How To Menu Plan

In my last post on Menu Planning, I shared how menu planning has been a great tool in helping me be more efficient. Here I will share how I plan my menu for the week.

Usually I plan for just one week. But you can plan for a fortnight or even for a month if your month is pretty predictable. Also, if your family is not as fussy as mine, you can actually rotate the same menu over and over. 

For example : Fried rice is served every Monday night while spaghetti is eaten every Tuesday night. Now if I can get my family to accept this, I’d be over the moon!

I usually plan on a week-to-week basis since dh’s schedule is rather unpredictable. There are certain dishes he prefers not to eat and I would cook those on days he’s not home to eat it Also the portions to be bought would be different if he’s not eating with us.

Some moms I know plan by their meals according to the meats they eat. For example, beef is always served on Fridays. So the menu plan may have beef stew the 1st week of the month, beef noodles the 2nd week, beef burgers the 3rd week, etc…Or chicken is always served on Tuesdays, so one week has chicken chops on the menu while the next week has roast chicken. Get creative as to how you want your menu plan to look like.

WhenI first started planning, I was rather stressed thinking I would have to actually come up with 21 meals in a week! But it really wasn’t that bad. First I started out with what I know how to cook – that’s helpful when one is pressed for time :) Then I listed all the dishes we have been eating all this while. I also asked the children what they would like to eat. Also, I would scour websites for easy to cook dishes that are easy to whip up. I do a mixture of Asian and Western cuisine just to jazz things up a bit.

Need more ideas to get started? You can check out Menu Planning Central. There’s also the weekly Menu Plan Monday meme organised by I’m An Organized Junkie every Monday.

The only issue I have with these menu plans is that they are usually ang mo* food. If you need Chinese/Asian food, I suggest you visited tingkat catering** websites. These will usually list a weekly sample of food they offer if you order from them. Check out their list and get inspired!

* ang mo food refers to Western food  ** tingkat catering services is a service we have in Singapore where one pays for a catering company to deliver lunch and/or dinner right up to your doorstep Mondays to Fridays, excluding Public Holidays.

Menu Planning

As promised here’s my take on menu planning.

First of all, a confession. I highly recommend menu planning but I do not like menu planning. I find it a pain to have to sit down and write out what we are going to eat for a whole week in advance. But I do it week after week because I like the results of menu planning. That is – peace and efficiency.

Peace because I no longer have to wreck my brains thinking about what to cook and I do not have to answer “What’s for breakfast/lunch/dinner?” many times a day! I just point them to the menu plan on the fridge.

I am also more efficient when I use my menu plan to organise my freezer/fridge. All the food for each day’s meals are labelled and packed together. This way, all I need is to pull out the correct “bundle” to defrost at the end of each day for the next day’s meals. Also, because my grocery list is based on my menu plan I seldom end up with missing ingredients. I say seldom since I do sometimes miss out an item or do not realise that stocks of another item has runned out.

I have written before in So What’s For Dinner? the benefits of menu planning so I will try not to repeat myself here It is really a lifesaver and another useful tool in making sure that our household runs smoothly. The other tool is, of course, having routines as mentioned in Schedules and Routines.

A menu plan is so simple and helpful and yet many moms I know do not use it. There are also many moms who are highly resistant to it. “There’s no spontaneity!” they cry in protest when I suggest it to them. I personally feel spontaneity is overrated. Especially if spontaneity causes mom to feel stressed and worked up.

The only time I survived without a menu plan was when I had only 3 children and lived a 10 minute walk from the wet market which I visited almost daily as it was next to the only playground in the area. I also had a lot more time back then Now I do not have luxury of always popping to the wet market or supermarket to pick up things that I have forgotten to buy.

Actually, one can still be spontaneous with a menu plan as one dish can be swopped for another on the list. Don’t feel like having fish today? Then swop with Thursday’s Beef Stew. What to do with the plan for fried rice now that dh has decided to bring you out for dinner? Push it to the next week. It isn’t carved in stone. It is a tool to help you be more efficient.

Yes, it takes discipline and time to sit and plan and even a mindset change. But if you want your home to run smoothly, you have to invest the time to plan for it to become so.

Try menu planning. And if at first it does not work out, try again! I had to work at it and tweak it many times before being happy with what I have now.

You may be interested in How To Menu Plan coming up next!

Schedules and routines

One major and important tool in our home is a routine. Having routines have helped to eliminate many day-to-day hassles, especially as our family has grown

I have generally been a fairly organised person, preferring to know what’s ahead rather than to fly by the seat of my pants, so to speak. It did cause some distress when I had a baby since babies have personalities of their own and don’t always follow the structure and routine we set for them.:)

That forced me to relax a bit. Then we had more children…now that really forced me to relax more and yet ironically, with that many young children under my care, I needed routines & schedules more than ever. It was a great tool that allowed me to run the household in a smoother manner. The children also enjoyed the predictability of things. 

In the beginning I had a fixed schedule which I really loathed to deviate from but with more than 3 young children, it was near impossible to run a home with fixed timings. There were a lot more interruptions – diaper changes, potty training, wiping up messes little people create, disciplining…. That’s when I moved from schedules (with fixed times) to routines.

Our routines have been tweaked many times to suit the needs of the family. When we started homeschooling, our routines had to change. And of course when we have a new blessing, we would have to juggle the timings all over again. We now have a rhythm to our lives. Things flow from one to another and not necessarily according to the clock. It is more peaceful.

An example : Every morning, we wake up, shower, have breakfast, clean up and do school. The sequence of things is always the same regardless of what time we (or me!) wake up. Even if we go out for breakfast, we’ll just do school when we’re back.

Living with a routine has also meant that we seldom have to fight with the younger children about meal and nap times. The toddler knows that she naps after lunch. Period. And she also knows that she can’t expect me to play with her when we are doing school in the mornings.

Routines have served us well.

If we should suddenly have to interrupt our routine, it is ok. Alright – I may not be happy, but it is ok We’ll just pick up where we left off.

How does one come up with a routine?

I will just cover this briefly. You can start with items that must be done and then work in the rest of the things that you would like to accomplish. Steve and Teri Maxwell explains it best in their book, Managers of Their Homes available locally at The Home Library. I have learnt much from the book and highly recommend it to young moms who are struggling to get a handle on their household, especially those without maids.

I started off with fixing meal and sleep times. Then I slot in what’s important and necessary to our family, such as schoolwork and chores. 

So, since I like us to eat our breakfast at 8am, lunch at noon and dinner at 6pm, they are what anchors our day. Bedtimes are staggered according to age, starting at 8:30pm.

The bulk of schoolwork is done in the morning when everyone is fresh and awake. Afternoons are for resting and playtime. That’s also when I finish grading their work and getting my internet fix Evenings are totally for playing. But as the children get older, I forsee that a part of our afternoons have to be set aside for schoolwork as well.

If you are feeling that you end each day having accomplished nothing, I would suggest that you set up a routine and write down all the things you have to do. Nothing beats looking at a list and seeing how many things you have done!

I understand that some people may have an adverse reaction to the word routine and stay far away from it preferring spontaneity. That’s fine if things still get done and your family loves it. If that works for you, great! But for those who are struggling to keep their homes in order and/or are feeling overwhelmed, give routines a try.

Next Up : Menu Planning

Getting Ready for Baby’s Arrival

Here we go again. As I pass the 36th week of this pregnancy, I am eagerly hoping that the baby won’t be late again! But I am also trying real hard not to hold my breath over it since the last 3 babies came 5 days, 3 days and 6 days past their EDD.

In order to distract myself, I have started to slowly prepare myself and the children for the baby’s arrival. Slowly because I am operating on a very low energy mode here

Starting this week, I will be doing the stuff I wrote about HERE and HERE.

But there are other things I need to do this time round as well.

Homeschooling

This year, we are homeschooling 3 out of the 6 children in the primary level (P1, P3 & P5). So I need to be very diligent in making sure everyone (me included!) finish what I have planned for our homeschoolin the next 3 weeks so that I won’t have a backlog of stuff staring at me after I birth.

We won’t be doing any formal school in March and April. But I am planning to do more read-alouds(History & Science specifically) with them. That is, if I am not dozing off in the middle of the day! I am not being ambitious here. If I can do just one hour of reading a day (probably split up into many instalments!) I would be happy.

Why am I doing this? I have learnt from past experience that too much free and play time gets everyone into trouble!

Home Management

I just started a final round of de-cluttering (very little left- whew!) of the entire house, room-by-room, 2 weeks ago. This serves 2 purposes – it removes all the eyesores (piles of papers on my table, stacks of toys all over the house, etc) and it will help the children when they do their chores.

Meanwhile, baby clothes, linens, cloth diapers, nursing clothes, mama pads, nursing pads all need to be pulled out of their storage vacuum bags to be washed and packed into their designated spots.

Confinement

I have also finalised my menu plan and my grocery list. It is just a simple 2 week menu plan that will be rotated from now until I feel bored or have more energy to think. For the immediate post partum period where we’ll be too busy to think about grocery shopping, I have already frozen food for Week 1 and will be freezing Week 2’s meal this week.

I am not freezing cooked food as I think most cooked Chinese food don’t freeze well. Instead I have just frozen the portion required for each meal and packed them into freezer boxes with their marinades. I will then pull the relevant boxes out to thaw and cook on the actual day itself. And since I do not follow any traditional confinement food taboos, this makes life easier on me

Pregnancy

As I approach the tail end of the pregnancy, these are the things I have done to prepare for labour and delivery.

Drinking my Pregnancy Tea

SinceI hit the 3rd trimester, I have been diligently drinking my Red Raspberry and Nettle tea.

Taking my vitamin supplements

I have also increased my intake of Vitamin C and started taking garlic and acidophilus to boost my immune system and to prevent an onset of Group B Strep especially since I am not going to be tested.

Taking it slow

Yes, despite all the things I need and want to get done before baby’s grand entrance, I am forcing myself to take it slow. Kinda contradictory huh?

What I have done is to spread out all the stuff that need to be done slowly over the course of the next 3 to 4 weeks. The important things that must be accomplished before the baby arrives have been scheduled for the next 2 weeks. The rest can be left undone if the baby should decide to come earlier.

Birth Plan

I have also submitted my birth plan* to my doctor so that we are in agreement about how I want the labour and delivery to go.

 

I generally have an extra burst of energy towards the end of each pregnancy (like now ) that allows me to finish up tying all the loose ends but surprisingly, this time round, my energy level is really low and I have to literally force myself to get these basic things done

I hope this post gives other moms-to-be some ideas on how they would like to prepare themselves for the labour and delivery. And if you feel like scrubbing the walls or ironing everything in sight, good for you!

* I’ll be posting my Birth Plan in the next few days. Keep a lookout for it!

******

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore

Some freebies

I received an email from the great people at Menu Planning Central giving away some free stuff that can help you in your household management duties.

Check out Free New Years Success Pack for Moms for free information on how to organise your fridge, lose weight and menu plan!

Remember menu planning is very helpful in both managing stress and your food expenditure!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

Is Your Home A Place of Sanctuary?

Or is it a place of chaos?

Do your children love to be home? Does your husband look forward to coming home? Or do they all prefer to be out as often and as long as they possibly can?

Please note that I am no Martha Stewart And neither do you have to be her. But all of us can strive to create a peaceful and harmonious home with whatever resources we have.

As we approach the Chinese Lunar New Year in 2 weeks’ time perhaps you can use it to prod yourself to start beautifying your home so that it can be a place of sanctuary?

I know what you are thinking, “Please! I don’t even have time for myself, who cares about the house!” But you will find that as you remove the chaos from your home, you will feel less stressed.

Start small. Start simple. Don’t run out and start buying decorations and ornaments yet! The first thing you need to do is de-clutter! Yes, de-cluttering is on my mind!

Just go around the house, room-by-room with 1 box/basket and 1 trashbag and start packing. Things that are to be thrown away go straight into the trashbag. Things that don’t belong to that room go into the box/basket. Then start putting away the things to where they belong.

This is not the time for deep cleaning – unless you have the time and energy to do so. What we are aiming for is removing surface clutter so that the eye does not see piles and piles of stuff everywhere but instead it sees clean, open spaces.

Don’t know where the things belong? Ask yourself – do you need this item? Why are you keeping it? Please leave all your guilt in the trashbag, ok? Don’t keep a gift coz it was given to you by a well-loved relative/friend but you hate it coz it is hideous/does not go with anything in your home/is totally impractical. You need to be heartless unless you have the luxury of space in your home or are willing to rent storage space.

Rule of thumb in any organisational book/website* will tell you – if you really can’t decide, put it away for 6 months. If at the end of the 6 months you have not used it at all, then it is time to throw or donate it away.

Once you have removed the clutter, you can start beautifying your home. Perhaps a vase of flowers. Matching hand towels. A new table cloth. A new bedside lamp. New bedsheets. New photo frames. New curtains. And it doesn’t have to be expensive to be beautiful.

Basically, a neat and organised home is what you are aiming for. No point having a lovely vase of flowers when surrounding it are piles of paper and toys! The vase of flowers, instead of a thing of beauty, becomes another piece of clutter.

Then if you have more time or if you are now totally motivated you can start de-cluttering what’s inside your cupboards and drawers. You may find that you now have 2 or more extra empty drawers/shelves. So now you can remove even more surface clutter!

I would also encourage you to make your bedroom a place of peace and sanctuary. Your bedroom shouldn’t act as a de facto storeroom. It is a place where you can go to to retreat and re-charge yourself.

If the baby/children are in there and you can’t do that, then look for another nook in the house. Everyone of us needs a personal space/chair/desk that we can go to to read or to space out. Think out of the box. We have at the moment 8 bodies in a 1500 sq ft apartment (including stairs!). If we can create a (small) space for ourselves, I am sure you can too!

Remember your home should be a place of sanctuary!

* There are so many books and websites out there to help you on de-cluttering and beautifying your home. To start you off, you may want to check out Edith Schaeffer’s The Hidden Art of Homemaking. The library also has tons of homemaking books if you don’t want to add another piece of clutter in your home

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

My DIY Planner

As the year draws to a close, it was time for me to set up another Planner for the New Year.

I have tried many types of planners (Yearbook for the HomeKeeper, A Record of the Learning Lifestyle, Make Your Own Brain In A Binder, The Schoolhouse Planner, etc…) and they are really good (from simple and basic to more detailed). BUT they never seem to suit my needs fully. So I gave up and started to design my own.

First I had to decide what exactly I needed and will use. And after going through all those planners, I certainly knew what I needed, what I liked but never used and what was totally not useful to me. Then I got onto Microsoft Word and started designing.

It’s really easy – and fun might I add. Use the free clip art function to design your very own covers and sectional headers. Or print off pictures from your own photo album to personalise it even more!  Use coloured paper to make it fancier.

I then laminate the front and back covers (makes it waterproof and smudgeproof!) and bind it all together. Voila! A Planner that no one else has! We own both a laminator and binding machine (basic models bought when Popular bookstore had its storewide 20% sale). But if you don’t own either, you can always visit photocopying shops that’ll do it for you for a small fee.

This is how my Planner is organised. But bear in mind I have only 6 sections or headers versus the multitudes the pre-printed planners usually have : 

• Monthly Calendars
• Homeschooling
• Homemaking
• Personal
• Blog Stuff and
• Health Records

Monthly Calendars :

There are loads that can be printed and downloaded from the net free. I downloaded and customised mine from Free Monthly Calendar or Planner Printable Online. The function of this section was for me to record important events for the year. This is different from the wall calendar that records our usual appointments.

Homeschooling :
a) Lesson Planners : This is where I have my weekly lesson plans printed and filed so I have a record of what they have done and if I have been faithfully grading their work! Their yearly plans are in a Homeschool File of its own.

b) Homeschool Info : Websites, books, curriculum and other interesting nuggets pertaining to homeschooling are recorded here.

Homemaking :

Menu Plans and Chore Lists are in this section.

Personal :

Actually this is like a miscellanous section. Lol! Things like my goals, books read, wishlist can be found here. And for 2009, my Birth Plan* and Things-To-Do-List-Before-Baby-Gets-here list also goes in here too!

Blog Stuff :

This would be where I write down the topics that I would like to cover in my personal blog as well as here on Building Up Moms.

Health Records :

Ah! I am most remiss in this section tho’ I really try hard to keep on top of it! I started this to remember the bouts of illnesses (serious ones) that the children get hit by. Like the recent rotavirus infection the toddler got.

This is also where I am supposed to record major health expenses – eye treatment, orthodontist, chiropractor, etc…But I have yet to be consistent So the records are obviously not up-to-date.

*******

And that’s it. No need to have unused and wasted pages that other families need but we don’t. No need to figure out how to modify pre-printed pages to suit our requirements either.

Just in case you think I am brilliant I test drove the Planner for 6 months before settling on this current format. I tried various combinations : colours/fonts/forms/covers/etc…till I am finally happy with it now.

I strongly recommend having a Planner to get organised. But if you don’t have the energy nor interest in creating a Planner of your own, try checking out the Planners I mentioned or google for more options. 

And if you are looking for a Chore Planner (which would go under the Homemaking section) to help you keep on top of the number of stuff you need to do (don’t we all?), you may want to look at Motivated Moms Planner with Scheduled Bible Reading thrown in! Click here to view more details.

Have A Blessed New Year!

* I’ll post my Birth Plan in a few weeks’ time for those who might be interested.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

The Blessing of a Timer

In a large household such as ours where there are more little bodies than large ones, a basic timer is a blessing. Mom no longer has to keep a close watch on the clock.

Example One : Nap or rest time for the 3yr old is 2pm. I set the timer for it and when she hears it, she’ll stop all her play and go up to the bedroom by herself. Without any fuss. In the beginning (as with all new things) she’d protest but after a week of consistent usage, she happily goes upstairs and rests.

Example Two : Computer usage is limited to 30 minutes each. Thereafter, each child who either played or watched is required to rest his/her eyes for 5 minutes by looking out of the window. So before they play a game, they’ll automatically set the timer. There’s no need for me to be the stopwatch.

There are countless uses for a timer – boiling soup/limiting computer usage (for mom!)/etc. So simple. So basic. And such a helpful tool for me!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For my personal musings, do visit Building An Ark in Singapore.

Organising My Fridge

Every once in a while, the fridge, like any other room in the house, needs to be de-cluttered and re-organised. Instead of buying a bigger fridge, I force myself to look at the junk in the fridge that needs to be cleared out.

No, it is not because I have great self-control that I am able to restrain myself from buying a new fridge. I am held back purely by the lack of space in our home! Recently, as I was exploring the possibility of buying a freezer (more about that later), a friend recommended getting a second fridge instead. Boy was I tempted! But some other friends (thanks Angie and Aunty Helen!) think that a freezer is more practical than a 2nd fridge. Hmmm…I was in a fix!

Our family IS growing and we’ll eventually need more food which needs to be stored somewhere So – do we need more fridge space or freezer space? And bear in mind, we have no space in our kitchen anymore. So whatever we buy has to fit into our already small and cramped balcony/laundry area!

Dh is of course against buying anything But you see, he isn’t the one who has to find space in the fridge and freezer after each week’s grocery trip. He’s also not the one who has to pull everything out of the fridge to get the item that is wanted which has been conveniently shoved to the back coz well, there’s no space for it!

So a fridge/freezer overhaul is needed! And in view of not having any help with food this time round come March ‘09, I need to get organised NOW!

So this is what I did :

FREEZER

I used to organise my freezer space by food type. Eg. all chicken goes to the bottom shelf. All pork goes to the top left hand corner, etc. But now I group the food according to the meals I have planned. Eg. Menu Plan says Chicken  Macaroni Soup for Monday’s lunch. So chicken bones (for soup) and chicken breast gets bundled together and labelled as “Monday lunch – Chicken Macaroni Soup”.

This way I hope to be more efficient and I’d know if there are any ingredients missing immediately instead of finding out on Monday morning when I am doing food prep for lunch!

As I sorted and labelled the food, I noticed that I can only shove organise 2 weeks’ worth of food in the freezer. My plan for the confinement period* is to pre-prepare (cut/marinate) a month’s worth of food before baby’s arrival. Hmmm….I need more freezer space!

FRIDGE

Previously, food was haphazardly placed in the fridge – item goes where there is space So I decided that I had to be more organised. Guess what? I threw out 4 bags of junk! Amazing the amount of stuff I had just shoved into the fridge. It really was a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind! And to think I thought I had no space in the fridge!

After thinking through, this is how I have organised my fridge :

From the top down, I designated half a shelf for my herbal teas (now into drinking RRL tea to tone and prepare my uterus for labour and birth) and the other half for my baking needs (yeast, extra butter, cheese, chocolate chips, etc). Then a shelf for leftovers and breakfast meats (ham, sausage) & spreads (jam, kaya).

Another shelf for de-frosting food. Tip : place a tray under the food to be de-frosted so that any raw juices that may leak out is caught in the tray and not all over the shelf or worse, drip onto cooked foods!

Next is a shelf for my leafy vegetables. Note : I keep my easily perishable vegetables in Tupperware and Lock ‘n’ Lock vegetable containers. I have found that this allows my vegetables to last at least 1 week if not more, compared to just wrapping them in newspapers and putting them into the vegetable bin. But because I use these containers, they are too big to fit into the fridge’s vegetable bin.

So I use half the vegetable bin to store my stash of longans and red date (to make red date tea for the confinement period) and the other half for the hardier vegetables and fruits.

On the fridge doors, I have one and a half shelves for eggs! Yep, we eat a lot of eggs A small space for the butter dish. One shelf is used to store for our vitamins and our cold water jug. And the last shelf is kept for drinks, usually just milk for our cereal or baking needs but sometimes juice and soft drinks.

After all that organising and de-cluttering, it was clear that I do not need more fridge space! I do not even need extra freezer space if I do my grocery shopping once a fortnight. It seems that my disorganised fridge has led to an inefficient use of time all this while!

However, having said that, I do need to prepare to go solo after I birth and there’s no way I can store a months’ worth of food in my freezer. So…we bought a 110litre upright freezer that looks like THIS from NTUC AMK Hub.

(*) It seems at this point in time, that we will be going fully solo after the birth of this baby. We’ve usually had no confinement help. But we’ve always had someone (mom or mil) helping with food. This time round, there’ll be no help on the food front. So instead of opting for tingkat service (no one can stomach tingkat food here ), my grand plan is to have a one month menu plan and pre-prepare (cut and marinated) all the food and freeze it. Then come meal times, I only need to de-frost and cook. Or dh can cook if he is available. This way, I still have freshly cooked food without all the hassle of food preparation.  With this in mind, we’ll need lots of freezer space. And this will probably be our method of keeping on top of the cooking challenge in the days ahead with 7 children (God willing), aged 10 and below!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore

Cutting down your laundry load

One way to cut down your housework and your power bills is to pare down the amount of laundry done daily. Laundry is something that should not be accumulated since it is definitely much easier to tackle a day’s worth of laundry than 3! Laundry is also something safe that a child of any age can learn to help out.

At the moment, we have 2 adults and 6 children. We do one load of laundry per day unless it is bedsheet changing or towel washing day. I only iron once a week on a Monday for at most, 2 hours each time. We use a Thomson, 5kg, top loading washing machine and sun/air dry our clothes.

There are many household chores I am behind But thankfully, laundry is not one of them. Let me share with you how I keep my sanity with our laundry and may it help you re-think the way you do yours.

Whites/Lights vs Blacks/Coloureds

Firstly, we separate our laundry into just 2 bins – whites/lights and blacks/coloureds and they are washed on alternate days, everyday, except on Sundays. This is the only category we separate the clothes into. Undergarments of both genders are thrown into the machine as well*.

Dirty clothes are immediately sorted into lights and darks by each child/adult when they take a shower. Every morning, after everyone has showered, I would bring down one basket of clothes to be put into the machine and start the machine. Oh to have a laundry chute, eh?

 

Our Thomson machine takes 1hr 40min for a full cycle and once completed, either the assigned laundry helper or myself will remove the clothes from the machine into a plastic basket to be hung up on hangers, which I will hang up on window grilles all over the house to be air and/or sun dried. Our machine is a top loading one and it is difficult for the children to close the catch of the drum properly. I learnt this the expensive way when I had to spend almost S$80 to get the drum repaired after the assigned laundry helper (6yrs old) decided to help me start the machine without closing the catch properly After that incident, I told them that I would load and start the machine myself but they can unload the machine on their own. 

One load per day?!

How do we keep to just one load of laundry per day? There are certain things we do that help us do this without compromising on hygiene. But if you are a super clean mom, then you’ll have to skip this part For one, we do not change our pyjamas/nightgowns daily. Unless someone has soiled themselves or it has been an extremely hot and sweaty night. We change them twice a week. The children are required to start unwinding and doing only quiet activities after they have showered and changed into their pyjamas. Dh and I also shower and change into our pyjamas just before we sleep.

Clothes we wear at home are of course changed daily. For me, I shower and change 3 times a day. So actually I churn out the most laundry of all! Clothes we wear for going out are worn at least twice before they are thrown into the wash. Unless of course they are badly stained or dirtied.

What about towels? We wash them once a week. Each time after they are used, they are spread out and hung up to dry on towel racks. So no stale smells or mould. Bedsheets/pillowcases, soft toys and blankets are washed once every 2 to 3 weeks.

Yes, we do have more children than the average 2-child family but I also now have the luxury of having older children to help out compared to when I had 3 children. Currently, I have 2 children (10yrs & 6yrs) assigned to hang up the clothes onto hangers after the machine is finished with them. Another child (5yrs) sorts out the clean clothes into individual baskets. Each child (10 years down to 3 years) is responsible for folding and putting back their own clothes into their wardrobes. The 3 year old has been doing it since she was 2. Do not underestimate your child’s capability!

Obviously when we cloth diapered, we would have to run more than 1 load per day. The diapers would be washed every other day. Which meant that we run 2 loads or 1.5 loads (depending on the number of soiled diapers churned out by the baby) every other day. These would go through a rinse cycle first and then a full cycle before being hung out to dry in the sun on a clothes rack.

Ironing

I only iron clothes that we wear to go out. So I do iron t-shirts that we wear out. But, no, we do not iron our pillow cases or bedsheets. And not our pjamas either!

To ensure that I can be productive and efficient in my once a week ironing session, I make sure that I shake out the clothes before I hang them up on the window grilles to dry in the sun so that a lot of the creases are “shaken out”. Also, I do not let the clothes sit in the washing machine for a long time, or the creases will “set”, making it more difficult and time consuming to iron.

I do not use a steam iron. I actually find it more time consuming to use a steam iron than a basic, old-fashioned and heavy iron. Yes, heavy. It has to be heavy so that business shirts can be easily pressed without me using much strength. I just spray the clothes with lots of water from a simple spray bottle and iron them. After many years of practice, I am able to iron very fast which helps.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how you can cut down your family’s laundry load. Besides just wearing your clothes more before throwing them into the wash, the best way to cut down your load is to share it with your children! 

* Many Asian people view female undergarments as “dirty” and so would never dream of washing male and female undergarments together.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.