The Happy Domestic

I do not like housework. I like to cook, bake, even iron clothes, when my house is clean & tidy, and above all QUIET. Which pretty much never happens. I still make an effort to cook and bake when I can muster the fortitude, because the payoff is so worth it! I do love food. But then, I do not like housework. And cooking and baking have the unfortunate side effect of creating more of it. Another blogger mentioned amongst her radical purging that she kept only enough dishes and utensils for one meal, and enough clothes for 7 days. Although I have considered such measures for clothes, it never occurred for me to do the same with dishes! I usually thank God I have so many dishes, so I can get through a whole day of meals (and then some, depending on the meals and who is home) without having to do dishes. But after sitting crusted with food from breakfast until late evening, cereal bowls get harder to clean. Forcing myself to use fewer dishes in a day - what a fantastic idea! I feel a...

I must confess I have been doing much more blog reading than blog writing! One of the many blogs I have been sporadically following made the following comment on budgeting for groceries: "If you are on a particularly tight budget, it is realistic to spend $100-$150 per family member for the month." The author also noted that this includes toiletries, diapers, etc. as needed. So, for our family of 6, not counting the 3-4 times a week we are feeding an extra 2 people, we should be spending... $600-$900?? I realize that this is highly subjective depending on what area you live, cost of food, etc., but this blog post was from July 2008! Here we are in 2011, and when I spend $600 a month for groceries, we are definitely over budget! Is my budget unreasonable? I do cook at least a few meals a week from scratch, and I don't buy pre-made meals. My "fast-food" dinners are things like hotdogs or spaghetti. I also have 3 kids in diapers (one almost done toilet training...

Our family has grown so quickly over the last three and a half years that most days feel like a little corner of chaos. My three youngest children are in diapers, and my two oldest are excessively hormonal teenagers! We are in the midst of renovations to add space for another child, and my darling husband is trying hard to balance two different jobs with the demands of our family life. Yesterday, notwithstanding the usual chaos, I had my most enjoyable Mothers' Day yet. In the morning I had Cheerios and Earl Grey tea in bed, while I read my favourite blogs and enjoyed a half hour of quiet time. After church I had a lovely and relaxing visit with my mom-in-law and sisters-in-law while the children played outside, and later we enjoyed a walk around our quiet neighbourhood in beautiful sunshine before a quick leftover dinner and bed. After the children were asleep I laid down for a catnap and then played a game on the computer for a little while, and my husband brought me a McD'...

Well girls, here I am coming out of blogger semi-retirement after such a long lapse. My own family life has consumed so much of my energy these past months that I have had nothing left over to give to the blogosphere... until now. The issue of maternal health is a pressing one, both nationally (in Canada) and globally, and there is much posturing and politicizing on both ends of the spectrum. If you care about women, if you care about humanity, READ THIS. The recent discussion of the G8 agenda for child and maternal health has reopened (at least in Canada) the debate over abortion. I have friends both "pro-life" and "pro-choice", but I have yet to find one person who thinks that abortion is evil but should be permitted. Generally supporters and opposers of access to abortions fall into two categories: 1) those who think it's wrong (usually based on religious beliefs), and 2) those who think it's sometimes the right choice for a woman (based on ethical and ...

A friend of mine with whom I was sharing the burdens of housewifery and parenting this week made me realize how far I have departed from mainstream North American consumer culture. Shocked by the thought of me spending 2 - 4 hours a day cooking, and trying to help me alleviate some of my time-stress and work load, she suggested I buy more prepackaged meals and convenience foods. This suggestion appalled me, and suddenly made me realize how much I have changed in 5 years. It's not just the fact that nearly any prepackaged food from the grocery store costs four times as much (or more) to buy as to make from scratch; as I ardently protested over the phone, the true costs are much higher, and certainly not worth the savings in time. Consider the ingredients of even a "healthy" prepackaged meal. The list is longer than your fifth grade essays, and half the ingredients are unpronounceable without a graduate degree in chemistry. Then think about the interactions of all those...

Last week, I took the plunge. Pushing aside my habitual procrastination, disorganization and impulsivity, I sat down and created a weekly meal plan. Breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, dessert or evening snack, and all beverages for each day meticulously planned out to the smallest detail, I then wrote a grocery list based on that plan. I estimated the cost of groceries required. And I had a fit. Here's the thing. My meal plan was based on exactly how much every member of our household eats on a daily basis, and was made up of foods we regularly prepare and consume. Everything was to be made from scratch, and sales and discounts were taken into account. My total came to just about $140. Our weekly grocery budget is $80, but allows for an extra $20 a couple times a month for diapers. How is this possible? I know for a fact that we have not been spending anywhere near $140 a week on groceries. I haven't been eating as much lately due to pregnancy sicknes...

Well folks, it's Christmas Day. Actually, night. And here I am in fine Christmas spirit, exorcising my humbugs on Blogger. I should be catching up on mountains of paperwork, which, actually, I have been doing to a certain extent already, but it's just so hard to concentrate on work with a belly full of treats, a house full of opened presents, and a brain full of notes to self (tinged with a smidgen of hormones). It may not be New Year's Eve yet, but I feel like summing up the year, or at least the month, in review. December has been... interesting. Other possible adjectives include strange, perplexing, frustrating, promising, sickly, busy, predictable, difficult, exciting, and full of change. I have a hard time keeping up with my own life. At least I'm not puking every day, which is more than can be said for the first few weeks of December. At best, my girlies are the highlight of my life, particularly when they're not driving me up the wall. And Thank You God for...

I have heard several couples declare they don't celebrate Valentine's Day. These are loving, well-adjusted couples who give a lot of attention to their relationship and their partners, every day of the year. Valentines Day, in comparison, seems like such a cheap, commercial version of the real thing, that they don't see the point in celebrating it. Sometimes that's how I feel about Christmas. One day 2000-ish years ago, Jesus Christ was born. He lived a remarkable life, and then he died. Three days later he rose again, and he has profoundly impacted the world and my life ever since. We celebrate him every day. We live life with him every day. So decorating a tree and buying presents for others and stuffing ourselves with treats seems so meaningless in comparison. And so much pointless effort. Then I think about how I saw Christmas as a kid. The lights, the tree, the mysterious packages, the delectable smells and tastes, all these gave me a sense of greater magic tha...

I have six kids. Seven if you count my husband. Are they all mine? Thankfully, no. But this kind of craziness explains in part why blogging has taken a backseat to real life in the past ...weeks? month? Anyhow. My girlies are turning 1 and 2 in a week and a bit, and I am going to be 28. For some reason I feel like I've been 28 forever and I should be turning 31 by now. We just found out that we have a foster child being placed in our home full time, and she is already staying with us. This is exciting, and so far things have been going well. All (3) of our girls are getting along great and enjoying each other's company. On Tuesday some friends of ours were able to get last minute flights to Alberta to pick up some belongings that have been missed for some time, so we are also looking after their three school-aged children. Despite my initial panic, life has continued on at a manageable but very busy pace. I love to be creative in the kitchen, but cooking for eight (me and h...

This past spring I blogged about my intent to set healthy habits , and to fit into my pre-preg pants. Now that it's autumn, I thought it was time for an update on my progress, goals, etc. Confession time. I have not been drinking 8 glasses of water a day. Some days I have forgotten to drink at all, and other days I have struggled to get in 4 or 5 glasses of water. This is partly because I have been drinking coffee, milk, and occasionally juice. From time to time I feel incredibly fatigued and headachy, and then I know I am dehydrated and immediately get some water. Sometimes being dehydrated has made me feel hungry, and I snack unnecessarily without thinking. I don't get 30 minutes a day of straight exercise, but I do get that at least 3 times a week. Carting children around helps. The good news is... I fit into my old pants! So it would seem that part of the problem was simply my abdomenal "muscles" (I can hardly use the word without sarcasm) still contracting af...

Today, finally, my house is clean, Clean, CLEAN! I am flabbergasted by the sheer productivity of my time this morning, that and the fact that the girlies slept for 3 whole hours, allowing me to get it all done. The usual stacks of dishes all got washed, pots and pans scrubbed and sparkling, counters made spotless, and even my sinks and faucets were scoured until they shone. Floors were vacuumed, baby clothes were sorted and put away! and laundry was gathered up from all over the house. Bathrooms were cleaned. Garbages were emptied, and beds were made. Windows were opened and rooms aired out. And this was all by lunchtime! My bedroom is unrecognizeable. This carpet... this dingy, stained, disgusting old carpet, that we meant to replace when we first moved in but never got the time or money together... is such an eyesore now. Now that you can really see it, I mean. But the rest of the bedroom looks pristine. It makes me want to paint the walls, like I intended to do over a year ago. A...

Last night we went out on a date to the Brighton Speedway. Now, I'm not normally into the whole stock car subculture, but this weekend we had a good friend racing and a few of us went out to cheer him on. The noise was, as I remembered from the one previous time I'd gone, painful and deafening. The air was a miasma of exhaust fumes, flying dust, and cigarette smoke. But the races were awesome . The skill of these drivers really hit me while watching these pure stock cars skidding and sliding through curves, then screaming and bumping their way down the straightaway. Serious skills are required. The sheer adrenaline that drives these races is contagious, and although at another time I would probably say it's just a bunch of dirty, smelly, polluting machines going in circles a gazillion times, up close I could not help being in awe and cheering at the top of my lungs for a favourite car. While I can't understand people wanting to poison their lungs, damage their eardrum...

It has been a good week. Sunday we took the kids to the Stirling quarry with some friends, and enjoyed some swimming and sunning on a gorgeous day. Monday we visited a veteran parent therapy home (for foster kids) and were impressed with what a rewarding opportunity we have, and how well suited to us. Yesterday I bowled badly (Tuesday night bowling league started the beginning of this month), but that was offset by a kind and anonymous giver who left a generous portion of veggies on our front porch - zucchini, squash, cabbage, potatoes... yum! The veggies came at a great time, because I had already gone grocery shopping but had not bought much produce this week. Now I'm baking zucchini bread - several loaves - to freeze for later. Then I'll make some Asian Cabbage Salad (a new family favourite!) and maybe some sauerkraut, and probably a delicious batch of curry for later in the week. Wow, what a blessing! We finally have a few relief days booked, meaning we will be getting...

Lately some conversations have brought me back to thinking about roles in marriage, and gender roles in general. A child development and crisis book I'm reading (from the early 90's) talks a lot about sexism issues and gender bias, but the more I read, the more I'm convinced they're missing the big picture. It seems that in our push to swing the pendulum away from the fiercely patriarchal and misogynistic culture of times past, feminists and other liberators have teetered over the brink of delusion toward uniformity. Let me illustrate this logical fallacy. We believe women are equally as valuable as men. Therefore we feel that women should have the same opportunities as men. Since we want to ensure women have the same opportunities as men, we insist that women are the same as men - and we skew job standards to gender, to support this assertion. So female candidates for a police officer position have one set of criteria they must fulfil, and male candidates have anothe...

In the absence of a productive garden of my own, I have been thriving off the clearance produce at No Frills - a fact I may have mentioned a few times already. Whether you have a garden abundantly producing, or produce abundantly available, all these ripe pickin's require fast use before they spoil. I previously blogged about an episode of peach chutney brought on by this very dilemma, and on a later day this week I was faced with a similar situation in home-grown veggies (or fruit, if you want to get technical). A few much loved friends and family members bestowed on us some very welcome garden goodies - tomatoes and cucumbers. We have been enjoying them freshly sliced with a sprinkle of salt, but as fast as we could eat them, they were heading toward spoilage. So, what could I do? The plump and juicy tomatoes, just starting to discolour in small spots, were the inspiration for a spur-of-the-moment experiment in a " salsa fresca " for pasta, which turned out fantasti...

I love, absolutely love, getting ripe fruit and veggies off the clearance rack (49c to 99c) at our local No Frills for next to nothing. I also love their doorcrasher sales - like a fantastic basket of peaches I picked up this week for a couple of dollars. Of course, peaches don't keep very well once they're ripe, so I had to find something to do with them. We've been eating them like crazy, and I have had a good chuckle at my husband peeling the fuzzy skin off his peaches before eating them. It reminds me of my little brother, who used to say "it gives me shiver-ies!" Last night I saw that some of them were starting to rot, so today I set to making peach chutney. I read online that if you dip a peach in boiling water for 30 seconds, the skin slips off easily. So, I blanched, skinned, sliced and chopped peaches this morning, sprinkling them with lemon juice and salt. Then I boiled vinegar and brown sugar with finely chopped onion, cumin, coriander, and a pinch mo...

Here we are in the final days (I hope!) of getting ready to open our home for foster care, and the list of things to be done seems interminable. Medicals are done, criminal checks are done, bedrooms are ready, but still there are the last couple of reference letters to collect, CO detectors to buy, small handyman jobs to finish, locked cabinet to pick up, and... first aid training to take! Just when I thought I had everything ready to go, I realized we don't have our CPR certification. I really didn't have any idea, going into this, how much it was going to cost all at once to get up and running. It certainly can be a deterrent for anyone looking at fostering as just "a job". For us, however, it has if anything given us an opportunity to reaffirm that this is something we feel is a real calling. Whatever it takes, we will make it through, because of our convictions. Being parents is an enormous privilege, whether of biological children or otherwise. It's worth i...

Yesterday was what Anne Shirley would call a "Jonah Day" for me. It wasn't the large cup of coffee that my toddler dumped behind the couch at 8:00 AM, it wasn't the 29°C heat in my house, it wasn't the food that got thrown on the floor at every meal... but these things didn't help. Things really started going downhill when I went to get Boo up from her morning nap and found her diaperless, smearing poop all over the crib, her body, her face and hair. Now don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and I can even see the humour of the situation - when it's happening to someone else - but at this particular moment, I felt like I was losing it. This little girl got an earful and besides that was forced under the shower despite her aversion to getting her head wet. If it's the only way to get her clean, I'm sorry, but she will just have to cry! After she was clean, dressed, and hair done up pretty, I put her downstairs in the playpen and went back up to st...

One of the reasons my posts have been sparse and oft interrupted in the last month or so is that we are in the processing of taking a big step towards opening our home to more children. That is, we are soon to be foster parents. Having passed through the rigours of psychological testing / personality profiling and an initial home inspection, we are now in the process of getting our home fully safety compliant, going through medical screening, criminal background checks, and character references. On one hand almost anyone can be a foster parent, but on the other hand, it sure takes a lot to get to be one! All the rigamarole, far from being burdensome, is just getting me more excited about being a foster parent to the kids we will have in our care. My Prince Charming and I have felt for some time now that we would like to adopt an older child who might have difficulty finding a good home. Ever since we started thinking about raising children, I knew I would love to have a big family...bu...

I made a new friend this month, who is as interested as I am in eating healthy, living on a dime, and family matters. You can visit her blog here , which is a fairly recent initiative. Deep in conversation with my new friend, however, I felt convicted of not having spent enough energy blogging about the OTHER "green". While a lot of my blog posts have focused on low-cost living, not so many have talked about our environmental impact. The fact is, my husband and I are both very concerned with living sustainably and practicing good stewardship, and finances are only part of the picture. Maybe I don't blog about eco-friendly living mainly because most of our household choices naturally tend in that direction without much thought. For a large part, frugality is synonymous with sustainability: For instance, buying in bulk reduces waste AND saves money. Cutting down on energy consumption reduces your carbon footprint AND saves money. Saving food scraps for soup and composting r...