Now that we’ve had a look at how to plan realistically, not with a perfectionistic mindset but with practical mindset, we need to put hands and feet to it. This practical mindset focuses on your goals. Now we are going to take those goals and plan practical steps.
Learning to follow a plan is the last step in my series on preparation. Please read the first steps, changing our mindset and habits.
In this post I want to talk about food. It is my bane! As much as I love food! Love eating! And even at a time loved cooking… food is really a killer. It is one of the things that truly needs to be planned if you are living the mom life. It is one of the major factors for my motherhood creation.
Food also tends to be one of, if not, the top expense in every household. If you aren’t ready with the food thing you are going to sink. It is our nourishment, strength, health… all are influenced by food.
When I say health, I’m not just talking about chicken soup in winter. When my first-born was 5 months old I started noticing a rash, or what appeared to be a rash. He also started losing weight and I, as a new mom with no personal health conditions, was more than alarmed. The doctor said eczema but there was more. It was more than a year later when I learned how food and gut bacteria. Praise God, my son is completely healed of his eczema and his other symptoms are drastically reduced.
I attribute his healing to God of course, but also to God allowing us to learn so much about food. I have seen how food makes a huge difference in my family and I know I have a plan for it.
So now that we have a clearer prospective on the complexity of food let’s use the outline we created from our last post to concrete a plan that we can consistently keep.
If you missed the last post, or any posts in my series on preparation please take some time to catch up:
I’m Not Prepared! Get Prepared.
Preparation comes in bits (Mindset About Tasks)
How to do things in bits: Practical Steps
Preparation comes by Consistency (Mindset About Cycles)
How to do things consistently: Practical Steps
Preparation comes by Planning (Mindset About Goals)
So as a reminder, when you make a plan you can start by considering
* Where you are going and where you’d like to be?
* What is the simplest route to get to where you’d like to be?
* How can you make sure you’ll arrive there?
These really give you an understanding of what you goals are on the tasks you face. You cannot be prepared for dailies or weeklies or situations if you don’t see where they are going and what your goal is for it. It’s hard to think beyond today in terms of what you want to be happening. These questions will help you to get there. As in the case of food, we answered these questions so let’s look at how plan practical steps.
Food goal example #1
No one likes eating up their money… or maybe someone does! But I sure don’t. If you eat out you are definitely getting more money than food. When we eat out we are doing it most times because we don’t have time or energy, so we squeeze out the money. If you get home everyday tired with plans of sandwiches or mac n cheese (everyday) you are going to be malnourished and hungry. Remember we are thinking about the practical and y’know this would happen. But it gets worse…
After a few days you are going to think, ‘I’d rather have a hamburger’ and stop somewhere on the way home. Maybe its suddenly 10 minutes to dinner time and you are just stressed out by your kids, exhausted from the day and think how easy it is to just order.
Stop. If we know each day (and the kids know) you will tend to desire that. Take a Saturday afternoon or Sunday evening and write down meals for the week. Some people do it on Monday, but I say do it on the weekend so that you can ask your family. They will look forward to it, maybe even help. Take the money you were going to use to eat out and buy a few quick foods to put together. Buying these will still be more cost efficient than eating out, and likely healthier.
Food goal example #2
Figuring out meals for the week is only one part, of course. If you haven’t planned a grocery day I encourage you to do so. You get off from work and go buy the ingredients for that’s night meal, well that gets old really quickly.
Don’t run out every couple of days and get a handful of groceries either. If you shop like that because you don’t like to shop with your kids, I understand. Plan to tag-team with your mate, he can watch the kids at home while you go shopping. He could maybe watch a movie, usually shopping doesn’t take longer than 2 hours and he won’t be uber-stressed when you get home. He could take the kids out to the park. Or he could shop and you be home. You could also plan for someone else (a neighbor friend) to watch your kids.
You could also use one of those cool shop by app and just pick up programs. I know Walmart does it, now you can do it at Whole Foods also (thanks Amazon) but even your local store might, just call and find out.
Plan a day to shop (or pick-up) for your whole week and have your listed ingredients and a few quick foods. When you get home put your food away, maybe divide up things (make snack bags or clean and cut up your veggies). You will feel a lot more in control with this practical plan.
So how this looks IN REAL LIFE…
At the end of every month I take a day to plan for the following month of meals. I have a binder filled with recipes that work (well not all of them, I need to clear things out a bit). I also have my food notebook in my Evernote with recipes categorized by the types of things we eat. This has been collected over the last 7 or so years.
So I print out an empty calendar and fill up the spots for each day. I try to think about what probably will be happening on each day, according to our regular schedule. For instance, Fridays are always busy for us with activities for the kids plus sometimes my husband works from home. It’s chaotic so I know I’m packing lunches the night before and doing a crockpot meal for dinner. So after I fill in the calendar I’m done until the day before shopping.
On the day before shopping
I look at the meals for the following week and I make a list. I do my very best to get everything so I don’t have to go to the store again that week. I’m not hurried because the kids are usually with my parents on that day. This gets crazy sometimes but generally it works.
I hope this look at my life, and this series in general has been helpful for you. If you’d like more detail on any of these please comment below and let me know. In my next post, we’ll wrap up this series with tools, tips and tricks to cement these habits so that you can get far ahead of the rolling boulder.