Staying Prepared
Gather in my friends, prepare that cup of tea, wrap your hands around that mug of coffee, and get out your knitting, crocheting, embroidery, needlework, and quilting. Form a circle, a circle of women guarding and sharing what must be known about home.
I originally titled this article “Preparing to be Flexible.” Some of you will laugh at that. Plan to be flexible? Isn’t that oxymoronic? Probably. Since I’m one of those people who has had to train myself how to be flexible, since I’m more comfortable within the walls of routine, since I must find ways to on-purpose do what you flexible ladies do by nature, just as you must be intentional in learning to control your chaos, I thought I might share the two things that have helped me calmly learn to be flexible.
Or, another way to look at this, these two things help me be ready when life doesn’t go according to plan, when upset comes, when the day takes an unexpected left turn, when sickness comes to the house, or I have a flare-up, these two things help me carry on without my home, and my heart, turning into a disaster of a dumpster fire. So a more accurate title is “Staying Prepared”.
I’ve said it many times: Home is both 100% routine and 100% flexible every day.
We have to have routines, or the home becomes unsafe and untrustworthy. It’s just there all wibbly-wobbly. A lack of basic routines raises stress. Is there breakfast? Dinner? Bedtimes? Clean clothes? Church attendance? Routine lowers stress levels because it keeps these regular things happening.
But! We must always be flexible because life is filled with things outside our control (though thankfully never outside God’s control) like sickness, things breaking, car repairs, needs of others, pregnancy, family emergencies, hormones, job loss, moves, injury, chronic health issues, and more can rip holes in our plans.
There are two things I’ve found that can make it easier to roll with the things we can’t control.
1) What can I do today that will make life easier tomorrow? I’m prone to procrastination if I don’t stay on guard, especially if something is stressing me out. I also tend to cut corners, or not finish a job. I’ll get right up to the completed line and fail to cross it, telling myself “that’s close enough, I’ll finish that later.”
My future self would like to beat my present self soundly with a 2x4 for always leaving my future self with half-done work to finish.
To combat this, throughout the day, I ask myself: what can I do right now that will make tomorrow easier? Sometimes it’s food prep or a load of wash or putting the dry dishes away. This cumulates. It gives you some cushion so that if tomorrow gets turned upside down, you at least have some things done.
There are two major pitfalls you must keep in mind:
a) You never stop. This is not advice to never rest. Honestly, sometimes the best way to make tomorrow easier is to stop and get some rest. If you don’t manage yourself, you’ll run yourself ragged. This advice is best applied to small things.
b) You’ll distract yourself. To make tomorrow easier, you’ll distract yourself from work that needs to be done today. Some days you will have a whole 30 minutes at the end of the day to make tomorrow easier, but often it will be five minutes here or five minutes there. Don’t miss these important, tiny pockets because they’re tiny. Sometimes it is as simple as putting one thing away.
Side Note: Phone notifications steal these pockets from us. I highly recommend (as a friend, not as a lord over your conscience) turning off all notifications that you legitimately can, so you’re in charge of checking things, not your phone constantly demanding to be checked. I do this even for work emails. No one needs to be on call all the time except to our immediate family, and even they should learn to respect people’s downtime.
2) Leftovers/Ready to eat meals. Some families are full-on leftover eaters. Y’all make one huge pot of chili or a ginormous lasagna and poof! that’s what everyone eats for days until it’s clean-out-the-fridge day, and then you eat all the remaining smidgens. Other families are not leftover eaters, ever, rarely, or only for lunch. Meals are made in single-use batches.
To tend your family in times of mass upheaval or even just in little adjustments that take up a day, figure out two things: which meals freeze well, and which meals your crew likes.
Example: My hubby is a no-leftovers guy as was his father before him, but I have learned a couple of meals that freeze well and can be reused in a variety of ways. I keep them rotating in my freezer so that I have a backstock for days or weeks that I need a quick easy thing.
Make sure you cook these meals semi-regularly. Make a big batch for dinner and freeze the remains. Your future self will thank you when a day hasn’t gone well.
Keep in mind a couple of things:
a) Make sure you mark them clearly in the freezer and rotate them. You don’t want a day of chaos to end with yucky old freezer-burnt food. Set up a system whereby you are rotating constantly through your back stock. (I do this by using my back stock for my Sunday dinners. It keeps Sunday calmer and keeps the food from just languishing in the freezer.) Using your freezer meals at a slightly slower rate than you stock the freezer will keep you well in hand.
b) Make sure you also keep the necessary sides on hand: bread, tortillas, and veggies. Many of these things either have an okay shelf life or will freeze well. Just keep things rotating.
c) Be aware of burnout. You can overdo a good thing and make your family sick of having the same meal and the same old backup meal over and over. Make sure you have a handful of backup meals, not just 1 or 2. Make sure you mix in favorites and new meals for fun. Avoid the rut and watch for food fatigue.
These two things—doing something to ease tomorrow and a solid, thought-through backstock—can help your home stay in a state of calm functioning even in busy times, sick times, or when chaos abounds.
They do require thought and observation, but once you get the ball rolling, they can save your bacon and lower your stress level so you can tend with cheering strength and merry durability.
