Don’t worry—I won’t lecture you on meal planning (promise!). Instead, I have some real-life solutions that helped me survive the chaos of parenting and self-employment. Think of it as your survival guide to reclaiming dinner time sanity—because, let’s face it, we could all use a little more order and a lot less drive-thru.
If money is leaking out of your household and you aren’t quite sure where it’s going, I have an idea: Fast food. Busy households mean tired people—too tired to cook. And that can easily result in getting take-out two or three times a week. Does anything there sound familiar?
The last thing you need is someone to tell you to get a grip and plan ahead. So I won’t. Instead, I’m going to tell you what worked for me when I was in somewhat your situation (two boys 17 months apart, self-employed, debt-ridden) and a few things I’ve learned since.
Five-Menu Rotation
Come up with five simple menus you know your family will eat, one for each night of the week. These don’t have to be gourmet or anything fancy at all.
Example:Monday: Spaghetti, salad, and bread. Tuesday: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, green beans, and so on. At the end of a busy day, suddenly, being too tired to cook ceases to be your first reaction.
Weekends
Ask your spouse to handle one weekend dinner each week and give it a name like Daddy’s Delicious Dinner or let the kids give it a title. That leaves one Family Fun Night or some other reason to order pizza.
Post your weekly menu on the refrigerator. Now everyone knows what to expect, including you. This will simplify your grocery shopping, too. As the children get older and you get more courageous, you can expand your repertoire, but for now, stick to the five-menu rotation.
Double Up
Once you have your base menu and sufficient ingredients, double the recipe.
Example: Meatloaf (by the way, I have the world’s best meatloaf recipe for you … seriously, even the biggest meatloaf hater will beg for seconds; it’s that good). It takes the same amount of time and effort to make one recipe of meatloaf as it does to double the recipe to make two. Bake one for tonight’s dinner and freeze the second for next week. See where I’m going here? Time off for the cook.
Set the Table
I know you’re going to think this is nutty, but it works: Set the dinner table for the next day before you go to bed at night. I learned this from Emilie Barnes, author of “More Hours in My Day” (Harvest House).
Waking up to a nicely set table sends a silent message that dinner is so important we eat around a table, not in front of the TV. It will also help you to start thinking about dinner long before you run out of steam.
Pro Tip
Even a five-year-old can learn to set a table, so delegate.
Shine the Sink
Thank you, Marla Cilley, author of “Sink Reflections” (Bantam), flylady.net, for teaching me this amazing trick.
Before you go to bed, clear out the sink of everything (either wash the dishes or load them in the dishwasher), scrub, and rinse the sink well. Last, shine it with a towel. Five minutes to a new attitude.
There really is something magical about waking up in the morning to an empty, clean, and shining sink, no matter what condition the rest of the house is in.
Days are Long, Years are Short
Indeed, there’s no more difficult job in the entire world than parenting—and nothing more rewarding. Being too tired to cook is understandable. However, when you make dinnertime an anchor in your day while your kids are young, the tradition will come back to bless you as they age.
Even though they’ll never tell you, dinnertime will become something the kids know they can count on in an otherwise uncertain world.
Enjoy these precious days and take it from me: The days are long, the years are short.
Hang in. It gets easier.
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