Two Zero Two Zero Resolved

At the beginning of 2020, I set out with three goals for the year. You can read my original post here. It also explains why I don't do resolutions anymore, but I intentionally think about some mental goals to ground myself for the year.

Here were my three goals for 2020:

1. Finish my cross stitch.

2. Find a new work life balance.

3. Keep my sanity.

Did I accomplish all three? I did, actually. It wasn't always easy, and this year certainly wasn't a straightforward one, but I did accomplish the goals I'd set for myself.

1. I finished my cross stitch.

I won't go into detail about it here as I already wrote a post on it back in June when I finished it for my mid-year check in. So that was a great accomplishment considering I'd finished it after having two kids to look after. Now my next goal is to get it framed and hang it up in my son's room as I had originally intended. That should be a goal for 2021.

2. I did find a new work life balance.

Covid really did me a huge favor on this one. After having my son, the world took a big pause and quarantined/locked-down for about 6 weeks, and even after that, life has taken on a different pace. I did cut my maternity leave very short and returned back to teaching when he was merely 6 weeks old, but it was teaching online without needing to clean the house to be presentable for students. For the first 5-6 weeks after returning to work, I was teaching 7 students a week. It was great. I felt like I had the mommy routine and teacher routine down. In June, I added a few more. It was still doable. Then in August when the new school year began, I added some more, and next year, I'll be adding a few more and considering my studio full once again.

At the beginning of the year I had huge fears about how I was going to breastfeed my baby (assuming my body cooperated) and have my work schedule as well as watching two children. Because of the way this year panned out, I was able to exclusively pump, have an ample supply to feed him and freeze a stash, and have surplus to share. 

3. I did (for the most part) keep my sanity.

To be honest, staying at home and refraining from social gatherings did not affect me too much because I'm an introvert to begin with. I don't really enjoy large groups or crowds so being at home was doing what I enjoyed, for the most part.

It wasn't until about August when I started to really feel the "blues" of being at home all the time. There were just days when I wasn't motivated, didn't want to do anything, and lacked drive. Part of it was not having places to go as a motivator to get my day started. 

One of the outlets I was able to use as a "pick me up" was organization. Like everyone else, I watched The Home Edit, and although not inclined to organize my bookshelves by color or rolling my scarves, it made me want to organize our house.

So we did. We bought all sorts of products and organized our pantry, a built-in cabinet, kitchen drawers, bathroom drawers, and our closet. No, we didn't pay anyone $250 an hour to come do it for us. Yes, I bought a lot of clear storage containers. Yes, it was still expensive. 

Was it worth it? Yup. 

I grew up with a super frugal (and potentially incorrect) mentality that spending money on something to put what you already bought with money into is useless. Well, now that I'm officially in the 30s age range, it's finally clicked that organization is worth it because it changes your perspective and mindset.

That's for another blog. 

Here's a sneak peek at one of my favorite
drawers, newly organized this year.

I hope you were able to reflect on your year and find some silver linings through all the "unprecendented-ness."

Bye 2020. ✌

Household Tricks: Part 4

 This is the last part in my series on household tricks. Catch up on the first three parts here: 1  2  3

1. Rubbing alcohol cleans dry erase boards 

One of my best purchases this year was a laminator. What started out as a quest to make an activity binder for my daughter turned into making an activity binder for piano lessons and creating my own dry erase activity sheets. A good idea is dangerous so be careful how you run away with it.

With that said, some of the dry erase markers we had were brand new and also nearing 15 years old. Did they write? Amazingly, they did. Unfortunately, they did not erase easily, so after my daughter scribbled all over the activity sheets I made her, I had the painstaking job of wiping it off with a tissue. It did not wipe off clean and I contemplated getting rid of these markers.

We didn’t have dry erase board cleaner just lying around the house so I did some trials of my own. I tried water with no luck, then Windex with no luck either. After that, I did some quick searching online and found rubbing alcohol. Sure enough, it did the trick. 

Since then, I’ve made a system of letting her draw on the sheets twice a week and wiping them all at the end of the week in preparation for the following week. I’ve attempted to turn cleaning them into a game...that didn’t work out as well as I thought it would. 

2. Lens cleaner cleans cds from skipping 

I’m about 15 years behind on this trick as cds are becoming more obsolete with online streaming and podcasts. However, we’re traditional and I love my cds, especially now that we have kids. My friend had given me a brand new book with companion cds to go with it that she never used. I was so excited to come home and play it for my daughter. 

Here was the catch: the cd came in a vinyl pouch on the inside of the book cover and it had never been opened before. With all the years of the pouch being closed, the cd was essentially stuck to the vinyl. I had to carefully pry away the vinyl from the cd and pull the cd out carefully at the same time. I did a great job separating the cd from the vinyl to remove.  However, when I removed the cd, it made contact with the adhesive from the vinyl pouch, and of course, resulted in adhesive residue on the important side. 

I tried wiping it off with a cloth and some water. There was some residue visibly left on the surface but I popped it in the player to try anyway. It played fine until we reached track 43/50. The cd got stuck and would repeat the same syllable over and over again. If I got annoyed with it, I’d manually press the button for the next track. If I was walking around preoccupied, it would keep going until it could make it to the next track itself. 

After about a week of this, I finally got tired of hearing na na na na na na na na for a minute straight so I did a quick google search and lens cleaner came up. Luckily, we actually have lens cleaner. It worked like magic. What’s actually in lens cleaner that makes this happen? Rubbing alcohol, water, and a drop of dish soap.

In the future, I may make myself a small bottle and use it for glasses/screens, but for this task, I’m glad we had an actual bottle of lens cleaner. 

3. Don't shock nonstick pans with cold water

This one isn't really a trick....but moreso a lesson we learned the hard way. When we got married, we received a nonstick skillet pan as a gift and it was wonderful. We used it for many years and loved it. 

Suddenly, this summer, it started sticking. Foods I used to cook with ease started sticking to the bottom, and although I could wash the pan clean after each use, it made cooking a nightmare. I started doubting my cooking skills (which really aren't bad!) and was constantly discouraged in the kitchen.

This summer, we finally gave in and bought an entire new set of pots and pans...because, well, the pan I wanted as a replacement was $60-$80 alone, and I could get a whole new set for $150. Frugal? No. But I won't need to buy new pots and pans for years and years to come because many of them are still sitting in the box new in a closet waiting for their turn. Don't worry, they'll get their turn.

I was talking to a friend during this ordeal and I learned that you can't shock nonstick pans with cold water when they're still hot or it will kill the nonstick surface. Oops. I've probably done that more than once when I wanted to get the washing process started....🙈 lesson learned. Wait until a hot nonstick pan cools before you try to wash it.

***

It’s been a strange year with the majority of my time spent at home, but I’m glad I was able to learn new tricks and tips to file away in my brain for the future. Hope you were able to learn something new from the series. You never know when you might need to use one! 

Thanks for reading. 🙂

How to Plan an Organized Holiday Meal (With Kids to Watch!)

Because of cancelled plans and a crazy year, we stayed at home and celebrated Thanksgiving with our little family of four this year. We ended up cooking out Thanksgiving meal two days early because that's what day the turkey ended up thawing on. I bought our 13 pound turkey on Saturday morning and put it into the refrigerator to thaw because there was no room for it in any of our three freezers. Yup, you heard that right. We have THREE freezers - two refrigerator freezers and a chest freezer - and they are ALL full. Full of what? Liquid gold! No, I'm not talking about melted cheese. Breastmilk. And some food. But mostly breastmilk. 

This freezer is completely milk bags. 

I’ve repurposed bubble wrap packaging and empty tissue boxes very well. 

So Tuesday was the day.

I organized Thanksgiving as I was taught to lesson plan during my years of pedagogy and education classes or how to write a paper for everyone else who doesn't go the education route.

1. Pre-planning

I made a list of everything we wanted to eat for Thanksgiving. For us, that included turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, macaroni and cheese, brussel sprouts, and rolls. You might be thinking I'm missing a classic staple of green bean casserole. I'll explain why later. Keep in mind I'm making everything from scratch here so that is why I used recipes for things I wouldn't normally use recipes for. 

2. Planning

I wrote out a brief outline of my Thanksgiving dishes. This included finding the recipes for dishes I was using recipes for and writing out which kitchen appliances I would be using for each dish. This is a key step of organization that makes everything go SO much smoother. We all know how many dishes can take up the oven for Thanksgiving. Well, an oven only has so much room and a house only has so many ovens. We have one oven. I could have made every single dish on our list in the oven, but that would be a terrible decision because it would take an entire day to cook and by the time the last dish was done, the first would be cold. This is why we nixed green bean casserole off the list because as much as we both love green bean casserole, it would have lengthened our cooking time by at least an hour. And when you have two mobile children to look after while cooking, time is of the essence. 

These were the recipes that I used for the dishes involving recipes:

Turkey: https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/easy-no-fuss-thanksgiving-turkey/

Mac and Cheese: https://thestayathomechef.com/stovetop-mac-and-cheese/

Rolls: I used the recipe on the back of my yeast packet.

Stuffing: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-stovetop-thanksgiving-stuffing-225090

Giblet Gravy: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/giblet_gravy/

3. Cooking

For my 8 items to cook, I cooked one the day before: Mashed potatoes. I chose to cook my mashed potatoes ahead because I thought they were the most reheatable dish on the list without losing out on flavor and texture. Everything else we cooked on the day of. To maximize your time, you have to cook everything in overlapping times. While the turkey was in the oven, I was starting my gravy, starting my corn, making mac and cheese, prepping brussel sprouts, and preparing dough for my rolls. If I wasn't doing any of that, I was doing the dishes so the pile in the sink wouldn't reach the ceiling. 

Somehow, in five hours, everything got done, and my two kids didn't get into anything dangerous or cause any trouble. Yes, we were taking turns glancing over to watch them play or feeding them. So no, we did not completely ignore or neglect our kids for five hours. In fact, my daughter helped me wash dishes and make the rolls. 

By 5pm, everything was cooked and we were eating around 5:15 pm.

By 6 pm, we were done eating.

By 7 pm, everything was cleaned up, the turkey bone was simmering on the stove for stock, and we began the kids' bedtime routine.

So all in, it was a very busy 7 hours in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, but it was absolutely worth it to make a turkey dinner once a year. If we ever do Thanksgiving again at our house in the future, I may consider pre-making a green bean casserole and then just using the oven to heat it up on the day of to save time and still be able to use the oven for the turkey. 

As for Christmas this year....we'll most likely be cooking ham instead. And you guessed it. I’ve already started planning 😉.

Household Tricks: Part 3

This is the third part in my household tricks series. If you want to catch up on part 1 or part 2, feel free to do that first!

Today's tips include some more laundry tricks that I've discovered over the years. I really thought most of this was common knowledge and I was just discovering it on my own, but after talking to some friends, it's actually not. Who knew. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m not the most eco-friendly person who ever walked the earth, but I do value reusing, repurposing, and salvaging when possible  

 1. Air dry new clothes after the first wash after washing in cold water.

We all know washing in cold water prevents shrinking. But air drying after the first wash does too! I discovered this when we washed out baby clothes for our first baby. I'd buy it in one size, wash it, and then feel like she was outgrowing it already. It was also obvious when I looked at hand-me-down clothing vs new clothing we'd air dried after the first wash in the same size. The ones we'd air dried really looked an entire size larger. By air drying my kids’ clothes after the first wash, they keep their original size and we can wear them for much longer. This sounds like a lot of extra work, but the key is to remember it only applies after the first wash. Once you wear it and wash it again, you can feel free to chunk it into the dryer willy nilly without having to pick out each specific item to air dry. 

For clothes we’ve bought new and carefully air dried, I’ve been able to keep my kids in them for two sizes! (My 18 pound 8 month old baby boy can still wear size 6 month clothes, but he can also fit in size 12 month clothes hand me downs which have shrunk.)

2. Air dry clothes with stains after washing just in case the stain did not come out.

I used to just give up after one wash if a stain didn't come out and either throw the piece away or live with it stained. Then I realized if I didn't dry the clothing after, it would give me another chance to remove the stain. If I've washed it twice following careful instructions and it still doesn't come out, then I count my losses and move on. 

Pretty sure these had stains and were air drying after a wash. Some pieces are going through a second hurrah with us right now with little brother 🤗

3. Separate stained or new clothes into a laundry washing bag.

There's a lot to remember if you have to pull out specific pieces from the washing machine to keep them from being tossed in the dryer. A trick I use to make my life easier is to throw them into a laundry washing bag before going into the washer. Then, when it's time to dry, I pick out the bags and toss everything else into the dryer. This way, I'm not trying to filter through each wet, entangled piece of clothing to make sure I've found all my pieces to hang dry. 

This may seem like a lot of work to go through, but to me, if it means I get more use out of the same clothing, I’ll take it! 

Stay tuned for the final part of my household tricks series.