1 Thing to Make Life Easier After Baby; Preparing for Baby {HomeLife}

Something about the impending arrival of a brand new baby can send the minds of adults into a tizzy. And, rightly so. Babies require so much work to take care of and often the regular needs of a house can get set aside. At least, they do in my home. There is nothing like having your 8-year old coming up to you all stressed out, while you are nursing a baby because he has no clean pants. Or combating ants in the kitchen because you have not had the energy to stand and sweep or do the dishes after every meal. I mean, taking care of a baby is extremely exhausting, not to mention time-consuming. Who wants to do dishes and laundry?!

There has to be a few things that can be done to make it easier, right?

At least a few things?

Maybe?

I have no idea with laundry and sweeping. I am not going to wear baby just so I can sweep the floor (a suggestion amongst several bloggers). It's hard enough holding him, throwing in sweeping the floor and my back is sore afterward. I'll fit it in when I can. When I don't have to hold the baby.

I am going to give myself some grace when it comes to the floors. And the ants? They were looking for water so were over the sink instead of the floor. They've since left, thankfully. Hopefully, they don't start coming to the floor. I'll just continue asking for help until I can actually sweep again. Since no one else sweeps, it'll remain a mess.

My main concern for after the baby came was food. Goodness knows I was not going to want to cook dinner. The MOPS group is amazing with setting up a meal train every other day for a week, and I'm blessed with some amazing friends bringing meals too. And when Brandon went back to work, that was a definite lifesaver. But for the other nights, I needed to have something.

The one thing I would suggest to do to prepare for a baby? Get some frozen dinners ready to go.

Seriously. Frozen home prepped food is going to save your sanity.

At least what little sanity you will have left after lack of sleep and feeding a newborn will take from you.

What did I use for our frozen dinner recipes?

I shared with you 5dinners1hour.com (not an affiliate! I don't get anything if you sign up!) when I talked about meal planning back in June (you can read that here). And it has still been an incredible element to our dinner planning. I saved favorites and went back to see which ones could be frozen. I prepped several of those for our freezer and for my mom to have when she took the kids the nights we were in the hospital.

Here was just a few: (chicken for tacos and burritos (feeds for 2 nights), meat mixture for tater tot casserole, 2 bags of spaghetti sauce (that feeds us two nights in a row, so 4 nights)

I also had 2 enchilada dishes and 2 lasagnas(my own recipe).

Actually, I still have 1 meal in the freezer still (1 lasagna)!

With having food ready to go, it helped free up so much time for other things (like sweeping that darn floor, or the laundry)!

We started prepping meals again about a week ago. Little man has been here almost 2 months and we are now starting to get back into routine having eaten almost all the meals. Between friends and freezer meals, the 2 months have been incredible. You don't realize how much time a day you spend on prepping and cooking food until you really don't have time and can't.

I have to say I am so thankful for 5dinners1hour.com. It makes the week go so much smoother (especially with the new baby). I originally signed up for meals to use and stash in the freezer when the baby came, and I am planning on sticking to it because it makes life THAT much easier.

Sure, now it takes an entire day to prep 5-7 meals. I gotta stop to feed my constantly hungry baby. But it makes the rest of the week run smoothly. I can focus on homework and reading with the older kiddos.

So? Expecting a baby? Prep some freezer meals. You won't regret having that little bit of free time to sit as you recuperate.

Already had a baby? What have you done to make life easier after a baby arrived?

Getting back on Track with Cleaning {Home Life}

You know those mornings you wake up and enter the main living area of your house and it is spotless? No? Me neither.

I wake up in the master bedroom to a disaster (still). The rest of the house just seems to follow suit, though it is not nearly as bad as the bedroom.

Things sort of fell to the wayside after fall break from school. I have been playing catch up since. But in all honesty it really hasn't been too bad.

Yes:
~The kids have way more clothes than they can wear in 2 weeks (forget trying to wash that many clothes).
~I have way more clothes than I need (and thankfull I don't wear them all, laundry would be aweful)!
~The kids have toys they haven't played with since being babies, and yet those still get scattered around the house.

About a year ago I took a free challenge (sent over email) with Kendra Hennessy over at Mother Like a Boss called the Reluctant Homemaker Boot Camp. She now has it as a paid course. It makes me sad as I wish I could go through it again. (I am not recieving anything for this post. no affiliate, no free courses, this is not an advertisement)

It was amazing. I needed it like a kick in the butt to get me up and doing things after my mother-in-law passed away to be able to even try to stay on top of things. We were the 'wait until a big even at the house before we started cleaning' type cleaners. The thing that helped me the most was establishing a simple cleaning schedule for the week. Not icluding yearly or monthly tasks, just what needed to get done during the week. Forgetting all those printables you can find off pinterest. My schedule was tailored for me.

I had a friend visit a few weeks after implementing my schedule and she had even complemented on the cleanliness of my house (I had no idea how bad it was before, aparently.)

Anywho. I wrote down all the areas I needed to clean during the week. Only things I needed to do, not necessarily the kids. And I didn't manage to fit in the master bedroom which is probably why it is still a clutter disaster! Hey now, I have gotten rid of quite a bit of stuff! Work-in-progress....

I picked days that would be easiest to clean those areas, and restricted myself to 30 minutes (some weeks it was more some it was less). I was cleaning the baseboards just to find something to clean for my designated 30 minutes that week. When it starts out not a grimey mess, it takes less time to clean! (mind blown moment for me! Yay aha! moments! Ha!) Seriously, it was amazing the difference!

I even had laundry days devoted to each person in the house (except husband, he is in charge of his own laundry). I had cleaned off the top of the dryer during my laundry room cleaning day (it also houses the cat box) and was able to start using the top of the dryer for my laundry station.

My house wasn't spotless. Don't get me wrong. But it was much nicer than the mess it was before.

And, then I stopped for a while. And my house became the disaster area it was before I started.

But, we are getting back on track! I'm jumping back on the cleaning schedule train and it has made such a big difference in my house! This (coupled with other things) has actually saved me a bit of time during the day so I can do things I would rather do (like writing this stuff for you!) and sewing, and working on decluttering my craft/office space!

I don't have a multi-level house. It's not a super huge house (but not super tiny either). That said I want to share with you what I do for my areas. (Not that it is necessary for you, you have a completely different life in a different house!)

The areas I wrote down and decided I needed to focus on for my family:

Living areas - More specifically, the carpet. Lets face it. Kids and carpet do not mix well. Add to it we live in an area surrounded by dirt! I should vacuum more than once a week. But I vacuum once a week. The kids have to make sure all their stuff is picked up by the time we reach vacuum day or it's getting tossed.

The kids bathroom, Master bathroom. Everything that goes with cleaning a bathroom. And, I only have one little boy! I focus on each bathroom on a different day. As time passes I might start combining these two.

Kitchen - wiping down the dining table, washing placemats, sweeping and mopping the floor, and the stove, declutter counters, clean out uneaten food from the fridge. I try to sweep every evening. For several years (excpet last year when I was keeping up with the schedule) we had ants invade our kitchen around the start of our monsoon season. I try to do dishes every night too. If there is room in the washer I will fill it with the spoon rest and coffee pot. After it finishes running I open it and leave it open to dry more and will put it away while the kids eat breakfast. I also wanted this as close to trash day for yucky food coming out of the fridge so it wouldn't sit in the bin too long.

Laundry Room - why is it that clothes and towels always seem to pile up in here? I will do an extra load if necessary or move those things to their proper hampers. I focus on the floor with sweeping and mopping. Our a/c and heater intake is in this room so I will dust around it and make sure the filter is ok. I also clean the cat box and make sure the cat's bowls are clean. It's not a big room. More like a hot halway with wa washer and dryer included. I wanted this one closest to trash pick up for the cat box reasons.

I divided these amongst the weekdays, since the weekends are super busy.

Monday - Vaccuum (main living spaces and kids rooms)
Tuesday - Kids bathroom
Wednesday - kitchen
Thursday - Laundry room
Friday - master bath (trash day)

Next I fit in the laundry. There was nothing specific to it. It's just the way it fell and the way it stayed.

Monday - N
Tuesday - S
Wednesday - K
Thursday - Me
Friday - Towels
Saturday - Sheets

It's taken us a few weeks to get back into the habit of keeping things off the floor for the vacuuming day and getting caught up with the buildup from the last 6 months. But, it has started to feel decently livable and comfortable. And I am not spending all day playing catch up cleaning. I am limiting myself to 30 minutes so I can do other things. If it's not done I will come ack to it next week. And I am getting better at putting things away instead of leaving them out so I don't have to waste time on that when I spend the time cleaning.

This, coupled with meal prepping on Sunday (I will talk about that later), has made a huge difference in the amount of time I have during the week. I am still learning, but it has been great!

When do you do your cleaning? Were you like our "before", did you clean it when it looked dirty, or do you have more of a schedule?