The Easiest Way to Create A Minimalist Meal Plan (& save your sanity!)

Food / Home / Minimalism
minimalist meal planning, how to create a minimalist meal plan

Inside: Use this simple method to create your own minimalist meal plan, something that will save you precious time, energy, and sanity! As busy moms, we have better things to do with our time (can I get an “amen”?!).

If you hate meal planning as much as I do, you are probably constantly on the hunt for a miraculous meal planning hacks. You scour Pinterest and Google searching for the meal planning magic bullet.

You want something – anything – that will make meal planning less of the massive time suck and hair-pulling experience that it is.

I’m pretty sure prior to discovering minimalist meal planning. I tried every meal planning system known to man. And no matter what the system, I still hated meal planning. I dreaded having to come up with 6-7 meals my husband and I would actually enjoy eating – he is picky eater, not me.

And after an hour or two of frustration, I would come up a meal plan.

Finally.

Only to have to repeat the same awful process all over again a week later.

Ugh.

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6 Really Good Reasons to Stop Folding Laundry (guilt-free)

Cleaning / Home
Stop folding laundry

Inside: Are you spending all your time folding your kids’ laundry? Here are six good reasons to stop folding laundry and exactly how to do it to get your time back.

Neat and tidy drawers with nicely folded clothes make me happy. I am intent on raising kids who not only appreciate a clean home, but also know how to keep it that way.

And want to know something else? I’m one of those weird people who actually enjoys folding laundry.

I really do! Really.

In fact, I wrote an entire blog post about how the Konmari method of folding clothes changed my mom life (and if after you read this, you still want to fold your kids’ clothes, use the Konmari method).

Messy drawers? Gone for good with all those clothes filed neatly away, so you could see every single piece.

My husband’s drawers were no longer a complete disaster just one day after I put away clothes. Even the kids could keep their drawers straight (mostly).

I do still fold the adult clothes that require folding (and I still use and love the Konmari method for those clothes). About half of our clothes hang in closets, so that just leaves things like t-shirts, shorts, and pajamas.

Deeply wrinkled clothes aren’t really kosher for adults, so I don’t think I could ever stop folding our clothes. Although I did stop folding underwear – I mean, really, what’s the point?

But back to why I stopped folding the kids’ laundry….

So why on earth did a mom who loves neat and tidy drawers and folding clothes quit folding her kids’ clothes?

There are six, really good reasons.

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Our Relaxed Homeschool: 3rd Grade and 1st Grade {2018-2019}

Homeschool / Relaxed Homeschooling
homeschool 3rd grade, homeschool 1st grade

Inside: Are you going to homeschool 3rd grade or 1st grade this year? Check out the third grade homeschool curriculum section of this post for our core resources, and the rest of the post for additional resources we are using for the 2018-2019 school year for both grades.

Even though I am writing a curriculum post for the 2018-2019 school year, we are technically year-round homeschoolers.

I suppose you could consider our annual standardized test – as required by the state of North Carolina – the marker for when one school year ends and another school year begins. I typically administer the test in July or August each year.

While we don’t have an official “back to homeschool” day, we are starting a new tradition: an annual “NOT back to school” day!

I’m generally not bothered by the fluid nature of our homeschool days and years, but I know that my kids might need/want more special days to mark the years by.

Going out for ice cream (something we never do), playing board games and watching movies together all seemed like fun and easy ideas for an annual back to school day. Now to pick an official date in early September!

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Blog Income and Traffic Report {June 2018}

Blog Income Reports / Blogging / Work At Home
blog income and traffic report

Inside: My final blog income and traffic report! Read how I reached my goal of $1,000 a month income from this blog, and where I will go from here.

Welcome to my long overdue blog income report.

June and July were not very productive blogging months for me, as I was in the middle of my first trimester. I thought the first trimester was bad when I was pregnant with my first baby at 23. Nope! It’s so much more exhausting at 32 with four kids to take care of besides. I did the very bare minimum with blogging for two months in order to keep everything moving in the right direction.

When I first found out I was pregnant with my fifth baby, I thought it was going to be the death of my blog, of all the hard work I’d poured into it over the past year and a half. On the other side of my first trimester – when my motivation is lower than zero – I now see it very differently.

This pregnancy is the best thing that could have ever happened to my blog.

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10 Signs Relaxed Homeschooling is Your Homeschool Style

Homeschool / Relaxed Homeschooling

Inside: Is relaxed homeschooling your homeschool style? Read these signs to find out – you might be surprised! 

Relaxed homeschooling is a homeschool style that gets lost in the shuffle. It’s often used interchangeably with unschooling and eclectic homeschooling and minimalist homeschooling, partly because everyone’s definition of relaxed homeschooling is a little bit different.

While I am a minimalist, and minimalism does influence my homeschooling, I’ve never felt comfortable adopting the label “minimalist homeschooler”. I always identified much more strongly as a “relaxed homeschooler”.

And all of these signs that you’re a relaxed homeschooler? I nod along in agreement with every.single.one.

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A Realistic Christmas Budget: 7 Things You’re Forgetting to Include

Finances / Home
realistic Christmas budget

Inside: How realistic is your Christmas budget? If you’ve only factored in gifts (and maybe stockings), I guarantee you have underbudgeted because you’re forgetting to include so many Christmas items that all cost money – and they’re not cheap.

It’s only August, and Christmas seems REALLY far away. But unless you want to have a super depressing January after December’s credit card bills arrive, now is the time to start creating this year’s Christmas budget.

Paying off last year’s Christmas debt is not a fun way to start your new year, especially when New Year’s is supposed to be a time for inspiring goals and fresh starts.

Here’s the thing about Christmas budgets: most of them are not realistic. They focus exclusively on the cost of the gifts – the ones that end up under the tress. Very few take into account all the other Christmas spending that usually occurs during the holidays, which means your Christmas budget is seriously flawed.

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How to Stop Curriculum Hopping: The Secrets to Loving the Homeschool Curriculum You Already Have

Encouragement / Homeschool
how to stop changing homeschool curriculums

Inside: Do you find yourself changing homeschool curriculums every year, or even more frequently? Learn how to break the habit and to be content with the homeschool curriculum you already have. 

Over the past week I’ve jumped into a few Facebook groups for homeschool moms to ask my own homeschool curriculum questions. I couldn’t help but stay a while and look through the different threads. As a homeschool blogger, I particularly enjoy reading posts recommending new curriculums I’ve heard of, but never used personally.

As I scrolled through the comments after each curriculum recommendation, this statement kept popping up over and over again: “I switched to this homeschool curriculum…I don’t really know why though because we liked the one we were using before.”

Once? I wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But multiple occurrences of the same statement got my wheels turning.

Why are homeschool moms changing homeschool curriculums so frequently, even when nothing is wrong with what they currently have?

And an even better question: why can’t they stop?

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