Category: Simple Living

You’ve just made a 5-star meal complete with an amazing main dish, perfectly matching sides, and a show-stopping dessert to finish it all off. Everyone loved it, but now you have a fridge full of leftovers. It all tasted so wonderful and fresh the day you prepared the meal, but then what happened?

Sometimes people are reluctant to eat the same thing twice in a row, and sometimes you don’t have enough leftovers to make another full meal for your family.

You don’t want to just throw them out, but what to do? Even the best home cooks sometimes run out of ideas or motivation when faced with a bunch of leftovers.

Why does leftover food go to waste?

None of us purposely let our food go to waste. So why does it happen so often? There are many possibilities: buying more food than your family will use before it goes bad; using only part of your food instead of all of it; cooking more than you need for a meal; failing to store food properly; and unwillingness to eat leftovers are just a few reasons.

The first two reasons have to do with planning ahead. Let’s take a look at how better planning can help save food from being wasted.

Don’t buy too much food.

This sounds kind of crazy, doesn’t it? I’m envisioning someone going to the grocery store and loading up her cart full of fresh fruits and vegetables, then going home and realizing she can’t eat all of it before it rots.

But that would never happen, right? Maybe not to that extreme, but many of us do find ourselves with limp or rotting produce once in a while, despite our best efforts.

If something is on a good sale, it’s hard not to buy it, even if you don’t have a specific plan for it. Now, I’m not saying you should never take advantage of sales on perishable food, but do so prudently: come up with a plan to use or preserve the food within a week BEFORE you load up your cart.

In most cases, you can freeze or can perishable food if you won’t be able to eat it all before it goes bad. Just make sure you have the freezer space or canning jars before getting too excited over that super sale on peaches!

Prevent food waste when cooking

Do you find yourself throwing out a lot of food scraps? Carrot and beet tops, potato and onion peels, and skin or bones from meat or fish are all commonly thrown out.

Composting is great, but you can go a step further. Before you pitch them, think about how you might be able to use these nutrient-rich parts of your protein and produce.

The leafy green parts of many root or stem vegetables are edible, and are a great source of many vitamins and minerals. Rhubarb is one notable exception: the large leaves of this plant are so high in oxalic acid that they’re poisonous to humans. But beets, carrots, celery, chard, and many others are perfectly safe and may be prepared in a variety of ways.

Instead of tossing the skin and bones from meat or fish, save it and make bone broth! Broth or stock is nutrient dense, and prevents food waste at the same time. I keep a bag in my freezer for odds and ends of carrots, onions, and celery. When I have a chicken carcass or some bones for making broth, I dump in the frozen vegetable parts and water to cover, and let the pot simmer all day.

Love Food Hate Waste has many more ideas about how to use every bit of your food and prevent food waste.

Don’t cook more food than you will eat

Sometimes, cooking extra food is a great idea-when you plan for it. But if you routinely have a serving or so of each meal left over, that’s where the problem starts. The leftovers get wrapped up carefully, then gradually pushed to the back of the fridge, right?

I’ll be the first to say that it’s hard to know exactly how much your family will eat. It varies by the day, by the meal, by their moods… and what about unexpected dinner guests? Also, you can’t just alter every recipe to produce the exact amount of servings you need.

Okay, so you can’t plan an exact amount of food for each meal. But this is still worth thinking about if you’re trying not to waste food.

Here’s an example. If you know there’s a particular meal that your family likes, but it’s hard to use the leftovers, then maybe you should plan that meal for when you have guests over.

Or if you’re trying a new recipe and you’re not sure how your family will take it, consider halving the recipe and making it in an 8×8″ pan instead of a 13×9″ pan. You can always make the full amount next time if they like it. Better to end up with an empty pan than half a pan full of food nobody liked!

Learn how to store food properly

Does your lettuce go limp before you can use it all up? You might be storing it the wrong way. If you tend to store all of your fruits and vegetables the same way, there’s a good chance some of them are aging prematurely. Take a little time to learn the best storage technique for each one, and you will be surprised at how much longer your produce stays fresh.

In the limp lettuce example above, try putting it in a bowl of cold water for 15 minutes to crisp up the leaves again. Then wrap the head of lettuce in damp paper towels and place it in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. Wrapped this way, it should stay fresh for weeks.

Here are some more ideas for keeping your produce fresh longer:

• How to store strawberries so they last longer (The Spruce Eats).

• Jill at The Prairie Homestead has some great ideas for storing root vegetables when you don’t have a root cellar.

• Lori at Our Heritage of Health explains how to store apples all winter long.

How to eat leftovers

Most people don’t have a problem reheating their favorite foods or finishing off last night’s fruit salad. But some leftovers just don’t look very appealing. Others are strongly flavored, and don’t blend well when you add them to soups or casseroles. What are some tips for learning to eat your leftovers?

• Sooner is better than later. The longer something sits in your refrigerator, the less likely you are to find it appealing. Try to eat leftovers within a day or two after you make the meal.

• It’s okay to ditch the sauce. If you have leftover meat or vegetables that are covered with a highly seasoned sauce, rinsing the sauce off makes it easier to use in some other dish with different flavors. (I know, I know, this involves wasting a little food; but if that sauce is keeping you from eating the leftovers, it’s better to save some food rather than none.)

• Make them pretty. Designate one meal per week for reheating leftovers. You can lay them all out in fancy dishes, line them up buffet style, whatever floats your boat.

Cook with leftovers in mind

One of the barriers I sometimes face with using leftovers is that the leftovers are unexpected, which means I don’t have a plan for them. Now, I like to plan my meals once a week, so that I don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner every day.

I usually leave a blank space in my meal plan for leftovers at least one day per week. Sometimes, however, I have more leftovers that I expect. But if I’m strictly following my meal plan, those leftovers just get pushed to the back of the refrigerator and forgotten.

To prevent this from happening, I try to plan my meals with leftovers in mind. If you know roughly how much your family eats at mealtime, you should have a good idea of whether or not there will be leftovers from a particular meal.

That’s great to keep in mind, but you can take it a step further and actually plan for those leftovers. For example, if you’re roasting a chicken with vegetables for Sunday dinner, why not plan for chicken soup later in the week?

When you plan ahead for leftovers, you can estimate which foods you’re likely to have left over. This is important so that you can make sure to have the right ingredients on hand to turn those leftovers into another appetizing meal.

Leftovers in the Freezer

If you end up with a lot of leftovers after a meal, think about whether or not you can freeze them for later. Many people like to cook extra so they will have enough to freeze for another meal later. I know I definitely appreciate the days when all I have to do for supper is pull a meal out of the freezer and heat it!

Some meals that freeze well are: chili, soups and stews, casseroles like shepherd’s pie or lasagna, taco meat, seasoned (or not) shredded chicken, beef, or pork, and cooked beans. Those are all foods I find very handy to have in the freezer!

Another way your freezer can help with leftovers is by storing those odds and ends you’re not sure what to do with.

Instead of keeping a half cup of cooked veggies in the fridge until you get around to using them (a.k.a. until you forget about them and find the container a month later), why not designate a freezer bag or sturdy container for leftovers in the freezer?

You can slide bits of leftover meat, vegetables, and cooked grains into it when you don’t have a specific plan to use them. When the bag is full, thaw the contents and make soup or a casserole.

Conclusion

If this sounds overwhelming, just start slowly. Using leftovers instead of throwing them out can become a habit, but it might take some getting used to.

Meal planning can be a big help when you’re trying to form this new habit. I have some great resources and ideas for meal planning here!

If you would like some specific suggestions for how to cook with leftovers, see this list of ideas for transforming your leftovers.

I hope these ideas inspire you to be more creative in how you think about leftovers!

~Kimberly

How do you know that you’re accomplishing anything with your life when your world is your household? I’d wager that every homemaker asks herself this question at some time or another.

It has to do with intention and integrity.

Living intentionally means knowing your purpose in life and setting goals to get you closer to that ultimate purpose.

Integrity is making sure your actions align with your goals, so you’re not professing to believe one thing while actually doing something else.

Here are some practical ideas to help you live with intention and integrity, even on the days when you’d rather be anywhere but home. Especially those days.

1. REMEMBER YOUR PURPOSE

Living intentionally starts here. You can wander through life watching the days come and go listlessly, or you can see each one as a new opportunity to learn, grow, and form yourself into the person you were created to be.

If you want to keep growing, but feel like you’re stuck in a rut, it helps to take a step back and remember where you’re headed.

What is your ultimate goal in the eternal scheme of things? What are the smaller goals that help you get there? How does your current job or situation fit into your dreams and goals?

For example, caring for young children every day might never have been your dream. But if raising your children to the best of your ability is important to you, then this period in your life has a purpose.

You don’t have to feel happy all the time if you know that you’re going the right direction, and moving toward your goal.

But if you’re unhappy and your life goals seem unattainable, maybe you’re aiming at the wrong goal.

Maybe it’s a goal you set for yourself years ago, and you’re not the same person now. In that case, you might need to do some deep thinking about whether or not the goals need to change.

But if your goals are sound, you can feel confident that you’re headed in the right direction. This may not sound like a big deal, but it makes your daily duties more meaningful- and therefore more bearable.

2. DON’T GET DISTRACTED

It’s great to fix your eyes on a goal, especially when you’re going through tough times. Just be careful that you don’t let that goal absorb all of your attention, or life will slip away from you.

Another bad habit is to let yourself be continually distracted. Media, in its many forms, is the number one distraction for most people today.

It is so easy for us to fall into this habit, myself included! But it’s so destructive. Before you know it, you’re paying more attention to a screen than to your spouse, kids, or God.

When this happens, we find ourselves living a lie: we say that our faith and families are important, but if something else is taking up most of our time, that can’t really be true.

How can we stop getting distracted? Take time to really be present- to live in the moment- at least once a day.

Put away your phone. Shut off your computer. Feel the warm sun or cool rain on your face. Smell the damp earth. Listen to your children. Look your spouse in the eye and have a heartfelt conversation.

It may seem strange at first, accustomed as we are to distractions. But living in the present moment gives your life richness. We are not machines, working mechanically with no self-awareness.

When we take the time to look around and become aware of our surroundings, we can appreciate not only the tangible world around us, but also things like beauty, goodness, and humor. Awareness of these is what makes human life so amazing and precious.

Your life is amazing and precious! Don’t let it slip away while you’re distracted.

3. MAKE YOUR HOME A PLACE WHERE YOU WANT TO BE

Please don’t take this to the extreme. I am not recommending a total renovation of your house here. But if you spend most of your time at home, why not add some personal touches to make it a place where you truly enjoy being?

Perhaps most people don’t need to be told to get creative and make their house look nice. But I admit that I have trouble with it.

I’ve been renting for the past eight years (four different places), and it’s hard for me to justify spending money on furniture or decor items when I know that we’ll be moving again. As a result, none of our furniture matches, and there are only a few pieces that I actually like.

We got a new (used) couch recently, and it made me realize how much I had disliked the old one. I actually enjoy looking at and sitting on this one! What a difference it makes when you like your furniture, instead of just putting up with the least expensive option.

Again, I’m not suggesting you go out and buy lots of new furniture. Maybe all that’s needed is a rearrangement of what you already own.

But if there are pieces you really dislike, see if you can start replacing them slowly. It might take a while; that’s okay. This can be a long-term project.

But this section isn’t only about furniture. What else can you do to make your home a pleasant place to live?

• Set out a vase of fresh flowers or some potted houseplants
• Hang some cheery curtains
• Open a window and enjoy the breeze
• Bake something delicious
• Use pretty tablecloths, place mats, or napkins
• Make a pretty tea shelf or cabinet to store your favorite teas and accessories
• Light a candle (or two)
• Clear the clutter
• Display the things you love where you can see them
• Turn off unnecessary noise and distractions

What else can you think of?

4. GET SOME FRESH AIR

Now that you’ve made your house a welcoming and pleasant place to live, it’s time to leave it for a while. Make it a goal to get outside every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Sunlight and fresh air can work wonders for a tired, drooping spirit- and you don’t have to live in the tropics! 

I just spent a long, cold, Alaskan winter inside our little cabin. I barely poked my nose outside for over two months. For me, that is no way to live. I need fresh air! When I finally did venture out again, I felt so much better, even though it was still cold. 

Spending time outside, even just 10-15 minutes, refreshes my mind and melts my worries away. Sometimes your house becomes a cocoon insulating you too snugly from the rest of the world. Stepping outside reminds you that there’s a whole big world out there, and you’re part of it!

How can you convince yourself to start spending time outside? Plant some flowers or herbs. Hang your laundry out to dry. Take walks around your neighborhood. Ride a horse- or a bicycle. Go for a hike. Meet a friend for a picnic. 

Even in the winter, there are plenty of outdoor activities: walking, ice skating, snow shoeing, and skiing, to name a few.

Yes, it’s cold in the winter. It’s hot in the summer. Sometimes it’s raining, or windy. Maybe you’re just too busy. I can always come up with an excuse to stay indoors if I don’t feel like it. 

If you find yourself doing this, ask yourself: Would I rather experience a little discomfort and get outside, or stay stuffy and cranky indoors?

If you choose to ignore your excuses and go outside, you won’t regret it!

5. FILL YOUR DAYS WITH MEANING, NOT BUSYNESS

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re productive just because you’re busy. You’re only productive if you’re making progress toward your life goals. 

There are a million things you could do each day, but you don’t have to do all of them. Busyness is not a virtue.

If you’ve thought about your life’s purpose and established goals, you can look at all the things you do each day and determine whether they are helping or hindering your progress toward these goals.

Sometimes something comes up unexpectedly and demands your attention. I’m not talking about those because you can’t control them or prepare for them. But there are probably a lot of things you do each and every day. They’re habits. 

Habits contribute to busyness because we keep doing the same things over and over without really evaluating their effects. Unproductive habits merely waste time and distract us from what’s really important. Before we know it, we don’t have time for anything extra, and maybe not even for the things and people that are truly important.

This is not a good way to live. It’s a recipe for burnout and discouragement. What can you do to fix it?

Start evaluating your habitual actions, and the things you do over the course of a normal day. It’s probably easiest to examine them one at a time, as you start to do something out of habit, instead of all at once.

Ask yourself if the habit is getting you closer to your goal, or driving you farther away from it. Some actions don’t seem to be related at all, initially.

Take, for example, brushing your teeth. This is not a morally good or bad action, and it might not seem connected to any of your life goals. 

But it’s part of caring for your body, and contributes to your overall health. So if you aspire to be healthy, then brushing your teeth helps you accomplish this goal. Likewise, if you aspire to be neat and tidy, brushing your teeth helps with that goal, too.

Some actions might be helpful in small doses, but quickly become counter-productive if you spend too much time on them. I’m thinking of social media specifically, which is a terrific time waster! I am ashamed of how much time slips away from me in this manner when I’m not careful. 

Even if you don’t use social media, don’t think you’re immune to this! There are plenty of other habits that fall into this category.

Make sure your habits are helping you become a person you respect. If they’re not, stop now- and cultivate a new habit in its place. 

This is more effective than merely trying to stop an ingrained habit. If you don’t replace it with something, you will feel like something’s missing, and you’ll be more likely to slide back into the bad habit you stopped. 

Replacing a negative habit with a positive one is essentially distracting yourself. It’s hard to stop a habit, especially if it’s an old one. Cultivating a new habit at the same time really does help, because you probably won’t have time for both!

6. START FRESH EACH MORNING

You probably don’t reevaluate your life’s purpose every single day. It’s not necessary, if you’ve formulated goals and identified what you need to work on to achieve them.

But even if you’ve done this, it’s still easy to get caught up in the multitude of urgent issues demanding your attention. It’s easy to go from one thing to another from morning till night, and repeat this for days or weeks without pause.

By the time you finally raise your head and remember your goals, you might be off track a little- or a lot.

How do you keep your sights focused on eternal goals in the midst of everyday life?

Start every morning with a brief reminder of why you’re here and where you’re going. 

That might be a morning prayer or offering, dedicating all your work and all you do each day to the Lord. It might mean writing down some of your long-term goals and looking at them every day, so you can keep yourself focused on them throughout the day. 

Another practice I find helpful is to start the day by determining the one best thing I can do today. Then I do it. Maybe not first thing in the morning, but I will get it done if I start the day determined to do so.

Your one best thing doesn’t have to be a huge and noble task. Sometimes it’s writing a letter to a friend or family member. Sometimes it’s cleaning up a pile of clutter that you’ve been ignoring. Sometimes it’s asking yourself a difficult question that you don’t want to think about.

Start small. Determining to do one good thing each day might seem like nothing, but even small acts of love keep you aiming upward and moving toward your goals.

7. BE GRATEFUL

The best way I know to banish a negative attitude is to be genuinely grateful for your blessings. So many things have been given us, which we did nothing to deserve. Every one of us has many reasons to be grateful.

But you can’t be grateful at all if you’re focused on yourself. (I’ll be the first to admit that I focus inwardly all too often.) This inward focus makes yourself the center of the universe, and it skews all of your relationships. 

That’s why the opposite of love is selfishness, or self-love. Love focuses outward, on other people. It wants the best for them (and not out of false piety, which really glorifies itself). Selfishness focuses inward, and hoards the best for itself.

To have a grateful spirit, you need to know your place in the world. This is called humility: realizing just how small you are, and yet how significant, how precious your life is.

When you can see yourself, other people, and the world itself in their proper relationships, then you can begin to see goodness, and be grateful for it.

You begin to see through the lens of gratefulness, and discover more and more gifts: a dazzlingly clear sky, the soft sound of raindrops, a baby’s tiny hand, or the worn and callused hand of an old man.

Everything is a gift, if you have the sight to see it.

Set your goals intentionally, and live with integrity

You may have noticed a theme here. Each injunction involves pausing to examine some part of your life, and making adjustments when your actions don’t line up with your goals.

That’s not an accident. You can only move upward if you’ve set a true goal, and setting a goal doesn’t guarantee accomplishing it.

You have to be intentional about the way you live your life if you want to accomplish good or great things. Saints and heroes aren’t made by accident. They are formed through discipline and integrity.

Jordan Peterson captures the essence of what it means to “live properly” in his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos:

Orient yourself properly. Then–and only then–concentrate on the day. Set your sights at the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and then focus pointedly and carefully on the concerns of each moment. Aim continually at Heaven while you work diligently on Earth. Attend fully to the future, in that manner, while attending fully to the present. Then you have the best chance of perfecting both.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B. Peterson

Get your priorities straight first. Think about your purpose and goals. What do you need to change to become a person that you respect? How can you approach each day as a new opportunity to do good? How can you live today in the light of eternity?

If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading more about The Purpose of Homemaking.

Have you been feeling the urge to simplify, organize, and declutter your space? For some, the end of the year is the ideal time to set their houses in order. Others prefer to do it at the beginning of the year or in the spring: both seasons feel like new beginnings when change is in the air.

Maybe you’ve been getting that urge, but it feels more like guilt over your messy house than excitement at the opportunity to simplify.

I hope this list gets you excited about decluttering and makes you want to jump right in!

Outlook matters

Does the very thought of minimizing or decluttering give you a sinking feeling of despair?

Before you even start thinking about decluttering, we need a positive mindset: something that will keep you motivated and focused on a goal.

Why does it matter? Well, your perception of decluttering (or minimizing, or simplifying, or whatever you want to call it) sets the tone for the entire process.

If you see it as a huge chore looming ahead of you, you’re likely to drag your feet and do it reluctantly. Reluctant decluttering isn’t as effective as enthusiastic decluttering. Neither does it achieve the same results.

If you can start with a positive mindset and see decluttering as a process that will help you trim the excess from your life so you can focus on the things you really love, then this sets a totally different tone for the whole project.

It becomes almost a game: you give yourself a worthwhile goal and challenge yourself to do your best, knowing that the more thorough you can be, the better the end result will make you feel.

You really can do this, whether you like organizing and decluttering or not. The key is to start with the right attitude. Here’s how to do it.

Finding the right words

Let’s start with words. Words are important. How you say something impacts how you think about it. And how you think about a project influences your attitude toward it.

If “decluttering” just sounds like a bad word to you, what about “simplifying?” “Or minimizing?” Who wouldn’t be excited about a “home beautification project?”

Try to find some way to phrase it that sounds appealing- or at least not disheartening! I’ll try to use all of these words in this article, but I’ll probably use “decluttering” most just for simplicity’s sake.

Picture your ideal home

This is a common recommendation, whether you’re talking about organizing tactics, home decor, or finding your “signature style.”

Basically, it means daydreaming about your ideal home. Sounds fun, right? Then write a description, draw a picture, or find pictures that capture the essence of your dream. Pinterest or home decor books or magazines are great sources of inspiration.

These pictures give you something concrete to look at and renew your inspiration during the decluttering process (which is often messy and can be discouraging).

Picturing your ideal home is a helpful tool, if you don’t try to change everything all at once. Don’t fixate on trying to imitate someone else’s house or clothing too closely, or the end result will feel empty.

My rule of thumb is to find your ideal, then work with what you already have. Your decluttering process probably doesn’t involve buying a new house, so your home isn’t going to look exactly like that glossy magazine photo.

But you can reimagine the space you already have, and create something you love. It’s hard to do this when your house is so full of stuff that you can barely see it. (If you want to read more about this, check out my review of Cozy Minimalist Home.)

That’s the beauty of decluttering: it allows you to start again and create a collection of things you really love, whether you’re tackling a closet or your entire house.

Imagine your life in that ideal home

This is the answer to the question, “How can decluttering help me?” And that is the key question, isn’t it? It’s what provides you with an incentive to start, and also what keeps you going even when it’s overwhelming or you feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

What do you feel when looking at the picture of your ideal home? Peaceful? Cozy? Relaxed? Energized? Serene? Inspired? Whatever it is that defines your ideal home is your end goal of decluttering.

Consider writing down a few words that describe your ideal home and putting them up next to your picture. That way, you can refer back to your ideal when you feel frustrated or discouraged.

Set yourself up for success

If you want to enjoy decluttering instead of dreading it, then it’s not enough to daydream and set up a pretty picture. There is actual work involved, but don’t despair! Give a little thought to the process before you start, and you’ll save yourself from headaches and disappointments later on.

Method to the madness

Once you get your ideal home and lifestyle firmly in mind, it can be tempting to jump into declutter mode right away. After all, you’re excited now, and you want to get going before that excitement wears off.

I get it. But before you start, it’s important to have some kind of system in mind. Choose what you will focus on: clothes, books, kitchen and housewares, linens, papers. If you want to tackle everything, that’s great, but you still need to choose a starting point.

There are different decluttering and organizing methods out there. Some people like to go room by room; others sort through all of one category (like clothing, books, or papers) before going on to the next.

Within those two broad methods, there are numerous more specific organizing strategies. You don’t need to narrow it down any more if you don’t want to. It can be overwhelming just looking at all the different organizational philosophies out there!

If you want to do something in depth like the KonMari method, go for it! Just know that it’s okay to ONLY organize your closet or your living room if that’s all you feel ready to take on right now!

I prefer to declutter and organize by category, but that might be because our cabin has just one large living space plus a tiny bathroom. Tackling one room at a time wouldn’t be much of a starting point for me.

Whatever method you want to use is fine; just choose something that works for you and stick to it.

Choose a time wisely

Decluttering isn’t a job to jump into as soon as inspiration strikes. If you do, you’re likely to get distracted by other chores. Even if you can concentrate on your goal, there are bound to be other things that come up and demand your attention.

Kids need love and attention and diaper changes. Husbands need love and attention and lunches packed. They all need meals at regular intervals. And then there are all the other household tasks.

If you decided to tackle a large category or room, it will probably take longer than an hour. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to do something for more than an hour, I have to plan for it ahead of time.

So sit down and take a look at your week. Find a day that looks fairly calm, and schedule your home beautification process for then. Don’t try to start in the evening after supper. That’s just setting yourself up for frustration, because it’s almost a guarantee that you won’t finish before bedtime.

Minimize Distractions

This goes along with choosing your time wisely. If you foresee distractions, try to find ways to eliminate or reduce them.

For example, I have a baby and a toddler to work around. If I want to be able to focus on my minimizing mission, then I start when the baby takes a nap. When he falls asleep, I put on some music and get my toddler set up with books and toys so he can play by himself for a while.

Your distractions will vary, of course, and you can’t foresee everything! Just think through the scenario and if any potential problems or distractions come to mind, address them first.

Plan Ahead

I’m talking about supper. Make sure dinner is an easy one that day (read: not meatloaf, mashed potatoes, homemade bread, and dessert).

Decluttering will probably take longer than you realized, even if you just start with a small area. Not only that, but if you don’t finish what you started all at one time, you’re apt to feel discouraged and drained of energy for anything else.

You might think that making a great home-cooked meal will give you a sense of accomplishment even if decluttering didn’t. I’ve definitely thought that way.

When it comes down to it, though, at the end of the day when I’m already discouraged, the last thing I want to do is make a big dinner. And if your heart isn’t in your work, it probably won’t give you the satisfaction you crave.

So rather than trying to tackle several big projects on the same day, give yourself a break and pull a meal out of the freezer.

Set the Mood

Here’s an idea for those who really dread cleaning or organizing of any sort. Think about your ideal home, and the words you used to describe it. Choose an essential oil that exudes those same characteristics, and diffuse it while you declutter.

Essential oils can help clear your mind, soothe or energize (depending on the oil used), and boost motivation. They can give you the spark you need to face the task at hand and march bravely in!

Plus, it’s a sensory reinforcement of the goal you are working toward. If your ideal home is soothing and restful, lavender or chamomile essential oil might be a good choice for you to diffuse.

If bright energy is what you’re after, try citrus oils or peppermint. (These are also great for boosting energy and motivation during the declutter phase, even if that’s not your end goal.)

Want to feel warm and cozy? Try this recipe for a blend of grapefruit, angelica root, black pepper, and cypress essential oils to diffuse throughout your home.

Start Early

The earlier in the day you begin, the more time you have to finish, right? I’m not saying you should get up an hour early just to start decluttering (unless you want to, of course!), but look at your schedule and plan to start in the morning if possible.

Also, it’s easy to be motivated in the morning, with the whole day stretching before you. If you don’t start right away, it’s easy to keep putting it off until a “later” that never comes.

No more excuses. Just eat a healthy breakfast, pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea, and go for it!

How do I get my motivation back for decluttering when I’m overwhelmed?

You’ve begun the process of decluttering. You set a time and tackled one closet or category. You sorted and made separate piles for keeping, tossing, donating, and giving to your little sister.

But then you have to go do something else: change a diaper, pick up the kids, make dinner, whatever. The mess is left on the floor, and now when you walk into that room, it looks worse than when you first started.

I know it’s discouraging, but that’s just part of the process. It’s easy to look at the mess and think you’re not getting anywhere, but that’s exactly wrong. The mess means you are committed to getting the job done.

If you’re at this stage of the game and feeling frustrated, I encourage you NOT to touch the mess again until you have another big chunk of time to work on it.

It can be even more frustrating to try to chip away at a big task like this in 5-minute increments throughout the day, and it will make the task seem enormous. I find myself getting more and more discouraged, because it seems like I’m not getting anywhere.

This is not the most effective way to go about it. Stopping and starting a task like that means wasting many minutes staring at the mess trying to remember where you were in the process and what you should do next.

It’s much better to wait until you have a little more time, when you can really get a substantial amount done. That way, you will feel a greater sense of accomplishment for spending the same amount of time on the project.

Next stop: your simplified home

I hope you have found some of these tips helpful in motivating you to start decluttering. Not everyone can get excited about clearing out closets and sorting through piles of stuff (not to mention getting rid of some things).

But my hope is that with a positive mindset and a thoughtful plan of action, you can make what could be a daunting task into something more manageable.

Happy home-beautifying!

~Kimberly

It’s so easy these days to get caught by the lure of fancy cooking. Making meals takes up a fair amount of time each day, and most of us like to keep it interesting. However, there are some good reasons to stick to a simple meal plan, despite the temptation to experiment with elaborate recipes.

The Lure of Gourmet Cooking

There are days (or weeks) when menu planning seems to require too much energy, and then you can end up eating the same dishes week after week. Most of the time, I crave more variety and creativity in cooking–and that’s where the problem starts.

Social media is full of glossy photos of mouth-watering meals. Cookbooks have high-quality, full page pictures displayed alongside the recipes. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good advertising, and I am very susceptible to it!

Exotic cuisines generally aren’t my style, and I don’t often try them. But elaborate recipes with fancy ingredients can be pretty tempting, both for the challenge of making them correctly and for the delight in serving (and eating) a fancy dish.

Reasons to Cook Simply

Now, there are several reasons why this is not the best cooking habit. First, to put it plainly, our grocery budget doesn’t accommodate a lot of fancy ingredients. Pantry staples and fresh, whole foods? Yes. But specialty condiments or expensive brands? You won’t find those in my kitchen.

Also, who wants to run to the grocery store every other day because you wanted to make a meal that requires ingredients you don’t usually stock? Not me!

The other negative effects aren’t quite as easy to see at first glance–but they are just as important. These other costs are time and peace of mind. They go hand in hand, because the more time I spend cooking unfamiliar or elaborate recipes, the more stressed I get.

This can be magnified when you’re cooking for a special occasion or a large group of people. The costs of time and mental energy can really add up to make you exhausted and sick of cooking.

Lessons Learned

A few weeks ago, I had found a recipe that looked exciting, and I really wanted to try it. I only had to buy one “special” ingredient, and that’s only because my cilantro died. So it wasn’t a pricey meal, but I could tell it would be labor-intensive.

Add to that the fact that it happened to be my worst day of a nasty cold, and then someone decided it was a good day to clean the house from top to bottom…

Cooking and cleaning all day with a cold made me grumpy (have you tried chopping onions when your eyes are already watery?), and by suppertime, I just wanted to go to bed.

The meal wasn’t anything to write home about, either. I was hoping that it would be amazing and we would end the day on a high note, but instead it just left me wondering why I spent all that time and effort on it.

I could have had a much more peaceful and enjoyable day if I hadn’t tried to cook such an elaborate meal.

So what’s the solution? Never cook fancy meals? Stick to rice and beans for the rest of your life? I don’t think so. Rather, I try to set a simple meal plan and stick to it most of the time, while allowing room for more elaborate meals on special occasions. It’s part of living an organized and simple life.

How A Simple Meal Plan Can Decrease Stress

But doesn’t meal planning take lots of time and complicate your life? you may wonder. It doesn’t have to.

Now, if you sit down with ten cookbooks and a few Pinterest boards full of recipes, then try to choose a week’s worth of meals from that huge selection, it’s going to be overwhelming. It can take hours and leave you feeling frustrated.

I know because that’s one of the methods I tried when I was learning how to plan meals.

But if you go about it with a more reasonable strategy, meal planning can save a lot of time you would have spent staring into the fridge wondering what to cook for dinner.

When you have your meals planned in advance, you don’t have the daily stress of coming up with a meal and hoping you have all the ingredients.

You can just glance at your meal plan in the morning to see if there’s anything to make ahead. If not, you don’t even have to think about dinner until it’s time to start cooking!

This gets cooking out of your head, eliminating stress and giving you time to think about other things.

What is a Simple Meal Plan?

It doesn’t mean you have to eat the same meals over and over again, or only eat desserts on holidays. Not at all. The beauty of a simple meal plan is that you can intentionally schedule a variety of simple recipes so you’re not always stuck making the same four or five meals!

By simple meals, I mean those which you can prepare from ingredients you normally keep on hand, and which don’t involve many different dishes.

Typically for us, this would be a casserole, soup, or one pot meal, along with a vegetable and/or bread. There’s a lot of room for creativity within that framework, so I don’t feel cramped.

Remember that the individual dishes should also be fairly simple- at least as a whole. If each part of the meal takes you two hours to prepare, I wouldn’t call that a simple meal.

When I say that, I’m talking about hands-on cooking time. Of course baking bread or roasting a chicken takes hours, but most of that time you aren’t actually working on it.

Slow food is fine. (It’s ideal in my book!) Elaborate cooking isn’t bad, but for the sake of simplicity, it’s best saved for special occasions.

Meals to Mark the Days

If you eat exotic or fancy meals all the time, how do you mark the meaningful days of the year? Growing up in a tradition of fasting and feasting at different times during the year, I have always seen food as an important way to commemorate holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions.

Preparing special meals on these days is a simple way to make them special, and it doesn’t involve storing bulky decorations or spending a lot of money.

But again, it only seems special in contrast to simpler meals on ordinary days. So my goal in creating a simple meal plan is really to plan special meals on special days, and serve simpler fare the rest of the time.

And when I talk about saving special meals for special days, those come fairly often in our house. Of course big holidays like Christmas and Easter deserve elaborate meals. On birthdays, we let the birthday boy or girl choose the meal, and celebrate with cake and ice cream.

But we also celebrate special feast days in the liturgical calendar: both solemnities (the highest ranking feast), and those saints’ days that have a particular significance to us.

Now, I don’t make huge meals on these days, but they are a good excuse to make dessert or have some food associated with the saint, like Irish food on St. Patrick’s day.

Flexibility is Key

A simple meal plan is a great tool for streamlining your cooking–if you use it that way. On the other hand, if you create a meal plan and then think you absolutely need to stick to the plan, it could end up complicating your life.

Remember my cooking fail example above? The more reasonable option would have been to cut myself some slack that day both for being sick and for deep cleaning the house. I should have substituted an easy meal for the complicated one I had planned.

Keep this in mind when building your simple meal plan. If you plan a week’s or even a month’s worth of meals at a time, remember it’s completely acceptable to adjust the plan as you go.

If a special day comes up and you just don’t have the time or energy to make an elaborate meal, don’t beat yourself up over it. There are much more important things in life!

Balancing Simple with Special

One of my favorite parts about having a simple meal plan is that special days no longer come up unexpectedly and leave me scrambling for a last-minute dessert. I now plan ahead for birthdays and holidays, so I’m sure to have all the ingredients I need.

In my ideal world, the everyday fare in our simple meal plan would be punctuated by bigger Sunday dinners and a few saints’ days each month, plus birthdays and big holidays with their own special meals.

I’m not quite organized enough to do all of this yet, but it’s getting there. And I’m okay with celebrating random days once in a while because I found a recipe I just had to try!

To learn how to set up your first meal plan, read this article on Easing into Meal Planning.

For more on simple living, check out these articles on living in a small space and simplifying road trips with a toddler.