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Are You in Survival Mode? by Andrea Simanson © 2006 All Rights Reserved The past few weeks have been very busy for me. I was living day-to-day in survival mode, and by Friday night I was just plain exhausted. If you're a busy, working mom, you know exactly what I'm talking about. No matter how hard you try the night before, the start of each day can be hurried and rushed, disorganized and crazy. The end of the day can be just as stressful as you work to get through things with your family at night, get all the kids to bed, and fall into bed yourself. You wake up and rush around, trying to get yourself ready for work and the kids ready for school. Someone forgot to make their lunch the night before. Someone else can't find any clean socks. Someone else got to bed too late the night before and isn't moving very fast. Any one of these circumstances can add stress, and more than one at a time is a recipe for f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n. The above description is a rut we all get into from time to time. Last week, I lived in this state of being daily. So I decided to wake up on Saturday morning and get control again. The following are some tips to help you get back on track if you're in a rut: 1. Go grocery shopping early in the weekend. The store won't be crowded. You won't have to work around shelf stockers. You'll be more productive because you aren't tired and hungry while shopping. You'll love the feeling of being on top of this aspect of your life! 2. Make all your lunches for the week ahead of time. If you shop at a grocery store with a deli, you can buy a large sandwich, cut it into sections, and store it in baggies in the fridge so when the time comes to make a lunch, it's easy for everyone. I shop at a warehouse, so can get a large turkey sandwich for $2.98, which will cut into 6 sandwiches, which comes to about $.50 per sandwich. There are no condiments on the sandwich, but lots of meat. If you price out a loaf of french bread and a pound of deli meat, you can easily spend more than $2.98. So not only does this idea help with efficiency in prepping lunches, it's also cost effective. My point is, do what helps take away the pressure when life is busy. If that means letting someone else do the prep for you, go ahead. And it doesn't always have to be more expensive. I recently priced out my homemade lasagna and compared it with the family-sized frozen lasagna. Guess what? The frozen lasagna cost me slightly less than the ingredients for my homemade lasagna. So, I keep a store bought frozen lasagna in my freezer for a busy day and I don't feel guilty serving it to my family from time to time. Of course, my homemade lasagna is the preferred choice, but it doesn't have to be the only choice. 3. Organize your food by type. Organize a shelf in your pantry for snacks. Don't make your family members look in five different places to find a snack. It will eliminate the age-old complaint "There's nothing to eat." Group like foods together to make it easy on them. Take time to put potato chips into baggies for the week, cut up veggies and/or fruit and store it in an easy access container. Create a lunch shelf that includes bread, peanut butter, fruit, and sandwich bags close together so kids can quickly make a lunch. Keep fruit in a basket on the counter to make it quick and easy to grab and go. Organize your refrigerator by shelves. We have all the yogurt on one shelf. The cream cheese and jelly are also stored on this shelf. One drawer holds premade sandwiches, string cheese, cheddar cheese and tortillas. Our freezer is organized with frozen breakfast items together on one shelf, lunch & dinner items on another, ice cream and treats on another shelf, etc. 4. Do only the laundry you will need for the first few days of the week. Depending on the size of your family, this should be only two or three loads of laundry, which is very doable. If you focus on starting and finishing these 3 loads, you'll be on the road to success. Once you get the week started out right, do a little bit each day to continue making progress and have a successful rest of the week. These four simple organizing ideas can make a big difference in your week. Help yourself by planning ahead, and you'll be amazed at how easy it is to remove stress from the busy life you lead. Andrea Simanson is a wife and mother of three children. She is the website and ezine editor of Successful Family Chores, putting FUN and ENERGY into everyday tasks! Visit  Successful Family Chores and sign up for her FREE bi-monthly ezine.

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