Weekly Menu Plan 3/12- 3/18

I spent most of the weekend in my sickbed feeling awful. I'm still feverish and dizzy but a lot better today, my head no longer feels like it's in a vise. Thankfully since I plan my menu a month in advance I didn't have to do much thinking to put this together. I'm keeping it simple this week with meals that Joe can make if I'm not back to normal soon.

Weekly Menu Plan 3/12- 3/18
Monday: Crockpot Chicken with carrots and potatoes
Tuesday: Baked Tilapia, rice, steamed broccoli
Wednesday: Chicken Noodle Soup
Thursday: Pasta, salad
Friday: Tacos
Saturday: Pizza
Sunday: Leftovers & Pasta

Snacks: Honey Walnut Granola, Green Smoothie

I'm linking to Menu Plan Monday at I'm An Organizing Junkie.

Weekly Goals 3/12- 3/18

I did pretty well with my goals from last week despite getting sick on Saturday. Actually being sick helped me with one goal. I had time to finish reading Chasing Mona Lisa (& two more novels) in my sickbed.

Family/Mothering Goals

1. Help kids finish homework by 5pm on week nights
2. Finish reading Manager of Their Chores & start using chore packs. Morning chores have been assigned and are going well!

Personal
3. Plan out herbal garden and order garden seeds
4. Go to gym 3 times, including 1 Yoga class & 1 Cardio class 
5. Read Chasing Mona Lisa  by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey
6. Go to bed by 10:30 p.m. every night.  I did this most nights.

Home Management
7. Work on Project Simplify 2012- for week one I'm decluttering the kids toys in the basement.
8. Follow 15 minute daily cleaning schedule.   I've been undisciplined on this one. 
9. Make homemade sweet potato fries

Ministry
10. Plan for MOPS discussion group meeting. The meeting was pushed back a week so I still need to prepare.


I'm keeping my goals simple for this week as I'm still sick and trying to get better. Here are this week's goals:

Family/Mothering Goals
1. Help kids finish homework by 5pm on week nights
2. Continue using chore packs for morning chores

Personal
3. Go to gym twice
4. Go to bed by 10:30 p.m. every night.

Home Management
5. Work on Project Simplify 2012- for week two I'm organizing the kitchen cabinets
6. Follow 15 minute daily cleaning schedule
7. Make homemade English muffins

Ministry
8. Plan for MOPS discussion group meeting

How did you do on last week’s goals? What are your goals for this week? Feel free to share in the comments.

Project Simplify Week One

Tsh at Simple Mom is spring cleaning and I'm joining in for the next few weeks. Week 1 of Project: Simplify includes decluttering, cleaning and organizing the kids' stuff.

Organizing is hard for me. I love to BE organized but I find it hard to tackle problem areas and purge. Today I went for it and attacked the basement kid/toy stuff and got a lot done. I didn't get everything done but I did enough to be really proud of myself. 

We have a nice, big finished basement, so there is a lot of room for the toys to spread out down there and take over. I worked mostly in the bonus room where we store the majority of the kids toys. I let it get pretty cluttered in the last 6 months so it was a mess. 

I usually have trouble letting go of toys as I have such a wide range of kid ages: my boys are 10, 7 & 3. I've been keeping a lot of things for my youngest to enjoy...someday.  Well today I got rid of a bunch of stuff. Thankfully I've got a charity pickup scheduled later this month to benefit from all the spring cleaning I'm doing.

Main Area

These are the before shots of the biggest room in the basement. Train tracks are everywhere thanks to Luke with Legos all around to complement.

After photos- I made the boys help clean up the train tracks and legos. Of course they quickly found some other toys that I had organized and dragged those out to play with.

3 Walls of the Bonus Room

Before- The three bins on the floor were full of mismatched toys, small pieces and Legos. It took a LONG time to go through them.

 After

Before- the boys pushed the toys all together against the wall to have room for two square.

After- I purged a lot stuff in this area.

Before- not too bad here

After- It's not readily apparent in the photo but the colored bins are now decluttered and organized. I spent a lot of time separating and matching little pieces.

Week one is done! Whew, I'm tired from all I did today but also happy to be more organized!

DIY Laundry Detergent

I started making my own liquid laundry detergent years ago but eventually stopped because I didn't like "cooking" it or having an open bucket of detergent in my laundry room. Here's an easy, frugal, "no-cooking" recipe for making your own powdered laundry detergent that I like better.

1 bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap, grated
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax

I grated the bar of soap first, let it sit overnight to dry out then placed it in my food processor to chop it up. (I prefer it to be as chunk-free as possible.) Next I added the washing soda & borax to the processor and pulsed a few times. Then I poured it the detergent into a pretty glass jar I picked up at Goodwill. To use: add 1-2 Tablespoons to your laundry depending on size & dirtiness of your load.