It has been a long day at the office, or at the school, or out and about. You get home. You’re tired. The children are tired. You all need dinner.
This is when you need a professional cook. If you don’t have one, how do you organize your home so that you can feel good about getting home?
This is something that we are still working on. My husband works late and sometimes stays at work, so usually it’s just me and my daughter. We do television in the morning but not in the afternoon. This means that on work days, I have a hungry child who wants attention and a parent who needs to make dinner.
I have healthy snacks on hand to feed her. Let’s call them the dinner extension. When I am making dinner and I have a hungry child, I don’t want her asking for food and I don’t want her eating junk. I have healthy snacks like nuts, milk, carrot sticks or a little apple on hand so that I can give her one. Then she plays. I don’t feel that this undermines dinner – it allows me to make dinner! Let’s just call it an appetizer.
When I had a baby toddler, I wore her on my back in a carrier during this time. She wanted touch, and I needed to chop vegetables without a small person running around my feet. We could even dance to the music from the radio as I made dinner.
The freezer pantry saves me regularly. On days I have time to cook dinner, I cook double. On days when we will be out until dinner time, I take dinner out the night before and let it thaw in the fridge. Sure, I need to make a salad or steam some vegetables, but the main course is ready in a short time.
I also have a place to dump all of the items that come in from the day. This is the kitchen table. Thankfully, we don’t use it for cooking or eating – we have another table for that. As dinner warms up, I can put things away. That way, all we need to do after dinner is clean up the dishes, then we can have a quiet time to play or read before bed.
What do you do to help make coming home a little bit easier?
Image courtesy of marielle at Stock Exchange.