Category Archives: homemaking

Having feelings of inadequacy

homemaking

It’s been busy getting the older three kids ready for sleep away camp, and then my internet went down all last week, so I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. 

 On Sunday, my husband took 6 of the kids to NJ where the camp to my son’s camp in NY left from.  (There were no buses from my area.)  One daughter decided to stay home because she doesn’t like long drives and had a four hour drive to camp a couple of days later, so she slept over at a friend’s house.  I stayed home with the baby – it was the first time since he was born that I was in a quiet house with just him.  It was so peaceful! 

My husband connected with his best friend from his teenage years, who he’s kept in sporadic contact with, since he lives in that same city, and they had lunch at his friend’s home.  His friend is the president of a large law firm in Manhattan, and his wife is a school principal.  They have a huge, gorgeous home, spotless in every corner, a full time housekeeper, plenty of money, lots of career satisfaction, are heavily involved in communal positions of responsibility, and have a large family. I’m usually filled with peace and gratitude for the quality of my life, but for some reason, just thinking about their external success left me feeling inadequate and disgruntled with myself.  

I was pondering why I was letting someone else’s choices have any effect on my feelings about myself, and I realized two things: 1) I was really tired and needed to take a nap. 🙂  Seriously, I get negative when I’m overtired, and it’s amazing how much more balanced I am when I am rested.

2) I wanted some outside validation that our path is a different kind of success, which I wasn’t getting right then.  I’ve chosen to live in a way that most people don’t, and that means that I often have to be my own cheerleader.  When I’m feeling a need to have someone else build me up, it’s a sign that I need to do some spiritual work, so recognizing what I was feeling helped me refocus on the deeper issue.   When I deal with these things from a position of working on my spirituality and connection to G-d, everything seems to get much clearer and simpler.  It’s so easy to get caught up in comparing our insides to other people’s outsides, and thinking that what we see is all that there is, and forgetting to recognize all that we are.

I’m really grateful to my husband, who told me that visiting them didn’t bother him at all.  In fact, he said, after visiting them he felt even more appreciative for the life we have, and he thanked me for staying home with our kids and raising them.  He reminded me how fortunate we are to be healthy, have a strong marriage and great kids.  Keeping my mind on what I have keeps me feeling happy, and today, my husband was the one to help me put my mind back where it should be.

Avivah

It’s that time of year again – camping time!

frugal strategies, homemaking

It’s time for our annual camping trip!!  We were supposed to leave for our trip last week, but decided the day before we left to push it off for another week.  The forecast was for cold and rainy weather all week, and the forecasters were actually right (they aren’t always, you know!).  So far the weather for this week is looking much more suitable for camping – it is gorgeous out today.

Last year we went to West Virginia, but we didn’t want the long drive this year, and wanted to stay closer to home.  This year we’re returning to a campground we went to three years ago, that we all mark as our best trip yet. 

We went before the main camping season started, and it was very quiet.  There is a lake with a section for a beach, and another section that they two older boys spent fishing in for hours at a time together.  We hiked around, picked wild garlic that we later that night cooked with our meal, and just generally had a wonderfully relaxing time.  It’s only a little over an hour from home, which makes it more appealing, as well! 

 The last two times we came back from a trip, we found an unwanted cat ‘package’ on the bed – our cat showed his displeasure at having been left by defecating on the bed, something he’s never done before.  So this time my mother is going to stay here at our home for a few days, instead of just popping in and out and feeding him.  He actually likes her more than me. 

So today and tomorrow are our preparation days.  We’re planning to borrow a canoe to take with us, so we can enjoy the swimming, fishing, and now, boating on the lake.  My 13 year old daughter is an excellent canoer, who canoed the Delaware river last year with her camp.  I also really enjoy canoeing, but haven’t done much of it for years – the last time I canoed was with my husband when our oldest was three months old.  (And since he’s almost 15 now, it’s clearly been a very long time!)

The four middle kids (11, 9, 7, 5) are outside right now pitching the tent to make sure all the parts are there.  We’re borrowing a 10 x 14 tent from a friend that has a divider to make it two rooms, and will probably take our 8 x 8 foot tent as well.  If we do that, it will be very spacious sleeping accomodations for everyone.  We have the menus all planned out, and I just need to pick up a few items to finish off the food shopping for the trip.  We’ll probably pick up the canoe tomorrow, and I’ll let my husband figure out how to securely attach it to the rooftop of the van without a roof rack.

I’m off to a plant exchange; I’ll let you know how that goes when I get back. 🙂

Avivah

Storing water for emergencies

homemaking

In the past months, I’ve done a fair amount of thinking/learning about emergency preparation.  There are a number of things that are important to have available, but what concerned me most (because I felt I was least prepared) was having water available.  You realize very quickly how important water is when you don’t have it – you can go without food for a while, but you can’t go very long without water.  I’ve seen it recommended to store a gallon per day per person, times the amount of days you want to be prepared for.

Well, it’s not practical for me to go out and buy large containers to hold water at this point.  I tried to buy large bottles of water from the store (the kind in the plastic jugs like milk cartons), but they weren’t strong enough to be stacked on top of each other and sprung leaks.  I decided to buy two cases (24 bottles) of large individual bottles when I was shopping for the month, just to have something on hand.  Then I did the following: each week we use one 64 oz bottle of grape juice.  It comes in a pretty strong plastic bottle, so I’ve been rinsing them out, then filling them with water and storing them downstairs.  I plan on doing that indefinitely – it doesn’t take hardly any extra time, and if we ever needed it, we would be grateful for the effort.  It’s worth it to take small amounts of time now to prepare for possibilities (staying reasonable and balanced, of course).  I’m storing them in an area which would otherwise be dead space.  I might have almost twenty by now – not much if there were a large scale emergency, but there’s some comfort in knowing that I have something just in case to keep us going for a couple of days.

Yesterday, I was glad I had put the water, though there was no emergency.  For some reason that we still don’t know, in the later part of the morning, the water all started coming out of the sink with a yellowish tinge.  And that continued the entire day.  (I’m guessing that somewhere they were doing work on the water main.)  In the past, this would have definitely been very problematic since I wouldn’t have been able to cook.  But when my kids saw the water situation, I was able to calmly tell them to bring up some bottles of water from the basement.  I love being prepared – it’s such a good feeling!

I hope to share more thoughts about preparing for eventualities with you, since I think it’s really important.  I’ve debated with myself about it since I don’t want to be a Chicken Little, but feel irresponsible not to encourage prudence, and I have some concerns on several fronts that have been steadily building over time.

Avivah

Baskin Robbins – 31 cent scoops

frugal strategies, homemaking

After I finished my last post, I thought that in case some of you enjoy ice cream, too, and didn’t know about the Ben and Jerry’s special, I could pass some helpful info on. 

On Weds., April 30 – that’s later today (I’m posting after midnight so to me it still feels like Tuesday :)), Baskin Robbins will have scoops of ice cream for 31 cents each.  Not quite as good as free, but still lots of fun!

We did this last year, and the kids enjoyed it.  A big part of why they can enjoy something like this so much is because we only do it once a year – otherwise, on the rare occasions I buy it, it’s from the supermarket in the gallon containers.  I’ve found that when something is a new or unusual experience, the kids get a lot more enjoyment out of it than they would if it were a regular occurence.

Back to last year.  Because it was so cheap, I told the kids they could each get two scoops (being the big spender that I am :)).  As we were halfway through the line, a woman approached me and told me she wanted to pay for the ice cream for our family and asked how many scoops we wanted to get.  The store was packed and I don’t know what made her choose us out of the crowd (maybe because we were a noticeably large family?), but though I felt uncomfortable to have someone pay for us, she insisted.  She told me to tell the cashier when we got to the front that it was paid for. Which it was.  Wasn’t that sweet?

It reminds me of something a friend told me today – she was driving on a highway and the person ahead of her paid her toll, so when she got there, she was told it was taken care of.  It wasn’t the monetary value of it as much as the thought that someone cared enough to do it which made the difference.

It gives me a pause when I think how little both of those opportunities cost and how much good feeling they spread.  How much does it take for you to put a smile on someone’s face?  Could you buy an extra scoop when you go out and share it with someone who isn’t expecting it? 

Random acts of kindness can light up someone’s day!

Avivah

Free ice cream and fun together

frugal strategies, homemaking

Today has been a busy and super nice day! 

I started the day by taking my two oldest sons downtown with me to pick up some pallets that I want to dissemble to use for garden boxes.  While they were lugging them around, I enjoyed a chat with the woman I got them from.  Don’t you find that you have a chance to have nice interactions with the people you meet here and there?  I do!  I really enjoy speaking with people and getting to know them a bit. 

We ended up talking about life stuff – stress management, quality of life choices, family – and several times she mentioned how happy I seemed.  I’ve already told you my secret to being happy – staying aware of the subtle and not so subtle things to appreciate in my day.  Her comment that it’s rare to meet someone like me was a sad reminder for me that being happy with who you are and what your life is like isn’t a popular approach. 

I had to rush home to be at a meeting (got there exactly on time, to the minute), and then as soon as it was over rushed back to pick up the kids for a trip that I organized for our homeschool group.  What a fun trip it was!  The kids had a blast together, and the moms had fun talking while the kids were happily occupied. 

After almost three hours hanging out together, some of us walked together to Ben and Jerry’s to enjoy a free scoop of ice cream (today was their yearly complimentary scoop day) – it was just a few blocks from where we had our trip, though I had no idea about the ice cream when I originally planned the trip.  Nice how that worked out! 

Then the kids enjoyed their ice cream by the harbor, watching the boats and seagulls as they ate.  Have you ever noticed how calming and peaceful being around water is? 

We got home, and a couple of kids started taking apart the pallets that we got earlier in the day.  One started mowing the yard, and another trimming the bushes.  While they were doing that, I was doing some yard work, and discovered a bunch of worms helping to improve the quality of my soil.  🙂  Three of my younger kids really enjoyed watching them and digging for them.  Then I remembered some recent online reading I did about red wriggler worms being the perfect composting worms – I don’t know if these are officially red wrigglers, but they’re reddish and they’re wriggling, so I suggested the kids collect them in a large container with dirt and some fresh matter for them to eat.  I’ll call that ‘science’ for the day.  🙂

Avivah

The kitchen is finished!

frugal strategies, homemaking

Remember way back when I posted that we were totally renovating our kitchen?  We got most of the big stuff done within a week and a half, but lots of small things (and not so small things, actually) were left.  True to the 80/20 rule, which states that 80 % of your results come from 20 % of your effort, and 80% of your time will be spent on 20% of the work, is what happened with our kitchen.

Here’s what we did – pulled out everything but the floor.  Replaced the cabinets, counters, appliances, repainted the kitchen, vented the hood to the outside (didn’t have a vent before), tiled the backsplash along the length of both counters (at least 20 feet in length), and replaced the lighting.  Because we were using previously owned cabinets, there were other things we needed to do to customize them for our kitchen – cutting the microwave cabinet down to standard size, rebuilding the cabinet that was previously above the hood, staining the wood on the exposed cabinet sides, building a desk area using a drawer and leftover trim for brackets, and more. 

But it’s finally done.  Really, really finished!  And it looks beautiful.  Looking at it is so empowering for everyone in the family.  I kept thinking of things here and there that would improve it, but now it’s all done.  My 13 year old daughter finished the tiling for the final wall yesterday (my neighbor’s 40 year old daughter was visiting today, and told me she couldn’t believe it when she looked outside yesterday and saw her operating the power tile cutter independently – actually, dh taught the 9 and 11 year olds to use it, too :)).

The kids have learned a lot from this project.  Here are some of the lessons: 1) Living within your means doesn’t mean doing without.  You just have to be willing to find other options.  The kitchen cost us under $2000 (including paying for an electrician, all power tools purchased, supplies, cabinets, appliances and 2 Uhauls rented to bring the supplies home).   

Lesson 2 – just because everyone else hires experts doesn’t mean that you can’t do just as good a job on your own.  You just have to be willing to learn, and trust your ability to accomplish your goal.

Lesson 3 –  There’s a huge amount of satisfaction in doing something on your own, and sticking with it until the end when it’s finished.  Every person in this family helped out and has a sense of pride in our project.

Our only regret is that our digital camera wasn’t working properly when we started, so we don’t have before and after pictures. 🙂

Avivah

Suit shopping for teenage boys

homemaking

Yesterday I took my teenage son to a local men’s store to buy him a new suit.  I bought his last suit at overstock.com for $100 (a super buy, since it was a $350 suit), and he wasn’t an active participant in the process – it came in the mail, we took him to the tailor to get it fitted and that was it.  Great suit, very simple process.  I would have done the same thing again this time, but he received a gift certificate to this pacticular store.  So he was anticipating that this was going to be a much more gratifying shopping experience for him. 

LOL.  You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find a black suit with pinstripes, would you?  Especially for someone who wears a standard size and looks good in everything.  But just to take pinstripes alone – do you know how many kinds of pinstripes there are?  Lots.  And when you add up all the other varying factors (like materials, cut, style….) – he was overwhelmed.  It’s good I was there because he almost settled for a navy suit just to be done (when he insisted initially that he only wanted black).   It would have been so much easier if I had just shown him three black suits with pinstripes and told him to choose one. 

But he did finally find something, and I’m so glad he got something he’s pleased with.  When he came home, he told me he never knew how confusing buying a suit could be. 🙂

It made me think about how many choices we have in our modern lives.  We may think it’s a great thing.  And maybe it is.  But the down side of having so many choices is that we spend a lot of time and energy sifting through those choices.   If it means are lives are qualitatively much better, then it’s worth all the time and effort.  But I wonder if there’s really any gain over choosing from just two or three items…

Avivah

Writing daily gratitude lists

homemaking

I’ve been consciously trying to do less to keep my inner balance, which is why I haven’t been posting much lately.  It’s so easy to get too busy in today’s busy world, running from thing to thing without improving the quality of our daily lives.  I tend to do a lot, and do them fast, and slowing down isn’t natural or easy for me, but it’s important to maintaining my emotional and physical health.

I’ve mentioned before the importance of a positive attitude, and thought I’d share something that I’ve found very valuable.  When I was 18 or 19 years old, I began a gratitude notebook – each day, I would list several things I was grateful for.  They could be big or small, but they couldn’t be the same things every day.  It was amazing what a difference it made to my outlook on life in a short time.  It forced me to look for the good and find it, every single day, even when I was feeling tired or irritable.  I did this for quite some time, then eventually stopped after 2 or 3 years, but by then had gotten into the habit of looking for the good in things.

I’ve often been told that I’m a positive person, or that I always seem upbeat and happy, and whatever positivity I’ve developed has its roots in this practice.  I wasn’t naturally an easy going and optimistic type (reading my poetry as a teenager points to the exact opposite), so whatever I positive outlook I have is a result of an ongoing effort on my part.  I try to look for the good in situations as much as I can.  Sometimes I’ve gone through periods that have emotionally sapped me and I’ve felt that my attitude needed some adjusting, so I’ve pulled out a notebook and gotten back into writing my gratitude lists.  It always helps me get my head back into a good space.

I strongly recommend this to anyone who wants to be a happier person.  Abraham Lincoln once said that a ‘person is as happy as he makes up his mind to be’, and I definitely feel that’s true.  We all have struggles in life. Not one of us has been given the easy pass through life, regardless of how it may look to people on the outside.  But when you decide you want to be happy, you can focus your mind on thinking thoughts that make you more joyful. 

It may seem like there’s nothing to write about at first.  That’s part of the power of this exercise.  We get so used to noticing every little thing that bothers us.  Writing down things to be grateful for forces you to look more deeply into your day so you can find them!  There are so many things every day that happen that are good, but we take them all for granted.

Did you wake up on time this morning? Did your alarm go off when it was supposed to?  Did you have running water when you wanted to wash up, toothpaste to brush your teeth, food to eat for breakfast?  When driving somewhere, did you get any green lights?  Did anyone let you merge?  Did you notice the clear sky, the warm sun, the newly blooming flowers on the side of the road? 

What if you were stuck in traffic because of construction or an accident?  Can you appreciate that you and your loved ones made it home safely?  The construction will lead to a smooth new road (or whatever improvement) – there are countries where the governments don’t use tax monies to improve the roads.  Didn’t hit any potholes on the way home?  Write it down!

What if you were in an accident?  Could it have been worse?  The check bounced – maybe you can appreciate that it was only one check, instead of five! 

If you decide to try this, commit to doing it for at least a month.  And please let me know how it affects your life!

Avivah

Baking marathon

homemaking

My house the last couple of days has resembled a mini bakery – a friend came over today and said our kitchen and dining room looked like an assembly line.  The older kids had three friends over yesterday, and they all independently said the same thing! 

When we recently renovated the kitchen (which still isn’t totally finished), we replaced our freestanding full size stove with a gas cooktop and a double electric oven (24″ wide).  Generally that suits our needs, but at times like this, it would be nice to have the larger capacity for baking to get all the pans baked faster.  We’ve had an early dinner the last two nights, since the table is covered with so many batters and pans during the day that lunch is out.  So between eating breakfast a little later, snacking on all that they’ve been baking, and an early dinner, we manage to keep hunger pains at bay. 

We have many dozens (have no desire to count) of filled cookies in an assortment of flavors (these were labor intensive because they had to be rolled out), about 15 loaves of banana bread, and 75 banana cookies.  Tomorrow we’ll make another big batch of banana breads.  I don’t even want to think about how many dishes I’ve washed. 

The reason for so much banana baking is that I bought a case of ripe bananas for $4 a couple of days ago – so I need to find a way to use them all up!  Bananas can be mashed and frozen for later use in baked goods, but in the past I’ve ended up leaving the mashed frozen banana in the freezer for so long that I eventually just threw it away.  So I’m making a big effort to use them all now.  You can also make chocolate covered banana pops: stick a popsicle stick in the banana, dip it in melted chocolate, and then roll it in shredded coconut or ground walnuts. 

Today I made baked banana oatmeal, and tomorrow I’ll give them banana milkshakes for breakfast.  I know it sounds like bananas are coming out of their ears, but it’s really not like that.  The kids usually have fruit sometime during the day, but they aren’t having bananas as their fruit right now.  The banana breads are for giving to neighbors, and the cookies will be a treat for the weekend.  We made the cookies healthy enough that I feel okay about sending them with my oldest son to have for breakfast (he hasn’t been taking food for the day and comes home famished).  We’re down to about 30 bananas, and I think we’ll finish them tomorrow, at this rate!

Avivah

Convenience foods on a budget

frugal strategies, homemaking

I’ve been noticing a trend when I’m grocery shopping – I see many items being packaged for convenience that traditionally haven’t been sold in that way.  Junk foods have been packaged like this for eternity, but now the healthy food is following suit.  Some examples of what I mean are: bags of carrot sticks (not baby carrots), prewashed potatoes for baking, and hard-boiled eggs in a sealed package.   And those things come at a much higher price as a result.

I dislike seeing everything commercialized, but I also understand that marketers are appealing to the desire of today’s busy shoppers to minimize the time in the kitchen.   And aren’t all of us busy?  I know I appreciate shortcuts that simplify my life!   I’ll share with you how you can make your own convenience foods, cheaply and easily.

When I buy a few heads of cabbage, I’ll take some time to shred a bunch.  Then I fill a couple of gallon sized ziploc bags, squeeze out any extra air, and keep it in the fridge to quickly use in salads, stir fries, or kimchi.  I do that with green and purple cabbage, as well as carrots.  Carrots – buy a five pound bag, peel them all, and cut them into sticks, then fill a bunch of sandwich bags for your kids’ lunches.  Do you like hardboiled eggs?  It takes less than a half hour for them to boil, whether you make two or twenty, and either way the effort involved is just putting the eggs in the pot, filling it with water, and putting it on a burner.  (That takes all of 1 minute?)

You’d be surprised at how little time it actually takes to do large amounts.  It’s the same principle that once you’re baking cake, you might as well quadruple the recipe and have four times the amount with just a little more work.  Once you’re doing it, it doesn’t take much more effort to do lots than a small amount.

You can use the same approach for less healthy things like snack foods.  If you bake cookies or other treats, put it in small portions in separate sandwich bags.  But it doesn’t matter if you make it yourself (that just means it’s cheaper and healthier).  You can take the big bags of popcorn, pretzels, or snack crackers and likewise divvy them up into portion sizes.

I have to send my oldest son to school every day with breakfast and lunch (he waits to eat dinner until he gets home), so I use the same approach for him.  (No, I don’t send him processed garbage just because it’s convenient.  :)) I make a bunch of a dish and then divide it into meal size portions, putting it aside in the fridge or freezer for him.  Last night my 13 year old daughter made a huge amount of broccoli lo mein – everyone said it was delicious!  (If you tell me you’d like the recipe, I’ll share it here with you – it was a big winner in our house, including the friends of the kids who ate over last night.)  So we put aside several containers for my son to take for lunch. 

Since I often eat a different meal than my kids (because of my food plan restrictions), I do the same thing to keep my life simple.  At the beginning of the week, I will chop up a bunch of veggies for salads, and place it into separate containers so I can just grab one each day for lunch.  (If you use grape tomatoes or keep the chopped tomatoes at the very top of the salad, the salad will stay fresh through the week- this was a very helpful tip for me when I finally figured it out!)  When I make my chicken, meat, salmon patties, or whatever, I make up a bunch, and then package it in a meal sized amount and put it in individual bags.  It makes my mealtimes much faster when I can just grab a bag out of the fridge or freezer.

Avivah