Monday Q&A | Weird Schedules and Bread Ends

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 don’t have a formal question to start us off today, but several of you have written to ask advice about adjusting family life to an odd work schedule, so I thought I’d tackle that topic first.

This is something I’ve had a lot of experience with, unfortunately, as Mr. FG’s worked almost every shift that one could come up with, aside from a true overnight shift (though a number of years ago, he had to be at work at 3:00 am, which meant he had to be up at 2:00, so it kind of felt overnight!) He’s also worked rotating shifts at points, and that came with its own set of challenges.

Anyway, here are some things that have helped me cope.

1. Look for the good.

Though there are some shifts that have had precious little in the way of upsides (I’m lookin’ at you, 3:00 am start time!), most of them have come with at least some sort of benefit. Though it’s tempting to focus on all the downsides, I’ve found it to be much more helpful to steer my thoughts towards the happy stuff. For instance, when Mr. FG had a Tuesday-Saturday work schedule, we missed a lot of Saturday events, but having our “Saturday” on Monday was kind of nice because few other people were off, and so whenever we went to go do something, we didn’t have to worry about crowds.

Even if a schedule has nothing good about it, one can always be thankful for the job itself. A job with a bad schedule is still generally preferable to no job.

2. Don’t compare.

I am very, very familiar with the temptation to look with envy at other people who have more normal schedules and heaven knows I’ve given in to it more often than I should. But I can tell you that nothing good comes from comparison…it just bums you out and blinds you to the good of your own life. Focus on the good parts of your schedule, and remember that there are downsides to 9-5 shifts as well (like more time spent in traffic!).

3. Keep the rest of the family’s schedule flexible.

Though I’m sure there are families who make two odd mandatory schedules work, it’s a whole lot easier if you can deal with just one mandatory schedule. Because we homeschool and because I’m self-employed, we’ve been able to adjust our lives to Mr. FG’s work hours. Without that flexibility, the amount of time we could spend together as a family would suffer significantly. For instance, with the Tuesday-Saturday schedule, we did school and I did my piano teaching Tuesday-Saturday so we could have Mondays off together.

Obviously, this isn’t a solution for everyone, but if you can manage to minimize other mandatory schedules in your life, it does help a lot.

4. Think outside the box.

Sure, it would be ideal to have weekends off, schooldays from 8:00-2:00, family meals at 6:00 pm, dates on Friday or Saturday nights, and it would be lovely to sleep from, say, 10:00 pm to 6:00 am. But it doesn’t HAVE to be that way.

If you can’t have your family together for a meal at dinnertime, maybe you could have a big family breakfast. Dates with your spouse can happen over breakfast or lunch, and weekdays can work as well as weekends. If you homeschool, lessons can happen pretty much any time during the day. And even sleeping can be arranged differently. For instance, when Mr. FG worked that ridiculously early schedule, he’d come home and sleep and then get up to spend the evening with the kids and me.

Of course, a positive attitude can go a long way toward helping you to think of creative ways to make odd schedules work. Looking at it as a challenge rather than a sentence to misery helps. 😉

What do you do with your uneaten bread ends? I’m not a baker so I buy mine at the grocery store, but it never fails that we have 2 or 3 pieces of bread (on a good week!) left in the bottom of the bag, getting stale and falling apart. I tend to throw them out in the yard but I worry a bit about raccoons or other uninvited guests thinking that I’m inviting them! Do you toss them out to the birds?

-Becky

With six people in the house, we usually don’t have a whole lot of trouble with this, but I’d recommend that you use your bread ends for bread crumbs. I’ve got a number of recipes that call for bread crumbs (like zuchinni patties), and I bet you do too. I just toast the bread, let it cool, and run it through my food processor. You can freeze the bread before or after you turn it into crumbs-whatever works for you.

Another idea is to cube the bread and use it to make bread stuffing (like you’d use to stuff a turkey or chicken). Again, you can freeze the ends as-is, or you can cube them and then freeze them. You could also make strata or french toast, both of which are really better with dried-out bread.

I’m sure my readers will have some other ideas for you as well. (Feel free to share tips for adjusting to odd work schedules too!)

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