Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
I am a new mom and I stay at home with my 6 month old daughter. I work 5-10 hours a week for pay from home with the occassional work meeting outside of the home. I mostly do that work while my baby is sleeping. My question for you is whether or not you managed to do all that you do (specifically homecooked meals every night, baking bread, sewing) when you had a baby (or babies since your kids are somewhat close in age). For example, when Joshua was a baby, did you bake your own bread? I would love to do that but I struggle as it is to get dinner on the table. My baby needs to be entertained/played with when she is awake so it is hard for me to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I do make some freezer meals on the weekends when my husband can play with the baby, but I don’t want to increase that time too much since I think we should have family time on the weekends since my husband works Monday through Friday. Just curious how you handled that when you had smaller children.
Thanks,
Meghann
Probably the biggest difference between my life now and my life then is that I didn’t blog when I had babies! Blogging about frugal living makes things a bit more time-consuming. 😉
I have consistently made meals at home over the years (except for some months in each of my pregnancies where I was so sick I could hardly think about cooking) because eating out is SO expensive. The meals haven’t ever been fancy or gourmet on a regular basis, of course, but I think that’s ok.
Don’t feel bad about keeping your meals simple during this season of life, and don’t feel bad about not cooking everything from scratch. Your baby won’t always be a baby, you know? One day he or she will be more independent, and you’ll get some of your time back.
For now, soups, salads, sandwiches, grilled marinated meat, or frozen ravioli topped with a jar of sauce will do just fine.
And don’t stress about not baking bread…I did that some when my kids were little, but that’s because I enjoy it and because I was already a very experienced baker when I had babies. Making bread is only slightly harder than breathing for me. 😉
In case you missed it, check out my post about wisely choosing frugal activities…I put that together for a group of moms with young children, and the principles in it might help you in this stage of life.
I know your blog’s focus is around being frugal, but I was wondering if you could do a post about your decision to homeschool. I know you were homeschooled, so is that why? Was Mr. FG homeschooled? Do your kids ever wonder why they don’t attend a public/private school outside of the home? Thank you!
-Nicole
You’ll be pleased to know that I finally wrote a nice long post about why I homeschool my children.
Mr. FG actually wasn’t homeschooled (he attended public school), but before I even met him, he’d decided that he would like to homeschool any children he might one day have. So, that worked out very nicely.
My kids are aware of a lot of the reasons that we homeschool, and thus far, they have never, ever expressed a desire to go to a traditional school. In fact, they’re quite opposed to the idea, which I totally understand.
As a homeschooled kid myself, I never wanted to go to regular school either*. Mostly, that’s because homeschooling takes a lot less time than traditional school does (homeschooling is efficient, at least for the kids!), and that left me with lots of play time.
Even if they’re not sold on the educational benefits of homeschooling, not a lot of kids are going to argue with more playtime. 😉
Anyway, they’re all very happy with the status quo.
*I did go to college and I functioned just fine. I preferred learning on my own to learning in the classroom, though, mostly because I felt like a lot of my classes were really inefficient.
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Readers, do you have any advice to share with Meghann?
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Today’s 365 post: This is a Joshua-style photo
Glory Lennon
Wednesday 25th of April 2012
While I never home-schooled my kids, I so wish I had. Why? I found out how very inefficient regular school is when my daughter got expelled from school for a stupid thing she said and they sent one teacher to the house twice a week for two hour sessions. That was all it took to cover an entire week at regular high school--4 hours! That was an eye opener, indeed. How I wish I had those years back!
Anne @ Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy
Tuesday 24th of April 2012
I totally agree that homeschool is more efficient. I was home-schooled, and the current plan is to homeschool our children. So far, my oldest is only 3.5 but we can do phonics, math, reading and Bible in 20 minutes or less with one simple one-on-one session. From my experience as a K5 teacher, I recall that a LOT of time was wasted on classroom management, as well as trying to teach to the middle of the class with help on the side for advanced and remedial students. Teaching one at a time is SO much easier. Not to mention older students can work independently most of the time.
Laura Vanderkam
Tuesday 24th of April 2012
I am repeating the "season of life" line to myself a lot right now. Like when I wound up with two children in bed with me last night. Eventually, they won't want to do that.
Ingrid
Tuesday 24th of April 2012
Here is a link for the artisan bread that has been mentioned here today:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx
It's a hit in this family! And even though the sliding it onto the hot baking stone part is usually a disaster, I'm now content to just somehow scrape the blob of dough onto the stone, then take the knife and re-score the loaf and call it good. Still tastes quite delicious! :) The trick is not to burn yourself while doing that in a 450ยฐF oven...
Magda
Tuesday 24th of April 2012
Thank you for the post! I am so glad I found your blog because it has provided me with so many great tips and advice. My baby is 14 month old and I feel sometimes so much "pressure" because I am not able to keep up with the cleaning, cooking and doing it all like before. I am working full time and have a long commute. Right now I am the bread winner in our family so my baby is at daycare while my husband finishes school. I had to revise all of my expectations simply because I COULD NOT keep up with it all. I was sleep deprived, exhausted and miserable. I started thinking about my priorities and what was the most important at that time. For me it was to breastfeed. I know it might sound silly but it was a huge commitment to pump 3 times at work initially, fight with the daycare provider who was constantly telling me that the milk isn't "enough" and make sure that I get enough bonding time with baby when I am home. In the first month I was just happy to have clean underwear every day and my husband had to do most of the daily chores. Now everything is easier and I am so glad to hear that I am not the only one who felt "overwhelmed" with the standards that we are setting for ourselves. About the bread, I have a bread machine. It is so easy to use because you just throw the ingredients and push start. I have it now for 5 years and we had to buy a new insert two years ago because the original wear out. Totally worth the investment.