A Day In the Life of The Frugal Girl
It's been a long time since I've done one of these, I know...you've been asking me for a new installment for quite some time now.
I often think about writing one and then decide against it because that day is an odd day. But really, most days and weeks have something unusual going on, don't they? I mean, how often do you have a week where everything happens according to the schedule and no extra events or errands are thrown in?
It's pretty rare around here.
This is one of those deviate-from-the-ideal-schedule days...it's not ideal because I had to run errands after lunch, but it's a real day nonetheless, from last week.
The other times I wrote this type of post, the husband was working first shift, which made our days start and end early. So, this will be a lot different...we now keep night owl sort of hours. 😉
7:45-I roll out of bed, put my contacts in, check the weather on the computer (is it a long-underwear kind of exercise day?), read email, check Twitter, and get dressed.
8:00-I go for a walk. Sunny mornings are just the best, aren't they?
The kids eat breakfast while I'm gone. It's pretty nice that the kids can take care of that meal themselves...a big change from 5 years ago when I had a nursing baby and three other young children.
8:30-I'm back home. I do some calisthenic exercises (these vary from day to day.)
I have some spinach that needs using, so I make a green yogurt smoothie for breakfast (homemade yogurt, berries, bananas, and spinach).
9:00-We all gather in the living room for some reading.
Right now, it's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregard have both been disposed of, and I know Veruca Salt is up next. 😉
And I fold some laundry.
9:30-I put away the folded laundry and clean up the breakfast mess in the kitchen. The kids clear the table, but I need to clean up my smoothie mess and put some food away.
I have to cook our main meal in the morning, and it's so helpful to not have breakfast mess hanging around while I do that.
Then it's off to take a shower.
10:15-I'm finished showering, so I get dressed, put the dirty laundry in the laundry room, put on a bit of makeup, and straighten my bangs (they're pretty short right now and if I don't straighten them, they get curly and unruly and end up coming only about halfway down my forehead. It's not a good look.)
10:40-I sit down at the computer to write down what I've been doing so I don't forget! And of course, I check my email, Twitter and Facebook.
I switch a load of laundry around (it's a laundry kind of day, apparently), bring some upstairs, and get some things started for lunch. I'm making wraps, which need cooked bacon.
I have a terrible tendency to burn bacon if I'm not careful, so I fold washcloths while I wait for it to cook.
I made an ebay sale, so I package that up, and print a label. I weigh the package on my kitchen scale just to double-check the shipping weight...it's not super-duper accurate, but I always round up a bit just in case.
I pack some things for the husband's work lunchbox, and then finish up my cooking. I'm making Chicken/Bacon/Spinach wraps,
and we're having sauteed green beans (you should try them!) on the side. I remember that some of you wanted the recipe, so I take some pictures while I cook the beans.
12:00-We sit down to eat together. Since the husband works second shift now, this is our family dinner for the day.
12:45-We finish eating, clear our dishes, and I finish packing his lunch while he gets dressed for work.
1:00-He's off to work, and the kids and I clean up lunch together.
1:20-Sonia, Zoe, and I leave to run some errands. The two older kids stay home to do schoolwork (they've also been doing some in the morning.)
We drop the eBay package off at the post office, drop a few things off at my brother's house, and then pick up 50 pounds of organic red wheat. We order it from a semi-local company (though the wheat is not local), and they drop it off at host homes.
The nearest one is about a half hour from my house.
On the drive, Sonia and Zoe do their math and Latin flashcards.
We're making kind of a big circle with our errands, and our next stop is the library. We have a few books on hold, and Sonia and Zoe pick out some books they'd like to read.
The kids and I often take a picture in the mirror when we leave the library, but usually there are five of us. We decide to take one today just because three is more unusual (everyone goes to the library normally!)
Next, we stop at the organic store for some local chicken. I almost always let the kids pick out a lollipop from the bulk section there.
Finally, we stop at the bank to deposit some checks and head home. Phew! At least I got a bunch of errands done on one trip.
3:30-At home, I get Sonia and Zoe started on their schoolwork. On ideal days, we do this right after lunch, but sometimes other things need to be done after lunch. Fortunately, homeschooling is quite flexible.
While they work independently, I check the older kids' work.
Sonia and Zoe aren't as independent though, so I kind of hop back and forth between correcting work and helping them.
The older two correct their mistakes after I mark their papers, and I help them with that as necessary. I also put away the lunch dishes that I'd left to dry earlier in the afternoon.
I help Sonia and Zoe finish up their bookwork (for Sonia, Handwriting, English Grammar, Spelling and Vocabulary, Math, Reading Workbook and for Zoe, Math and Handwriting, plus some other busy work that she loves) and then we do what we call our couch work.
This is usually comprised of a journal entry, flashcards and read-alouds, but we already did our flashcards in the car. So, I read to them (a Bible book, and several science books), help them do a journal entry, and we're done.
5:00-6:30-The kids and I have a clean-up session, I check my email, clean my inbox, approve and respond to blog comments, and do a few other computer tasks.
6:30-7:15-The kids and I eat dinner, which is comprised of leftovers and more lunch-y foods, like yogurt, toast, and fruit. While we eat (I usually finish before they do) I read to them. We're studying the presidents right now for history this year, and we're up to Chester A. Arthur.
We studied Lincoln not long ago, though, and I found a library book about his funeral train, so I read that too. (Abraham Lincoln Comes Home
, which I thought was a very moving account. It almost made me cry, actually. Great text and paintings.)
We usually draw or color a picture of each president and then write down some things we learned about him, but since it's getting pretty late, we decide to draw Arthur tomorrow.
7:15-7:30-We clean up dinner, and put away any remaining playthings. Except for the shipping boxes, which the kids are still going to play with (Those aren't just boxes. They're a train!)
Sonia and Zoe put on their PJs, brush their teeth, give hugs all around, and I tuck them into bed.
7:30-8:30-I do more laundry (I swear I don't usually do laundry all day, but I just had a LOT that needed to be washed this day) and sweep/dust my room. I try to do one household maintenance task at night, like cleaning a bathroom. It doesn't happen every night, as is evidenced by the blanket of dust on my black nightstand. 😉
8:30-9:00-I take care of my email and update Quicken.
9:00-10:00-It's blogging time! I write my post for the next morning.
And that's the end of my day! I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my life.
I am really digging the dinner/lunch thing.we may have to try that too! My husband works 4 10 hour days and has Friday thru Sunday off. During the week it gets hard trying to prepare a meal later in the evening and eating around 7 pm, at least for me. I don't like eating that late and the kids are usually starvin Marvin. Maybe we can do a trial run of eating bigger meals during lunch time when my hubby is off and having a snacky dinner.
wow...ok. so i definitely need to tweak my homeschooling. i have 1 kid i school. 1 and let's just say it's a good 4 hours. i suspect i need to relax:)
Well, it depends. Sonia and Zoe are done in fairly short order because they're in kindergarten and second grade. But Joshua does take 4 hours sometimes. Do what works for you!
Thanks for sharing! Just wondering, have you found yourself feeling any different by having your larger meal in the middle of the day rather than at night? Any unexpected weight loss (not that you need any!) or are you having an easier time sleeping? I feel like having the larger meal mid-day would be ideal!
In Spain and Italy, most people eat their big meal at 2 and a light (or sometimes not-so-light) dinner at 7.
No, I haven't really noticed anything significant, and neither has Mr. FG. Except if I eat a pretty light meal in the evening, sometimes I get hungry before bedtime. I never was up long enough after dinner for that to happen before!
No shower until almost 3 hours after being up? Oh gosh, I'd be crawling in my skin feeling absolutely disgusting! My wife, on the other hand can stay in her PJs most of the day and not feel grossed out. 😛
Is that the Aldi cast iron pan or the Le Crueset? I'm also surprised you can use them on the smooth top range.
Well, I don't want to shower before I exercise...that would be pointless.
My mother would say "You take two showers, then."
Yeah, I grew up in that kind of environment. No wonder my skin sucks. 😛
Seriously! If I showered that much, my skin would be all shriveled up and dry. A little body oil is a veddy good thing.
In my experience you can use cast iron on a flat top stove, so long as you set it down carefully and always pick it up to move it. Never slide or you'll scratch the stove.
Yup, that's exactly what I do. And Battra, the pan is from Aldi.
Since I've been blogging about family mealtimes, I've felt like my whole day revolves around getting posts up. This was especially true when I was preparing blogs for the time we would be away on ministry for three weeks as I needed everything to be ready ahead. (I didn't know how much Internet access I would have--we travel overseas.) So I was interested to read that you have one hour set to do that. I wonder if I could do that--seems like I'm doing bits and pieces all day--especially when I get great ideas! 🙂
Busy, busy girl!!
Hi Kristen,
Those wraps look good! Do you follow Burgh Baby? She posted a recipe for veggie fajitas with homemade flour tortilla's. Thought you might me interested in making the wraps:
http://www.theburghbaby.com/burghbaby/veggie-fajitas-with-homemade-flour-tortillas.html
Patti
Love that you had pictures with the descriptions...it helped to follow along.
Very fun post, thanks!
I think I need to do a day-in-the-life blog post as well. I wouldn't have thought to photo document it, so thanks for the push!
Katy
Regarding laundry: When my kids started the 4th grade I made them responsible for doing their own laundry. This sounds really simple, but it really took about a year of reminding and monitoring for them to get in the habit; also for them to learn the lesson of waiting until they had nothing clean to wear :-P. They are now 17 & 19, and unless they are really slammed at school with a play or a big project, in which I will help them out with a load or two, they still take care of their own laundry.
I was in 5th grade when I started (mostly) doing my own laundry, too! I actually volunteered for the job when my mom accidentally (maybe?) shrank my favorite sweater. 🙂
I found it really weird in college when I encountered numerous other students who had literally never done a load of laundry in their lives. How on earth a child of 18 could end up exiting a household without knowing how such a simple machine worked was beyond me.
I'm curious, what do your children journal about?
A wide variety of things...sometimes we do weather reports, sometimes we write about their favorite things (My Five Favorite Foods, for example), sometimes we write about recent events.
Kristen,
Thanks for sharing your day again. I'm very encouraged by how you have adapted your family routines and schedule to fit your husband's work hours and to allow for valuable family time when he's home in the morning. It's quite a change from your last schedule when he worked early and I know it couldn't have been easy but it seems like you've done admirably.
Also I agree about screen time before bed. It makes it hard to sleep. I try to turn off the computer for a while before bedtime, but don't always succeed.
It has been a big adjustment for sure! I still feel like we're working out the kinks a bit, but we're in a better place than we were when we first started at least.
I really love these posts! Your days are so completely different from mine, but I enjoy getting these peeks into your life and I feel happy after reading. The pictures really help too. Thanks!
What a great look into your wonderful life. I always love how honest and real you are. Thanks for sharing!
I have to keep my hands busy to listen, too! It's not unusual for me to finish a phone conversation and find that I have cleaned most of the house on autopilot 🙂
Busy day! Do you ever watch tv? It's such a time sucker in my household. I've lessened the kids' tv watching drastically, but cable is one of my many vices.
BTW, still doing my research for the project. Have you ever read The Value of Voluntary Simplicity by Richard B. Gregg? It was published in 1936 and still rings true today.
Sarah - just off to Google. Many many years ago I stumbled across the concept of voluntary simplicity and it intrigued me. Thanks Jo
I don't generally. If I'm going to sit down and look at a screen, I'll choose the internet over the TV any day. The only time I really watch TV is on my weekly date night with Mr. FG...sometimes we choose to watch a movie then.
I haven't read that book, no. Is it still in print?
Hi - Voluntary Simplicity is in booklet form - but you can pull up the pdf. Save money and paper! As part of my project I pulled in concepts by Thoreau and Emerson, but I was also wondering about Quakers and Mennonites. Bingo! Quaker author Richard Gregg's concepts fit in nicely. THEN, in the 1970s, there was another wave of VS, where the authors deal with most of Gregg's work. Here's two links. Go with the Pendle Hill one first - it's the older and, in my opinion, better phrased.
http://www.pendlehill.org/php/262-php003
http://www.duaneelgin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/voluntary_simplicity.pdf
Sounds like a pretty good day to me! I've been meaning to find a local source and start grinding my own wheat as well. I noticed you mentioned having to watch bacon carefully to keep from burning it - have you ever tried cooking it in the oven? I bake my at 400 degrees on a wire rack on top of a baking sheet. It's *really* close to the pan frying method and to boot you can just set a timer! It takes between 12-20 minutes depending on your oven and the thickness of the bacon, you'll just have to play with it for a while. It's so much easier than pan frying in my opinion though!
I'm a big fan of oven-baking bacon although I use 350F. It takes the same time for anything but a small batch, is set-and-forget (no watching the bacon carefully, no switching batches in pans), and a lot less messy. If you use a broiler pan or a rack set in a pan, much of the fat drips off for convenient collection.
Ok, I'm trying this tomorrow - we're having bacon and pancakes for "breakfast for dinner", and I'm notorious for burning the bacon!
I saw the Stutzman Farms label on your wheat berries. I live just a few miles away from that little store. Their honey puffed spelt is my favorite.....
Love the glimpse into your wonderful day. I especially love to see how you fit worship into the schedule all the while keeping the four wee ones busy.
WOW! 1 hour for blogging, you are way faster than I am, it takes me 2 1/2 hours 5 mornings a week to get me up to 1 post a day for my blog, sometimes 2. That's 12.5 hours of work for 7 to 9 posts. Huh, never sat down to figure out the numbers, really I guess I am not far behind you (though I work on one blog and not numerous blogs, so sigh guess I am slow). Oh and I am so glad to see that you too have children who complete most of their school work themselves. As my kids are growing older I am finding myself more in the role of adviser and marker, than teacher.
Yeah, I typically only write one post per day, although on Friday nights, I try to write my Saturday post AND my Monday post because I don't blog on Saturday and Sunday nights.
You're homeschooling just right...that's how almost all of the homeschool families I know of operate. You're raising children who can work independently, and that's something to celebrate!
Veruca Salt is my favourite character! So glad she hasn't been disposed of yet!
'I want it now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
That is true. There's a certain pleasure in reading her spoiled rantings, isn't there?
There certainly is!
http://youtu.be/VedXJu13-8w
These day in the life posts are some of my favorites. I 'm amazed at how you're able to be so flexible with your schedule. The way you just move things around to work perfectly for your family in this season of life is inspiring. I wonder if my initial thought about my husband working the second shift would be, oh no how will that work? But, not only have you embraced it, it looks like it's working well!
At first I was a little bit like, "Whaaat?" 😉 But there are so many upsides to this promotion, (the main one being that Mr. FG enjoys his new tasks so much more) I really wanted him to get the job.
The lovely thing is that the kids' and my schedules are completely flexible...Mr. FG's is the only one set in stone. So, we have the freedom to arrange our lives in a way that works with his schedule. Without that freedom, this shift would be a lot harder to handle.
Wow! Busy day! Thanks for sharing, I loved getting a little insight into your life 🙂
I've thought about doing a day in the life post but my days are so scattered. Mondays and Wednesdays, I'm on campus teaching all day. Tuesdays, I have office hours in the middle of the day so I usually work from home in the morning/afternoon or go to see clients. Thursdays and Fridays are supposed to be my catch up days but that never seems to happen like I plan. Between Board of Education meetings, meetings for the nonprofit board I sit on and other town events, there is little consistency in my life. I'm hoping to have more of a plan after tax season and this semester are over.
Great post! You've really made me think about my schedule.
Yup, that's exactly what I was saying at the beginning of this post. There never seems to be a "typical" day because pretty much no one has those! I say just go for it and do a Day In the Life post. 😉 Just pick a day, carry your camera, and write down what you do.
Whew, I am all tuckered out just from reading about it! You sure do get a lot accomplished in a day!
I notice that you sometimes use "aloud" and other times use "out loud". I always thought that "aloud" was the correct term. Google, however, tells me that they are interchangable (not sure I believe that). If you don't mind, since you will teach your kids English grammar through highschool and must be very well versed on grammar, can you please tell me the rule for when to use "out loud" vs. "aloud"?
Thanks so much!
Aloud is definitely the more formal of the two, so if I were writing a formal English paper, I'd be inclined to use aloud instead of out loud. But blogging is pretty darn informal, so "out loud" is ok to use.
I do tend to use them interchangeably when I speak, and I blog the way I speak, so I'm not surprised I've included both in my blogging!
Thanks, Kristen.
I can't believe your kids sleep that long. I'm jealous. My 2-year-old goes to bed and wakes up the same time as we do. Our newborn sleeps a few hours before us, but wakes up at the same time as we do also.
Oooh, that would be rough! Sonia and Zoe definitely seem to need a lot of sleep...when I let them stay up later than that, they end up cranky the next day.
They usually wake up around 7:00 or so, but they can entertain themselves just fine until Mr. FG and I get up.
Wow, you are amazing, I am exhausted just thinking about what you do.
I guess being super organized is a must.
Congrats on your blog, you inspire me all the time.
Hugs from Australia
Raelene
My second grader loves Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she has read the book twice this school year on her own. Also Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I let her watch both version of the movie, she likes the 2005 movie better (more like the book, from what she said) but I still love the old movie (1971). She really enjoys all the books by Roald Dahl.
Kristen,
I don't mean to assume your wonderful kids are naughty, but how often in a day do you find yourself assisting with attitude adjustments and fighting? I don't have any children yet but several friends of mine seem to constantly be after their children for misbehaving. It scares me a bit (maybe I don't want kids!) but your kids seem so sweet! Do they whine and give you grief very often?
Thanks!
Ha! My children are definitely not perfect, so no offense taken.
I'd say that I spent more time correcting naughty behavior when they were little...Mr. FG and I spent a lot of time building a groundwork of obedience when our children were toddlers and preschoolers, and so we don't often have a high level of naughtiness around here on a daily basis. And whining isn't super common nowadays, though we certainly dealt with our share of fussing and whining when the younger two especially were small (not rewarding the whining with positive attention is helpful in curbing that).
I do have to deal with some fighting (between Sonia and Zoe mostly), and I do often have to remind the two of them to use kind words. With the older kids, the training is more nuanced now than it used to be. Instead of dealing with disobedience, I'm now trying to help them understand how something they're doing might be stemming from a heart that loves themselves more than others, or that a comment might be coming from a prideful heart.
Wow!! Love the post.. A question. You mentioned putting your lenses on at 7.45 am, when doyou get them off. I use lenses too and cant keepem on after 8hrs. :-(..
I love that you guys eat leftovers for dinner, hope I could get my kidos to do the same when I have them 🙂
Love your blog Kristen
Way to go on all the reading and veggies! Have you ever tried making bacon on a broiler pan in the oven? Way easier, tastier and less messy in my opinion. On hard days I look forward to my days looking accomplished and routine without any babies or toddlers! On a musical note check out our church's own songwriter- http://www.amazon.com/Anthem/dp/B0058U1BU0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331700614&sr=8-4
I recently discovered your blog and I love it! Thank you for being such an inspiration.
Love this post - just wanted to say that you have inspired me to do more with less, and to always think of ways to avoid throwing things out when they can still be used! Thank you for your inspiration and for sharing your stories with us.
I have been able to use your ideas to save some money and help the family... thanks.
I have found some additional savings opportunities and free meals (better than a discount) since I started mystery shopping. It's pretty easy, I evaluate and report back about the experience and sometimes get a meal for the family, sometimes just for one or two people. I also get savings on other items I would buy anyway have come my way.
I found another site (mysteryshopblog.com) and have discovered some good tips on how to be a smarter mystery shopper.
Anyway, thanks for all you do, I appreciate your blog.