  That means that I don’t do any planning for Pesach until Purim has passed – I focus on Purim when it’s Purim and don’t think about Pesach until it’s over, and all the Purim stuff has been cleaned up and put away.  I try not to drag out Pesach cleaning, but I also don’t like the pressure of having too much to do, too close to Pesach, so this schedule works well for me.    I clean mostly in the afternoons on Monday through Weds (sometimes Thursday, but I prefer to keep that time available for Shabbos preparations), so we can continue our regular homeschooling schedule until the week before Pesach.  I also use part of Sundays.

Here’s my basic schedule:

Week 1 (March 2 – 4):  I inventoried chametz (leavened foods) and clothing/shoes, and made sure everyone has what they need for the upcoming holiday and spring season.  It was the week of shopping, lol!   I still have a couple of things I need to get (including my personal big purchase that I’ll get today), but I’m waiting for a good sale to come along for the couple of other items. 🙂

Week 1: The week after Purim I do my planning – along with things like I mentioned above.  It’s preliminary kind of stuff that allows me to focus on Pesach cleaning without having to stop and start knowing it’s done.

Week 2 (March 8 – 11):  We’ll clean the top two floors. That includes all the bedrooms, the attic, linen closet, and two bathrooms.  We have a homeschool gathering on Weds. as well as an eye doctor appointment to take ds16 to, so I’ve scheduled that as an off-day so we can all enjoy hanging out without feeling like we should be cleaning.

Yesterday I bought our matzas and some other Pesach staples – I don’t like shopping when it’s crowded and I avoid the rush by doing it now.  It also spaces out the cost – six cases of grape juice, meats, and matza were all paid for with my Feb. budget.  My March budget will cover everything else.  My food budget is the same at this time of year as any other month – $600.   If I have to, I’ll stop in at the kosher supermarket a few days before Pesach when everything else is done to pick up any small items I don’t yet have.  Unlike the vast majority of people in the very long lines at that time, I’m relaxed and cheerful; I consider it almost a public service to share some positive energy when everyone is dripping with tension.  🙂

Week 3 (March 14 – 18): At this point I do the basement and laundry room.  This year I’m slightly adjusting our schedule to accommodate the home repairs the  kids want to do.  They want to  some spackle a little, paint a little, fix some things that don’t look so nice (like the hole in the bathroom door created when ds2 used a screwdriver to screw into it!).  So on Sunday and Monday, we’ll do the basement and laundry room, and then will have the following three days to do the desired visual improvements. 🙂

Week 4 (March 21 – 25):  I’ll do the living room, dining room, and kitchen (we have an open layout so it’s easiest to do them all about the same time).  This is the most intensive time, since it’s a lot of work in just three days.  I like to finish cleaning about a week before Pesach so there’s plenty of time to cook in advance, do all the laundry, etc, without a feeling of pressure.  I plan to turn over the kitchen on the 23rd, and that day we’ll shift out of hectic mode and can all relax – I plan to take the family to the duck pond for his birthday – we did that last year and he requested to do it again, with the same refreshments as last year.  Then on the March 24, I’ll do my monthly shopping, and Thurs. I’ll unpack, plan my Pesach menu (to be determined after I see what I buy), and cook for Shabbos.  At that time the house is entirely ready – the only thing left to do the following week is cook for Pesach.

So far the challenge this week is that the best time to clean is when the littles are napping, but they each nap in a differentbedroom, so not much can be done on the top two floors since it will wake them up!  That means cleaning with them awake and involved.  The biggest challenge is the attic, since I keep all the clothes storage there.  Since everyone is going through all of their drawers, I have a lot of clothes that need to be cleaned and then packed in the appropriate boxes.  Once I get past this area of the house, it will get easier since I can use the time the kids are sleeping to work.

I also want to find some time to plan my garden.  I don’t know if I’m going to get myself together enough to plant fruit trees – this is such a hectic time of year!  I need to go through all the seeds I have, see what else I need, but the most time consuming thing of all is to make a plan for where everything will be planted.  I have a feeling that I’m going to have to accept that I can’t make the more involved garden that I would like.  Oh, well.  At times like this I remind myself that I can only do so much, and to look at what I do accomplish instead of what is left undone.

Do you have any tips that help you stay relaxed and enjoy this time of year?

Avivah

Needing time for self

homemaking, parenting

>>and the more I see the pic the more I just cant stop being baffled at how you dont lose your mind from having this clan home every single single live long day. I just cant imagine how you dont need your space for a few hours every day to just do your thing without needing to respond to some child’s request. For the life of me no matter how many blog entries I’ll read, I will not be able to fathom the concept of being home with your entire family every single day of the year.<<

I’ve written about how can I stand to be around my kids all day, and I think part of the answer is that there are some things you just can’t understand until you experience them.  It’s not just that my kids are home all day and most other families have their kids in school during the day, but the mindset about it that is a big difference.  But I wanted to respond to a different point since it touches on something I’ve been thinking about these last few days.  And that is the importance of having time for yourself.

Don’t think I have a superhuman ability to push off my own needs to take care of everyone else 24/7.  I really enjoy spending time with my children, but occasionally I feel like I need more ‘self time’ than what I’m getting.  It’s not about them and how well-behaved they are or aren’t; it’s about me not carving out time for myself.  When I ignore my needs, I get the same feelings of burnout that everyone else does and I feel less calm and happy and more irritable and edgy.

I’ve been recognizing a few warning signs that I’ve been neglecting making that quiet time in my day.  When my mind gets too full or feels too busy, it’s like I subconsciously do things to create some space that aren’t effective or helpful.  Things like sometimes looking through my kids when they talk to me, giving instructions that aren’t clear because I’m too busy thinking about the next thing to be precise in what I’m saying that moment (pick ‘that’ up, put ‘this’ somewhere) or starting a thought and then not finishing it, and spending too much time on the computer (which can have a zoning out effect).

But the clearest warning was that a few days ago I told my husband I wanted to go away by myself for a day or two.  Not that I’m going to do it, since I have a nursing baby and taking him would defeat the purpose, but I was really feeling like I needed to be left alone for at least a day.  No noise, no people – just a hotel room where everything stays where I put it, no one needs me for anything, and I can rest and read as much as I want!  Sounds good, doesn’t it? 🙂

I find that feeling overextended or run down usually develops gradually, until you get to the point that it’s so obvious it kind of smacks you in the face.   Particularly since I’m going into the busiest season of the year with Pesach (Passover) less than a month away, it’s important to reevaluate how I’m spending my time and why.  That helps me to realign what I do with what I really believe is the best thing to do – which I haven’t been doing.  I’ve been doing everything I think is important and lots of other stuff, too!  The important stuff isn’t the problem – it’s the not so important stuff that I let myself get busy with.

And physically I know there’s an effect – the baby is 9 months old but the extra weight hasn’t come off as I expected it to (and no dietary improvements have shifted this).   I’m pretty sure my metabolism isn’t functioning well due to my adrenals being exhausted and my cortisol level being out of whack (which changes the insulin response of the body), both directly related to  sleeping too little.  And I haven’t wanted to look at this because it means making changes in my schedule that are hard for me to make (like going to sleep really early) and doing less than I want to do.  But you know that little voice of intuition inside?  That’s what it’s telling me.

I have plenty of things I need to do every day, but I’m going to be cutting down or cutting out some things entirely.  And because I know I can psych myself out by feeling like all my little improvements aren’t going to make enough of a difference to be worthwhile, I’m consciously crediting myself for small changes – like going to sleep earlier and taking a walk around the block once a day to get some fresh air.  I’m also being careful to be aware of and limit my time online.   So though I don’t plan to significantly cut down on blogging, if you see I’m not posting my usual 5 – 6 posts a week, you’ll know why!

Avivah

Keeping Purim costs down

frugal strategies, homemaking,

Holiday costs very easily spiral out of control, and like all other holidays, a person can enjoy the spirit of things without unnecessarily spending lots of money.  So I thought I’d share a little about some ways I keep Purim related expenses in check.  Some of these ideas will help you now; some require advance planning and can be put into use at different times of the year.

Mishloach manos – (also called shalach manos, this is the gift of food that is traditionally given on Purim to friends) – I set a limit of $1 for each family shalach manos (the kids send their own and my budget for them is lower).  Lest you think this looks cheap and chintzy because of my low budget, you’re wrong.  I actually have to be careful not to make it too nice because I  don’t want anyone to feel outdone, which is why I lowered my price from $2 to $1.  I know how little I spend, but most people wouldn’t be able to accurately guess by looking at it.  This price range allows me to send nice foods while keeping it simple – and it doesn’t overwhelm anyone.

We really enjoy preparing and giving mishloach manos (I try to keep the main list to thirty, and with the kids friends it goes up to fifty or so), so it’s not a pressure for us.  For some people, they might be best off by significantly cutting down the amount of people they give to.  As you see, we don’t spend huge sums of money that would make this financially stressful.

Food – Keeping food costs down is typical of my food saving strategies – make homemade foods, buy packaged foods in advance when they are on sale, buy at discount stores, etc.  This year I’ll be sending two sets of mishloach manos.  One will contain a half pint of homemade (home canned) salsa with a  7.5 oz bag of Garden of Eatin’ organic blue corn chips.  I bought a few cases of the chips when a store heavily discounted them to move them fast – .50 per bag (usually they’re several dollars each).  The salsa was made with tomatoes that I bought for $3 per case, tomatillos that I got free, and ended up a very nominal cost.

The second set of mishloach manos include organic chocolate bars, natural strawberry kiwi juice boxes, and 5 homemade sugar cookies that spell out Purim in Hebrew.  Again, I bought the chocolate and juice boxes when I saw them heavily discounted.  I don’t wait until a few days before Purim to start thinking about it.  The chocolate and juice were bought six weeks in advance, the chips were bought ten weeks in advance; all of these purchases were included in my regular monthly grocery budget.  My monthly food budget always includes any holiday expenses, which is nice since it keeps my financial outlay in that area constant.

Containers – The canning jars I’m sending the salsa in I bought in August 2008 for $1.30 a dozen (they were new and I shared about how I did that here – look halfway down the post).  So each brand new jar, including the lid and ring, cost me about .12 cents. If I were to buy a dozen jars new right now, it would be at least $6/.50 a jar.

After Christmas, I bought all of the non-seasonally themed candy gift boxes that were available at clearance prices, 75% off.  So I paid .25 cents for each one.  I didn’t know what I’d be sending for Purim and if this would be the right size, but figured better to buy it and have them than to regret not having them later on – it turns out that these will be a little small for my needs this year so they’ll be stored for next year.  I bought nice sized gift bags that were 75% off after Valentines Day that are large enough to fit the salsa and chips.  Those were also .25 each.

The second mishloach manos is wrapped in cellophane we were given a couple of years ago by someone cleaning out their basement – they gave us a number of unused rolls because they didn’t want to store something they wouldn’t be using until the following year.  The kids are all very good at being creative with what we have.  I was out of ribbon to tie the cellophane up with, so we found a roll of thin black string, and then the kids used the thin threads of tinsel (the kind you use as metallic ‘grass’ at bottom of baskets) to tie on top of the string to make it look more festive.  I had gone to Trader Joe’s with my toddler the day we prepared these, and got a few helium balloons while we were shopping.  Some of the older kids snipped off lengths of the ribbon it was tied with to wrap theirs with.  🙂

When I send gift bags, I don’t write on the labels, so that the person receiving it can save it for future gift giving if they so choose.  Gift bags are expensive and it’s a shame for them to only get used once, don’t you think?  It won’t surprise you that I save the containers we receive on Purim. 🙂  I let the kids choose from these throughout the year when they need to take something to a birthday part, and the following Purim they can choose from those containers to send mishloach manos to their friends.

As I mentioned yesterday, the kids made a lot of containers this year, so they didn’t take much from what I was stored in the Purim box (they used mostly card stock and paper plates).  If you learn to look at containers that are already coming into your house with an alternative idea in mind, you’ll see lots of free containers that you can use.  For example, the little plastic baskets that cherry tomatoes come in, the lidded microwaveable containers that some frozen vegetables come in, foam containers that one local grocery packages their discounted vegetables in – there are so many choices.  When I bought pearl onions that came in a small purple net bag, I saved them.  You can recycle jars or cans, then decorate them for this purpose.    The kids did this last year for Chanuka food gifts to our parents (one example was when they layered dried beans in glass jars, added spice bags and instructions for cooking).  You get the idea!

Costumes – I’ve made a number of costumes from cheaply purchased clothing at the thrift store.  Sometimes I buy it to use as is, sometimes I buy it for the fabric.  I’ve purchased elegant used formal wear made of nice fabrics like silk, taffeta, and velvet evening gowns (if there’s a stain somewhere on it you can get these very cheaply), taken the item apart, and then resewn it into dress up gowns for girls, and king costumes (jacket/cape with pantaloons) for boys.  I once bought a blue cotton sheet to make a prairie girl’s dress, and the bonnet and matching apron came from a old cotton robe that was checked red and white.  Costumes are fun to sew because it doesn’t matter if they are perfect, and your kids will think you’re incredible just by whipping together something basic. You can also buy costumes at the thrift store after Halloween, or buy them new when they are deeply discounted after Halloween.  I can’t usually go to yard sales because my dh takes our vehicle to work on Sundays, but I have gotten some nice costumes for the littles in the past (lion, Tweety bird, horse) for just a dollar or two.  Don’t forget to ask friends if they have something you can borrow before running out to buy something.  We’ve rarely spent more than a few dollars at the very most for a costume.

Seuda – (festive Purim meal) – I’ve been flabbergasted by how much people spend on this.  Last year we spent $15 for 13 people.  That was the first time we had a dairy meal for Purim, but it was very nice and everyone enjoyed it.  We had homemade challah rolls with butter, thick vegetable soup, homemade pizza (equal to about three or four pies), chevre (goat cheese), cottage cheese, roasted potatoes and yams with rosemary, and a big fresh salad.  And we put out orange juice and milk to drink, in addition to water.  For dessert we had banana chocolate chip cake, chocolate cake (both cakes were from shalach manos), and rice pudding.

This year I was thinking I’d be hard pressed to beat that price, particularly since this year we’ll be having a family of 9, in addition to our family of 11, and then our three parents as well (23 people total).  But you don’t have to keep it to less than $1 a person for it to be very affordable.    Providentially,  tonight my dh came home and told me a friend wants to empty his freezer in preparation for Pesach (Passover) and give us three pans of food from his daughter’s wedding – meatballs, chicken, and a cooked vegetable dish.  This is really nice food, and since I also want to empty my freezer for Pesach, this will be used for our Purim meal.  🙂

Remember an important mitzva of the day is to give charity to those in need that at least equals what you spend on mishloach manos.  This is above and beyond regular tithing, and it’s not the place to cut costs!

Avivah

Purim preps and the drinking issue

homemaking, parenting

Purim is around the corner and we’re in the full swing of preparations here!  A couple of days ago the kids baked 150 hamantaschen (with homemade chocolate filling), and cut out thirty sets of sugar cookies that spell out Purim in Hebrew (five letters in each word, so 150 letter cookies); each of the thirty sets will be part of mishloach manos that the family sends out.

We have several container options for mishloach manos that they’ve made.  One is something that looks kind of like a small basket, made from card stock we were given over a year ago.  They taped them into box-like shapes and attached a handle; that was dd13’s idea.  Dd15 helped ds3 and ds7 make containers by stapling two paper plates together, folding down the tops of each, and attaching a pipe cleaner for a handle.  A number of them are wrapping theirs in cellophane, and it looks like I won’t be using any of the (heavily discounted sale priced :)) containers that I bought.  Dd15 printed out a bunch of colorful personalized labels, and everything is looking really nice.  Everything was packaged and finished last night, so no rush for Sunday.

They also have been preparing their costumes.  This year I really wasn’t involved much at all.  They have the many costumes I’ve made to use if they want, and the older kids are all able to figure out something on their own.  When we placed our order for grass fed beef a few weeks ago, it came in a large box with thick layers of styrofoam on all sides.  We saved this and it’s become the basis for a costume for dd9, a traffic light.  That was finished yesterday.

Now on to another kind of preparation.  I have a strong distaste for this topic but I feel it’s important not to stay silent on something I find of such great concern.    Purim is a beautiful holiday with so many special mitzvos.   However, one of those mitzvos is so easily abused that I think we have to be very, very careful about how it’s performed and what messages we give the impressionable children around us.  My concern is that too many people are using Purim as an excuse to drink and kids are picking up on this not so subtly expressed behavior.

I watched this presentation with my four older kids (ages 11, 13, 15, 16) two or three weeks ago, and I think it’s worth watching with your kids who are preteens or teens, too.  It’s done by a frum organization who is trying to get the message out to Orthodox families that this is something our communities need to address.  My kids already know my very strong feelings on this topic, since I’ve discussed the concerns brought up in this presentation with my kids on several occasions, but alcohol abuse is an important topic and isn’t the kind of thing that one speaks about just once.  I also watched with them a couple of the videos on this site (for some reason only two of the four were loading for us or I would have watched them all).

It’s good that all of our Purim specific preparations are done (except for cooking for the seuda) since I now have to get back to my kitchen to deal with 2 cases of napa that were on sale.  When I opened them up this morning and realized how many heads of napa were in each box (11 huge heads, at least five pounds each), I wasn’t congratulating myself on my bargain (7.99 case).  Rather I was mentally wondering why I did this to myself!   🙄   The only thing on my side is the cold weather, which will hopefully help keep them fresh for a while longer.

Avivah

Happy Chanukah!

frugal strategies, homemaking

Wow, can you believe we’re already halfway through Chanukah?

The kids spent two days before Chanukah decorating the house with Chanukah themed shapes.  We have dreidels hanging from our dining room chandelier, a large menorah and dreidels adorning the front door, and snowflakes in the window.  A day ahead we took out the menorahs and moved around some living room furniture – almost all of the kids light their own menorah, so we need a six foot table in front of the window to accomodate everyone (and that’s atill pretty squishy!).

My mother spent Shabbos with us, then my in-laws joined us for Saturday night and then again on Sunday night (when we had a surprise birthday dinner for dd15).  We went to friends on Saturday night after our parents left, and tonight we enjoyed a quiet family evening – we’ll be having friends over for dinner tomorrow night and then spending the next night with other friends.

My kids have been busy buying/making things for each other and for friends and relatives – I took them to a floral design workshoplast week where five of them made lovely floral centerpieces.  They’re small, with a floating tea light in a glass cup in the center.  I hinted to them that dh and I would appreciate having one to put in our bathroom.  🙂

We’re again using the fabric gift bags that I made last year of green taffeta and black velvet.  They worked out so well last year- they looked festive and elegant, and there was no messy cleanup after each present was opened.  Last year when I gave my mother my gift, I had to disappoint her and tell her she couldn’t keep the bag!  Dh’s father had a similar reaction this year. 🙂

I don’t make myself crazy looking for presents.  I keep an eye out for things that gifts that would be appropriate, then put them to the side.   In addition to that, if there’s something a child needs and I buy it around this time of year, I’ll put it to the side and also give it for Chanukah. This can be something small or big, but they all enjoy getting it as a ‘gift’.   And I don’t feel that they have to be bought brand new, at retail prices, either!  What’s more important to me is that it’s something the child will appreciate and use.

An example is the Shabbos yarmulkes I bought for a couple of the younger boys, which they were given before Shabbos candle lighting on Friday.  New Shabbos shoes for ds16 were also given then so he could wear them to shul.  I know it sounds boring but our children are all  appreciative for what they receive; my ds3 spontaneously thanked me several time for his new yarmulke, and tonight was so happy about new tzitzis!  I’ll even give socks or underwear one night if I happen to have them!

This year I took dd13 and dd15 each shopping to choose what they wanted, since I didn’t want to guess about their tastes.  My kids enjoy thrift store shopping as much as me, and that’s where we headed first.  Dd15 found great quality boots that she liked (like new, selling for $70 retail but we paid 3.50 :)), ds13 wanted a poncho (not for rain, the fashionable ones you wear on Shabbos) and found something she really liked for $8.   I got brand new boots for dd9 – she has two pair of boots, but neither are waterproof – so I got her good snow boots with the tag still on them (yes, from the thrift store).

Also from the thrift store I bought a couple of shrink wrapped science kits (can’t remember the company this minute, but they’re good ones), a set of toy construction tools for ds3 in the original packing, a gorgeous solid wood toy train for ds2 (it has five parts, and were giving him one car each night), and an origami kit for ds7. At the annual library book sale I got books for ds10 and dd9 from their favorite series -sometimes people donate books to the library to sell, so you can get books that have no signs of wear and no library stickers.  These books were brand new books in a series they love – .50 each; we gave it to them tonight and ds10 kept asking me how much I paid, since they’re expensive hardback versions and he knows I wouldn’t pay $25 for a book – I didn’t tell him, of course :)).  I got a couple of stationary sets for the older girls.  I estimate for everything (including the boots and shoes) that I paid less than $40, which is pretty good when you consider that almost everything I bought was new in the wrapping or like new.  I spent more than that on new socks and yarmulkes for them!

Anything we give them is supplemented by gifts from grandparents and siblings. Again, everything is kept simple, which allows us to focus more on our family traditions as well as what holiday is actually about!

Avivah

Chore chart 2009-10

homemaking, homeschooling

Here’s this year’s chore chart!  There aren’t many chores on my chart – I try to keep it to the basics.  This year’s chart is similar to last year, but with a couple of notable changes.

  • Laundry – done for a month at a time – A
  • Bathrooms – done for a month at a time – B
  • Breakfast preparation and wash dishes after Shabbos – done for 2 weeks C/D
  • Dinner preparation – done for 2 weeks at a time – D/C

I put an initial next to each chore to represent a child.  These four chores are rotated between the oldest four kids, currently ages 10, 13, 15, and 16.  It’s set up so each child has one chore for a month, and they complete each rotation every three months.  The breakfast and dinner preparation rotates after two weeks, so that the kids who are doing these jobs reverse with one another mid month.

We go through the complete cycle three times a year, meaning that each child has laundry and bathrooms three times, and meal prep for each of the two meals six times.

I used to say the bathrooms had to be done every 2 – 3 days, but now it’s daily since I saw that it was getting stretched to every 4 or even 5 days when someone missed their chore.  It’s quick when done daily and the bathrooms don’t have a chance to get very messy, even if the person in charge misses a day.  I now recommend to the person in charge of laundry that they do at least 1 – 2 loads daily, but it’s up to them.  As long as everyone has clean clothes when they need them, they can do what they want.

  • clear table after every meal – E
  • sweep floor after every meal, thorough sweep of entire main floor once daily – F

These two chores are rotated between ds7 and dd9.  (In addition I sweep the kitchen a couple of times a day, because with all of the food prep once a day isn’t enough.)  They rotate every two weeks.  They also are each responsible to take down the laundry from their rooms and one other location in the house, and between them take down everything.  Again, this used to be done every 2 – 3 days and now I ask them to do it daily.

This year, I’m on duty for dishes and lunch preparation.  The kids were all very happy when I offered them this option, since they dislike dishes.  Dishes are honestly a challenge since there are three meals being prepared a day, along with three large loads of dishes/pots.  It’s easy for them to get discouraged since the sink isn’t empty for long before it’s getting filled up again, but I don’t mind it.  I get my break once a week, since on Motzei Shabbos one of the kids do the dishes, and this lets them remember how lucky they are it’s only once a week. :))  When I do dishes, I also wipe down the stove and counters every night.

That’s it for the scheduled stuff.  We do quick daily clean ups, and big clean ups for Shabbos, but we do it as a team and there aren’t fixed jobs.  At those times, when I see something that needs to be done, I ask someone to do it.  Sometimes, like yesterday, I’ll set the timer for 5 or 15 minutes, and tell everyone to do pick something to do in a given area, anything they want, and do it before it goes off.  Seven people (kids ages 7 and up and me) can get a lot done in fifteen minutes, by working together! Yesterday in the living room we got walls washed, blinds wiped down, bookshelves straightened up, all the surfaces cleared, and the floor swept in the living room. It’s fun to do together, and there’s no pressure – I don’t question the job someone picks, expect them to work at a certain pace, or check how they’ve done it.

The kids are responsible for cleaning their rooms daily, but their idea of cleaning and mine aren’t always the same.  🙂  Still, something gets done!

There are a number of other miscellaneous chores that I do a little bit at a time.  Not quite daily, but it probably averages to every day and a half.  You know, all those jobs that seem too small to schedule but if not done leave your home looking only half clean?  That includes the regular schedule of re-organizing various areas of the house, like the linen closet, basement, storage room, etc.  The natural state of things is to come undone, not stay done.  🙂

Five of the older children also have a daily job with the littles.  Dd9 puts ds2 in for a nap, ds10 puts ds3 in for a nap. Sometimes this includes reading them a book, usually not.  Dd15 puts  ds2 to bed at night, ds16 puts in ds3 at night.  Dd13 gets up very early (she likes to finish all of her work for the day before breakfast) so she dresses the two of them and luckily for them, she enjoys taking them out for a morning walk; that’s why she’s not on the naptime/bedtime schedule.  (I wouldn’t ask her to dress them or take them for a walk, only to give them a drink or fruit to hold them over until breakfast.)  Putting a child in to bed is a very fast job; I made it official this year so I don’t have to worry who I asked to do what – I try to keep things fair and this ensures I’m not asking the same person every day to do all of the work.

I find that this keeps things running smoothly, without any one person feeling overwhelmed by his jobs or the expectations of him.

Avivah

How to sprout beans

homemaking, nutrition

A friend asked me this morning about how to sprout beans, and I figured I’d post it today – it’s easiest to get the quick topics out of the way so I don’t have to keep them on my mind!

First of all, a quick reminder about why sprouting beans is beneficial.  Beans, like most grains, nuts, and seeds, have phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors in them.   That means that even though we think of beans as highly nutritious, we don’t utilize a good part of the nutrients in them unless they are properly prepared.  Beans are inexpensive and great budget stretchers, and it’s worthwhile to figure out how to use them to maximize their value.

Fortunately, it’s not hard! Simply put the dried beans in a bowl, and cover them with water that is room temperature.  Let them sit overnight, and in the morning, pour them into a strainer and rinse them off.  The beans will have absorbed all the water, and are ready to be used.  But if you really want to supercharge them, them you can sprout them!  This significantly increases the nutritional value.  That’s what I like to do.

Now that they’re soaked, put set them back in the original bowl and leave them on the counter.  At the end of the day, rinse them.  I rinse mine twice a day by pouring them into a strainer, running some water over them, and then putting them back into the bowl.  For simplicity, I rinse them once at night and once in the morning; it works well with my personal routine.  Twice a day seems to be a good frequency to rinse them, but I’ve often been lazy and just rinsed them once a day and they were fine. To clarify, after you rinse them, leave them in an empty bowl, not a bowl of water.

As they sit on the counter at room temperature, the soaked beans will begin to germinate.  Smaller legumes will sprout faster – within a day or two you’ll see little sprouts appearing at the end.  Larger beans take longer- generally 3 – 4 day, but it really depends on your household temperature.  In the summer, the beans sprout really fast!  How long you let them get depends on your personal preference.  If you want to use them as sprouts in salads, then you’ll want to wait a lot longer.  I use them in cooked dishes once I see the sprout emerging.

Soaking and sprouting isn’t hard to do, but it does require advance planning.  I plan my weekly menu on Saturday nights, and then on Sunday I begin soaking my beans for the week.  If you’ve been reading here for a while, then you’ve noticed that when I post my weekly menu on Sundays, I usually post the preparatory work that I’m doing for the week, too, including soaking beans.  Since large beans take longer to sprout, I generally plan them for later in the week.

What is you’ve soaked your beans and let them sit out for a day but they aren’t yet sprouted – and you need to use them?  Even if you don’t see the germination taking place, it’s still in the process and you’ll enjoy the benefits, so go ahead and use them!

By the way, lots of jokes have been made about beans and their flatulatory (did I just make that word up? :)) effect on the body.  We’ve found that soaking and sprouting the beans takes away that issue!

(This post is part of Fight Back Fridays.)

Avivah

Being where you’re meant to be

homemaking

Yesterday we had such a productive day of shopping fun!  So now I’m basically set for the next month.  I bought a lot of dairy and potatoes with Chanukah in mind.  Generally we can squeak by on 50 lb of potatoes a month, but when the kids realized I only bought 65 pounds, they started clamoring for more.  They saw a sign as I pulled into a gas station right before getting on to the highway ’50 lb of potatoes for $12′, and since that was an amazing price, I followed the signs to the home of a Mennonite farmer.

What nice people! Our interaction, though not very long, was really nice.  She has eight children, about the ages of mine. When I asked her the age range, she said the oldest was 17, and then said ‘there would have been two more’.  I didn’t think I heard her correctly, so I asked her to repeat herself, and she told me she had two children who died- one at the age of 12 days, and the other at the age of 18 months.  They both died of the same disease – Hirschsprungs.  One would have  been 18, the other 12.  So, so tragic.

After she told me that, I understood the indirect way she answered me when I initially asked about how many children she had, and how old the oldest was.  How do you answer a question like that?  Can you answer as if those children were never born?  When she told me they both died, I was shocked and horrified.  Losing two children at two different times may not have been unusual one hundred years ago, but now it’s almost unheard of.  She saw my reaction, and said, “Yes, it was hard.”  I started to respond and got so choked up thinking of the unimaginable pain of that kind of loss that I couldn’t even get through my sentence.  It doesn’t take a long time to connect with the heart of another mother.

I often think of how each of us are meant to be exactly where we are at every moment.  How did I end up at this woman’s house?  Because I thought I bought 130 lb of potatoes, and didn’t realize that the bags I got were actually 5 pounds instead of 10 – that’s why we ran short.  It’s not that I didn’t think about getting extra for Chanuka- I did, but I was meant to overlook an obvious detail when figuring out amounts so I’d have this interaction.

And this is true of unpleasant situations, too.  Just before I pulled out of the gas station to get the potatoes, I saw someone who was waiting to pull into the main area.   As a courtesy, I waited for him to go first, but instead of a wave and smile, he cursed at me (short unpleasant epithets are easily lip read :)).  I pulled ahead to go by, and as I went by, glanced towards him, and he started cursing at me more.  I looked directly at him, gave him a big sunny smile and an enthusiastic wave, and went on my way.  That was a situation I was meant to be in also.   I felt very glad to have been sent an opportunity to practice not getting sucked into someone else’s negativity.  Reacting in this way left me feeling sorry for him that he’s so unhappy but not personally attacked.

As far as my shopping, it was great, as always!  You could say that I was in just the stores I needed to be in to buy what I was meant to buy!  I got a lot of fruit – 2 cases (80 lb) bananas, 1 case pears (36 lb), 30 large navel oranges (so nice that citrus is coming into season now!); 45 dozen eggs, and plenty of dairy for Chanuka – 16 lb cottage cheese, 18 lb ricotta cheese, 15 lb sour cream, 10 gallons of raw milk, and ten lb butter.  The kids always enjoy the abundance of fruit right after my big shopping, because I basically let them take as much as they want!

I was hoping to buy some wild salmon, but the two kinds I saw were both labelled ‘wild Alaskan salmon’, product of China.  Sheesh.  When you look at labels, it makes you wonder how food can be grown/harvested on the other side of the world, be shipped over here, and be sold more affordably than something grown/harvested locally.

But as far as local goes, I got a few humongous heads of cauliflower for .75 a head!  It was brought in by a local small time farmer to the store I was shopping at – it’s nice how small stores owned by families can do that!  I also got a few heads of cabbage at $1 a head.  I bought about six heads of cabbage a few days ago (along with 50 lb carrots), and since I got another 10 lb of carrots yesterday, I’m going to need to get busy preparing some sauerkraut and ginger carrots.  I started a quart of preserved sliced lemons (the recipe from NT)  a couple of days ago, but otherwise the countertop is empty of jars of ‘preserves’. 🙂

I found five packages of sprouted organic tortillas for just .50 each – I was so excited about that!  A couple of weeks ago we made tortillas and it takes way too long to be more than an occasional treat.  I haven’t have good luck baking with sprouted flour (that I made, maybe store bought is different); maybe one day I’ll spend more time figuring that out, but for now I prefer soaking flour instead.  And for a snack, I bought some organic blue corn chips and organic veggie chips – they were a super price and it’s nice to give the kids something like this for a special treat.  It’s particularly nice with bean dip and salsa.

As always, it was nice to go, and nice to be home and know the shopping is basically done for another few weeks. 🙂

Avivah

New room for ds

homemaking

I’ve had a busy and productive day, and now even though it isn’t even 10 pm, I’m feeling pretty tired!  Most of the substantial work was done after dinner – we’re rearranging one of the bedrooms to use it for ds16.

Right now we have four boys in one room, three girls and a toddler in the other, and the baby in our room.  That works thanks to the wonders of bunk beds, and they only keep their clothes in their room.  So the space is adequate for them; it probably sounds squishier than it is!

Ds16 has never complained about sharing a room with younger siblings, though sometimes it can be frustrating for him that things don’t stay neat after he cleans up.  That’s a reality any mom can sympathize with!  When he mentioned that he’d like his own bed (instead of a bunk bed), I told him I’d happily shift things around in the last bedroom to give him his own space, if he didn’t mind boxes of pillows lining one wall.  He didn’t. (This was much more than he was expecting, since he wasn’t really making a request, just sharing his feeling about sleeping on a bunk bed.)   I also told him to be prepared to share with either ds2 or the baby, when he gets moved out of our room.  He was fine with that.

Right now our smallest bedroom on the main floor has been used to store the nursing pillow inventory.  In addition the girls use the closet to supplement the space available in the freestanding closet in their room. Today we turned this small  bedroom into ds16’s room.  By rearranging the space, we were able to put all the cases of pillows on one side of the room, and the other side now has a bed, bookshelf, and two dressers.

The girls went through the closet to clear out room for him.  They filled five large garbage bags with clothes to give away.  So the closet is nice and roomy now!  Dd9 kept grimacing when contemplating giving a dress away, and I kept telling her that having fewer dresses will help her enjoy what she has more, since she doesn’t wear a lot of what she has because there are so many things pressed into the hanging space.  I was ruthless – just about every time she held something up, I just thumbed in the direction of the give away bag.

She also found the suit I bought for ds3 for Rosh Hashana- I had purchased it in advance, then a week before Rosh Hashana hung it on the low hanging rack in the closet so it would be ready when we needed it.  (I don’t like to rush around the day before trying to find everything that everyone needs.)  Then Rosh Hashana arrived and the suit was nowhere to be found.  It was a little annoying but what can you do?  That’s life.  It turns out it was somehow moved to dd9’s clothing rack and sandwiched between the many dresses she hasn’t been wearing.  Mystery solved.  🙂

We have more to do in the room, but the bulk of it is finished.  Just a week ago we spoke about doing this and I told ds I’d look for a bed to buy for him.  But we got a twin bed for the room for free – someone we know was cleaning out her basement and had an extra bed that she wanted to give away. Timely, wasn’t it?

Tomorrow is my big shopping day, and it generally takes a good part of the day after I go shopping to unpack and reorganize everything.  I’m glad that I got all of this work on the room taken care of, since otherwise it would have to wait until next week.

Avivah

Another great year beginning!

homemaking

Today is my birthday!  Aren’t birthdays wonderful?  I find that every year of life gets better and better.  Dh and I every year on our anniversary comment that marriage keeps getting better, and it’s hard to imagine it getting better!  But then it does.  That’s how I feel about my life – I have so many beautiful aspects of my life that I take pleasure in every single day, and still I have a strong feeling that this year will be better than ever!

My Hebrew (Gregorian) birthday was about a week and a half ago, a day when there is a special spiritual power to give blessings and spread positive energy.  I really wanted to take the opportunity then to give all of you here my warmest wishes for love, harmony, joy, prosperity, and meaning in your lives.  Unfortunately, by the time I got online, it was already evening and my birthday was officially over.

But good wishes are never in vain, right?  So whether there’s any special power or not, I send you all my warm and heartfelt blessings for all the positive things you want in your life.

To those of you who preempted this post and privately emailed me your good wishes, thank you for your wishes and for being part of my life!  I’m so amazed by people who not only remember the birthdays of other people, but actually take the time from their busy lives to send good wishes.

Looking forward to another amazing year here with you all!

Avivah