Here we go…Mom Hacks!

After a ten-day near death experience, I am again upright most of the time and feeling not so bad. Not 100%, but maybe that’s too much to ask. For now I’ll settle for 80%.

So anyway, the old brain is clear enough (though the ears are still clogged) to write again. It’s time for the debut of

Today’s Mom Hack:

A houseful of husband and three kids means a houseful of hungry people.

It also meant, for me, being asked at least four times EVERY DAY this question:

“What’s for supper?”

(Sorry, we don’t say “dinner” at our house. I don’t know why. Pretty much everyone we know thinks we’re really weird…but there may be more to that than the supper/dinner thing.)

I heard that question so many times, day after day, year after year, that one day it was fairly likely I would smack the next person who asked it. Why was this innocent question so annoying? I don’t know for sure…maybe because of the obvious implication that I was the only one responsible for making food happen. Maybe because at least half the time, the comeback to my answer was a wrinkled nose and an “Oooh, yuck!”

Clearly, something had to be done.

Dry erase board to the rescue!

I bought one, magneted it to the fridge, and every morning I wrote up the menu for that evening. Every time I heard the question “What’s for supper?” my reply was: “You are not allowed to ask me. Go read what it says on the fridge. And no follow-up comments allowed…except along the lines of “That sounds great!”

It helped that I was a compulsive menu planner. Grocery shopping always happened on the same day each week, armed with a list of exactly the ingredients needed for the full menu plan for the entire week. All I had to do was check my plan and transfer it to the white board.

It took a little training, but lo and behold, it worked! This was when the kids were pretty small. When they got a little older and their schedules had us running several directions at most points of the day, I added something to the dry erase board notices every day: The daily schedule, with every single “be here at this time” listed out for each person. Believe me, that saved our butts many days when we would otherwise have forgotten an appointment, a lesson, or a pick-up. Posted in the kitchen, where everyone gravitates, anyway, the all-important schedule was pretty hard to miss.

For a mere $6.99 (or something like that – I don’t remember how much it cost, really) two huge problems were solved. Plus I LOVE writing on a dry erase board. It’s the teacher in me, I suppose.

So that’s Mom Hack #1. What do you have in your bag of tricks ? I’d love to share your ideas in a guest post – let me know!

Advertisement