In one of my first citybaby posts, I stated clearly that I am not a super-mom. I'm absolutely not, but I am pretty organized.
One way I've been able to provide cooked-from-scratch meals for my daughter since she started solid foods is by managing our time. An organized parent is an efficient parent, and as full-time working parents, we make an earnest effort to make the time we spend as a family meaningful. Quality mealtime is a priority for us. These ten tips have helped me consistently put nutritious, flavorful and seasonal meals on the plate with minimal effort.
- Keep it simple. I'm not Martha Stewart and neither are you. Family meals should look and taste good, but your dinners don't need to look like a food stylist plated them every night. The effort you put into a home-cooked nutritious meal will be appreciated by everyone around the table even if the final product isn't ready for it's close-up.
- If someone offers help, take it. Even your toddler can "help." Your child's help may slow you down, but the extra time you take getting their "help" will give you unexpected one-on-one time focused on an activity that ultimately may help your child build confidence.
- On a related note, be social! Of course it goes without saying that having a network of friends will help you live a full and fun life, but cast a wide net and participate or create online social communities too. You might be surprised to learn how all of us thinking together are smarter (and more efficient) than one of us thinking alone. Embrace the wisdom of crowds. I've learned valuable stuff from joining Facebook fan pages like CSA, Twitter Moms, 365 Tips and I hope the fans of my blog citybaby have picked up some ideas and inspiration from me; I've certainly picked up really useful information from commenters!
- Employ short-cuts but try not to rely too heavily upon processed or pre-prepared foods for every element of your family meal. You may never be able to eliminate cans, jars and frozen foods completely, but try to incorporate these types of items in moderation. Make an effort to put one made-from-scratch element on the plate each night. For example, if steamed, peeled vacuum-packed organic beets are available in your market, use them to make a puree and slice up the rest for a salad. Trust me, a beet puree made from quality beets will trump a jar of baby food beets any day.
- When it comes to cooking, act on a grand scale. If the thought of breaking out the pots, pans, steamers and food processor every night at the end of a long day with the end goal of making baby food every night isn't appealing, I'm not surprised. When our daughter started eating solid foods, I introduced her to pumpkin first. The beauty of making gallons of pumpkin puree was that it was the puree that kept giving. After the effort involved in making one ginormous batch of pureed pumpkin was completed in the span of an evening, we had purees at the ready in the freezer for weeks. Putting a grand effort into a task over the weekend will buy you precious time later in the week when your energy and time resources may be depleted.
- Use technology. I mean really use it. I use the Intuition on my iPhone to keep my ideas for our meals organized an I believe this task helps me minimize food waste. I also keep notes for my blog posts in the same app. I build my weekly grocery list with my FreshDirect app throughout the week adding items as I think of it. When it comes time to place my order for the week, it only takes moments instead of hours because most of the work is already done.
- Use an online calendar and share it. I create events in Google Calendar and "invite" my husband to them all the time. Even if he's not really invited to our book group, or my salon appointment there's a reminder in his calendar that I'm going out so that he doesn't make conflicting plans. I even "invite" our babysitter to events like our vacation (even though she won't be joining us) to help her remember when we'll be away. These calendar entries also remind me to be sure that a balanced and easy-to-heat-up meal sits in the refrigerator for my two favorite people have something to eat while I'm out as a thank you to my lost-in-the-kitchen spouse.
- Write things down. Don't laugh, but I actually wrote "write things down" on a post-it as I put my thoughts together for this post. I can't keep everything in my head (who can?) nor do I like having a desk littered with post-its and random notes, so most of my notes to self are kept in my Intuition app. I always have my phone with me -- having one tidy place where ideas, errands and to-dos are jotted down keeps me referencing my lists often and helps me keep things prioritized. I even email notes to myself directly from the app for later follow-up or calendarization. Post-its are unavoidable but my rule is post-its are for urgent items only. I get a dollop of satisfaction each day as I drop no-longer-needed post-its in the recycle bin because I know that those things have been truly crossed off the list, even if that simply means they migrated to my iPhone.
- Simplify, simplify, simplify. I can't underestimate this one. Try not to buy products that have a single purpose. You're likely to use products that have multiple functions more often than the ones that have very limited use. I find I use products that make my life easier more frequently when the are sitting very accessibly on a shelf or a counter free from clutter. For example, I used a food processor to make nearly all of my daughter's baby food and as it turns out, because I was using the food processor all the time for purees and chops, I noticed that I used it to make slaws, soups and sauces for us more frequently too. If I had a baby-food cooker and a food processor, the thought of creating more dirty dishes on a nightly basis might have prevented me from the DIY meals my family enjoys so much. As a result, our daughter is an adventurous eater. I directly credit her zeal for vegetables to the variety of ingredients she was introduced to thanks to my handy food processor.
- Tip number nine doesn't exclusively apply to cooking. Even when you are out of the kitchen, take steps to simplify all aspects of your life and you'll become more efficient. If you have 100 apps on your phone, you are less likely to be able to find or even remember that you have that one very specialized app that does that one very special thing. Keep and use apps that multifunction like Intution (access call lists, errands, grocery lists, wish lists and more) and TripIt (manage flight info, car rentals, hotels, OpenTable dinner reservations and eVites). Set up an iGoogle account to aggregate email and calendar accounts so that all of your content appears in one integrated page. If you use social media, set up an account with Digsby or HootSuite so you access all of your accounts, friends and followers at once instead of managing multiple log-ins and tabs on your browser. On the no-tech side, adapt and reuse what you already have to keep everything organized instead of buying special stuff to accomplish the very same task. For example, I never had a diaper bag -- I simply outfitted a mid-sized tote with baby items like bottles, a Skip-hop changer, burp cloths, pacifiers, alcohol wipes and Purell and it was totally fine (ditto the messenger bag for my husband). My baby was never the wiser, we probably saved $50-100 by using what we already had and we still use these bags for non-baby-specific purposes.
After all, you don't need specialized gear to be a good parent, but being organized (and using a few organization tools) makes it easier.
This post is part of a blogging contest from the TwitterMoms community. There is a chance this post could be randomly selected to win a $50 Target GiftCard, so wish me luck! For more details, you can view the contest page.
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