Weekly meal plan

The girls and I generally make our meal plan for the week on Saturday so I can shop on Sunday morning while they're at church.  We've been meal-planning for a few years now and it helps cut down on eating out and wasting food a TON!  I also do most of the cooking for the week on Sundays, which makes our week nights much easier since we get home no earlier than 5:30 and the little girl needs an early bed time during the week to function well.

Sunday:  Vegetable risotto
Monday:  Eat at my parents'
Tuesday: Brown rice pilaf
Wednesday:  Eat at my parents'
Thursday: Spaghetti
Friday:  Leftovers/oatmeal
Saturday:  Tofu quiche - this is a new recipe for us

My shopping list is in my purse.  It's going to be a yummy week!

What does minimalism mean for us

We are one adult and two children living in an 1100 square foot home.  It's not big by today's standards but it's not tiny either.  Because I got to make some changes to the layout of our home when we rebuilt after the fire, our home is now perfect for us.  The space is much more user-friendly than before and there is really no wasted space in our home.  We could get by with less space quite easily but it doesn't make financial sense for us to sell this house and find a smaller one.  It also doesn't make emotional sense for the girls, who have already been through so much and need stability right now.

We currently don't need to do a lot of downsizing in stuff either.  One thing with a fire like ours is that you lose everything.  We saved a few very special outfits for each girl, outfits bought in other countries with special people.  Outfits that can't be replaced here.  The little girl has one stuffed animal and one blanket from before the fire.  The big girl has a wax hand made the weekend before the fire.  I saved a desk my grandfather built when my mother was little and my childhood teddy bear. 

As we replaced stuff, I tried to be very conscious about what we were getting.  I got kitchen stuff that we'll actually use. I've bought some clothes for me but the only clothes I've bought for the girls are school uniforms and a couple of fun things.  We have the necessary furniture, although I haven't looked for real dining chairs yet and we're still using my parents' folding chairs.

The biggest issue with stuff is the little girl.  She attaches tremendous value to every. single. object!  She rarely agrees to throw anything away because it's all too special.  While I haven't bought her many toys, she's been given several stuffed animals.  She saves school papers and kids' menus and everything else.  It is a constant battle to keep her stuff under control. 

The big girl has seen the light as far as having enough but not too much.  She struggles to keep organized and realizes how important not having unnecessary items are in her quest to keep a neat room. 

I don't want to buy stuff for me unless I have to.  I'd rather not spend the money or have to figure out what to do with that item.

So, ultimately, for our family, I don't see minimalism as moving into a tiny house or scaling down possessions to fit in the back of my car.  For us, it means having only what we need...no more and no less.  Now if we can just get the little girl to see how much less she could live with.

Starting off with a bang

A blogging bang, that is.  I'm sure I won't keep up this frequency when life goes back to normal tomorrow, making our evenings much more rushed.  That is one of the upsides to breaks like this for our family although, due to other difficulties, I'd gladly give up all breaks to keep a regular routine.  But I digress...

When I used to blog all the time, I printed off the blog in a book form on a yearly basis.  The books were BIG!  Before the fire, the big girl loved going through them.  She'd look back over the years and reminisce about the past.  I miss having that.  Even though my blogging now is different because I want to give the girls more privacy, I'd like to have a record of our life for the girls.  Also, if I can get back into the habit of keeping up the blog, I can use it to track my goals to keep myself motivated.  We'll see how it goes!

Cleaning and purging

I am not a clean and tidy person by nature.  I blame my mother...not what she taught me but the genetic stuff she gave me.  I am so much better than I used to be but there is still lots of room for improvement.  Unfortunately, the girls aren't clean and tidy either.  For them, I'm not sure if it's genetics or living with me.  It doesn't really matter because the outcome is the same...we all struggle to keep the house relatively neat.

When we first moved back home, the big girl was doing such a great job keeping her room neat and tidy.  She was so proud of herself and she loved it.  Unfortunately, life got in the way and she let it go.  Because of Romeo, we keep all the bedroom doors shut so I hadn't realized how far it had gone until New Years Eve morning.  I had reason to go in there and saw the true disaster it had become.  In the past, I would have just started yelling and threatening and taking away privileges.  That's almost what I did that morning but then I took a deep breath and remembered all the great parenting strategies I'd learned over the last several months.  Instead of doing all those things I would have done in the past, I told her it was clear she needed some help in figuring out how to get her room reorganized and I was going to help her with that this weekend.

I picked the girls up from a sleepover this morning and I'm sure the big girl was dreading coming home to clean but after I had a few short moments to snuggle the little girl, we got to work.  It ended up only taking about 2 hours to get most of the work done (everything except the laundry).  We purged and cleaned and organized.  We threw away 2 big bags of trash.  There is another big bag of clothes that will go to the clothing bank at her school once they're washed. 

Her desk is now usable.  We stapled a ribbon on the back of her calendar to make it easier to hang when she takes it down to redo it each month.  We hung her new alphabet sign and bulletin board.  We organized her closet and she washed all the stuff on the floor...pretty much her entire wardrobe.  Then she put it all away.  This is where the benefits of having only what you need really comes to light.  When you don't place sentimental value of stuff, it's easy to get rid of things you don't need and/or enjoy.  That makes putting away the stuff you keep so much easier.

Her room looks great.  Her pride is back.  She spent much of the afternoon in there covering notebooks with duct tape and getting ready for the new semester.  We talked about things she can do to make the upkeep easier and when she can ask for help (anytime) if she's overwhelmed or unsure.

After we finished with her room, I moved on to my room.  I cleaned out my closets of the crap that had been accumulating...bags and boxes from the holidays, unfolded clothes that had been stuffed onto shelves in a rush.  I got my laundry and the little girl's laundry that was clean put away.  I emptied bags that had been setting on the floor for months.  It was mostly old catalogs and other trash.  I organized the little girl's hair ties in the bathroom...it's small and there is no drawer space.  They'd all been piled on the back of the toilet.  Now they're tucked neatly into a mason jar on the back of the toilet...so easy and so much better.  Why did it take months for me to do this?

I still have lots more to do.  There are some shelves in the living room that need to be cleaned off and organized.  Still, it feels so good to have gotten so much done today.  It's amazing how quickly messes like this can accumulate.  We've been here 6 months.  As I keep reminding the big girl, it's an ongoing process.  We won't be done until we can afford to pay someone to do it or we die. 

(Thank goodness, my mom helped the little girl clean and organize her room last week.  I have much harder time helping her since she's my hoarder...everything is special and meaningful and nothing can be thrown away or gotten rid of...ever.)

A night alone

Last night, I had a night alone.  This is a very rare occurrence for me and it was lovely.  There were so many useful things I could have been doing but I sat down and watched movies I wouldn't get to watch with the girls home...Pretty In Pink and Notting Hill.  At least I worked on my recipe binder and budget book a little while I watched the movies, as much as Romeo would let me.

Ironically, I slept like crap due to missing my nightly snuggle bug, the little girl.  I'll be so sad when she decides to sleep in her bed.

2014 in review

 The significant moments of our year in pictures...

January 6

A dumpster and port-a-potty in front of our house...let the demo begin

January 8

It doesn't take long to gut a house...too bad rebuilding isn't so fast

January 25

Checking out progress on the house on a nice day led to some time on the trampoline

February 15

My mom, the little girl, and I took a shopping trip to Ikea to get ideas for the new house

March 29

Bathroom tile is in

April 8

Kitchen cabinets are in...

...and the pantry is built and ready to be installed

April 30

Paint...

...doors...

...and a sunroom ceiling!!!

May 1
Kitchen drawers (I LOVE my corner drawers!!!)

May 7
Disaster #2
A paint fume explosion in the kitchen
Blew out the back window...

...and a hole in the dining room ceiling

(It also cracked some rafters and did some other damage.)

May 10

We rescued a turtle off a busy street.  The girls named her Sparkle Betty and we set her free where she could roam without getting in the street.

June 29

We took a roadtrip of a lifetime with my parents

Big girl got to check off a bucket list item

We saw this too

And this

And Old Faithful, checking off one of my bucket list items

Dinosaur National Monument was almost the end of our road trip sight-seeing

July 12

We moved in!!!

July 14

The first artwork was hung

July 19
Thrilled to have been reunited with our sweet Izzy, who stayed with a friend during the rebuild (we also had my grandmother's dog, Molly, but we lost her in May)

September 6
This sweet little boy joined our family and made himself right at home on my bed.
His name is Romeo and he lives up to his name as a heart stealer.

October 26
Great Pumpkin Sunday...the big girl in costume

November 30
We decorated for Christmas.  Romeo still chews, hence no ornaments on the lower part of the tree.

December 22
The big girl's gingerbread house (an annual tradition with Nana)

December 25
The big girl folded the napkins for dinner...

...and the little girl demolished her gingerbread house to eat the candy

There were other good moments that would have been included if I had pictures that didn't include the girls' faces.

All in all, it was not a terrible year.  It wasn't a great one.  It had some of the hardest moments I've been through, although not the hardest and it could have been much worse.  Nonetheless, I'm glad to close the door on a year dominated by the fallout of fire.  Here's hoping for a much calmer and smoother 2015.  So far, we're starting off right.

Goodbye holidays

I put up the Christmas decorations today.  It took about 20 minutes.  All we put up this year was a tree and one other decoration.  I couldn't find the stocking holders in the garage so we just set them out on Christmas Eve and put them up on Christmas Day.

The tree was lovely.  It was smaller than our pre-fire tree and fit perfectly into the space we now have for it.  We bought new ornaments on our summer travels and a weekend get away, plus we had a few gifts.  It was full, except for the bottom which was left empty to keep the pup from eating any ornaments, but not overly full.  All the ornaments are now tucked away in a box in the dining room bench.

I loved not being overwhelmed by decorations during the season and by the thought of undecorating.  We had enough to look like Christmas and now the holidays are done and put away.  Lovely!!!