I was recently asked to write a guest post on Kathie Morrisey’s Character Corner blog about encouragement. (You can read that article here on the blog!) When I sat out to write encouraging words, I came back to what I always come back to–prioritizing leads to encouragement. I can encourage myself by setting my priorities and following through on them. It’s true….it has happened to me countless times during my thirty-two years of homeschooling and continues to happen to me now as an entrepreneur and online teacher. So I wrote my article for Character Corner–and decided to make a video to follow it up. I hope that this prioritizing help encourages you as much as it has me throughout my parenting years.

Before I give you the outline, I’d like to leave you with some other tools to help you in your encouragement and prioritizing journey:

1) Podcast: Overcoming Obstacles in Parenting

2) Wondering Wedensday–Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home

3) My Organization Beginnings: Do the Dailies!

4) 5 Influences to Determine Your Priorities

5) Video: How to Prioritize

Here’s a short outline for this video, Finding Encouragement Through Prioritizing:

A. Introduction–Priorities are what I did that day

1. I did my priorities

2. I did my dailies

3. Priorities are not always exciting and grandeur

4. Priorities start with the things we do every day to make our home a success

5. Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

B. Prioritize Your Day

1. Most important things first each day

2. Put things that need done every single day in the first part of the day and don’t do anything before them

3. Delighting in Dailies Part I (here) and Part II (here)

C. Make list of Priorities and Attach Actions

1. Priority is a priority if we do it; if not, it is a wish

2. Priorities are the final outcomes; list of habits/actions are the way we will reach priorities

3. If we do not do something consistently, it is not a priority–only the things on our calendars and checkbooks are priorities

D. Put the Actions That Help Us Meet Priorities in Daily Schedule

1. Daily, weekly, monthly priorities need actions to make them happen

2. Put these actions down in daily schedule, calendar, planner, etc.

3. These actions should come ahead of everything else

The post Video: Finding Encouragement Through Prioritizing appeared first on Character Ink.

The post Putting My Productivity Trainings in an Order to Help You the Most! appeared first on Character Ink.

How’s your “back to school” productivity, scheduling, and prioritizing going? Mine is full on crazy with all of our new fall endeavors—but thanks to the many mechanisms and tricks that I learned from three decades of homeschooling and two decades of curriculum writing, I’m still afloat! 😜

I recently did a video on my personal FB profile about “breaking it down”—how to approach overwhelming tasks and take them step by step. I’d like to share it with you to help get your “organizing thoughts” on.

So many times we just need to “break it down” in order to “get it done”!

Blessings on your fall school year—no matter what daunting tasks await you!

Donna 

More Videos on Productivity! 

The post Break It Down…Get It Done appeared first on Character Ink.

Earlier I introduced Gregg Harris’ “attachment” principle for doing the many things that are important in our kids’ Christian upbringing. (Read Attaching Important Things To Your Schedule here.)

Today I want to introduce another paradigm that has kept us going in all of the myriad Christian training endeavors: If something is important to you, you will do it more often than you do not.

Simple, really. But it has kept us going when we felt defeated, overwhelmed, or unsuccessful in our parenting. No matter what was happening, we tried to follow that principle. When one of us got discouraged, the other would remind the first that we were, indeed, doing what we were supposed to be doing.

I haven’t done afternoon story time for two days in a row with Kara’s colic. Ray’s answer? All that matters is that you do it more often than you don’t. And I knew that it was true. I am not perfect. Managing a houseful of preschoolers certainly made perfection on a daily basis out of the question!

However, I knew in my heart of hearts what I wanted our home to be. I knew what I wanted my day to look like (and what it needed to look like in order to accomplish all that we wanted to accomplish).

We knew what we wanted in our children’s Christian upbringing. And we knew that as long as we persevered and did those important things “more often than not,” we could make it.

Make that your goal for new disciplines in your family—that if you plan to do devotions every school morning during breakfast, and you make it three of the five—you have done it “more often than not.”

If you want to read aloud to your tweens before bed during the week, and you read three out of the five weeknight bedtimes, you have done it—“more often than not.” And you are well on your way to success in carrying out the things that are important to you in your Christian parenting.

Raising children for the Lord is not a sprint. It is a marathon, or if you are married, a life-long relay. Running fast and hard at the beginning is not what will get you to the finish line. Slow and steady is what will get you there. And reading, praying, singing, talking, choring, playing, teaching, training, etc. “more often than not” will help you cross that finish line someday knowing that have done what you were supposed to do—without regrets for all of the “priorities” that never truly were priorities but just unfulfilled wishes.

How could the “more often than not” principle help you in your parenting? Would it bring freedom? Could it bring more consistency than you get with trying for perfection?

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The post More Often Than Not—The Secret to Consistency Without Defeat appeared first on Character Ink.

Thirty years ago, Ray’s mentor said, “Sit down with Donna every week and ask her, ‘What change do you think we need to make? What do you need for me to do?'”

He continued, “After you do this for a long time, it will give Donna peace, and she will feel secure that you really care about your family and how to improve it.

He said, “Then one day, you will ask her ‘What do you need for me to do for you?’ and she will say ‘Nothing at all. What can I do for you?'”

Well, that time of my saying “nothing at all” has never happened yet in over thirty years! 😉

But he was right about part of it: the peace and security that come from knowing for over thirty years that my husband wants good things for our family as badly as I do is incomprehensible.

A change a week times fifty weeks a year times thirty-plus years–equals a lot of change. Granted, we didn’t do this every single week of our lives. But even if we made a change a month for thirty years….

Twelve months times thirty years equals 360 positive changes. That is 360 opportunities to make our family stronger. It is 360 times to solve problems. It is 360 situations to improve.

It is 360 painless times to say, “We can do this. We can make changes in this area, and we can make this month better in our home than last month!”

You see memes on Facebook and other places all the time that read something like one of the following:

1. Just do it! The time is going to pass whether you do it (a fitness activity, usually) or not, so you may as well have a good change being made as the time passes!

2. Make the change (again, usually fitness-related). Sixty days from now (or whatever), you will look back if you do it, and be glad you did. If you didn’t do it, you won’t look back and be glad you didn’t!

And so it is with family changes. We all have things to work on in our homes. We need to tweak the schedule so that things run more smoothly. We need to discipline a child differently so that the child’s behavior is changed. We need to remove so much fun or add more fun in. We need to drop things for our lives to have time to spend on/with a certain child at a certain time. We need to take our focus off of one thing and put it on another until a skill is learned. And on and on and on.

However, those many changes can feel overwhelming when we look at them all at once. (I used to make “Master Changes Lists,” so I know what I’m talking about here!)

But what if we didn’t have a “Master Changes List,” but instead we just looked at this week, this moment in time, and we decided to do one thing to improve our family….and what if we really carried out the steps necessary to make the change? And what if once we got that change down pat, we took on another problem area and solved it–and again really did what it took to make it better?

Now that doesn’t feel overwhelming at all–and not only does it not feel overwhelming, but it also feels good–and doable.

We are talking on the Facebook page about how my husband and I kept going–NOT GIVING UP week after week, month after month for thirty years of parenting so far. This is one of the things that kept us going–knowing that we had the ability to change things that were not working in our homes–but also knowing that we didn’t have to do everything all at once.

You can do this! You can have the family life that you want. You can discipline your children properly and in love. You can raise children who have the character of Christ—not perfect, mind you, but virtues in their lives that you know the Lord wants for them. You can have fun in your home, have organization, and develop deep relationships with your children…

…one change at a time…facing one thing today and another thing in another week or month…because even a change a month times twelve months a year equals a lot of change…

The post A Change a Week—or a Change a Month appeared first on Character Ink.

The scene was a common one for this “young mama” (then!) of five children ten and under (so far!): I worked my tail off all day long and still felt like a complete failure. My husband came home from a typical twelve hour day to my cries of “I didn’t get anything done today that I needed to do” and “I just don’t understand why I can’t get more done as long as the day is and as hard as I work.”

And once again, he answered with sweet words that pointed me to prioritizing, something that I was still in the process of learning: “Did you rock and feed the baby?” I nodded yes.

“Did you do Bible time this morning?” I nodded yes.

“Did you do read aloud time?” I nodded yes.

“Did you do story time with the littles?” I nodded yes.

“Did you speak words of encouragement to the kids?” I nodded yes.

“Did you make sure everyone did their morning routines and chore sessions?” I nodded yes. (He knew my schedule well!)

“Then you got everything done that you really needed to! You got the PRIORITIES done.” ….And off he went to finish dinner and clean the kitchen.

And somehow, I was encouraged. I was encouraged through completing my priorities.

We had always talked about our priorities. We had agreed on them. We had mechanisms and routines in place to be sure we got to them.

Yet, the grandeur, non-daily, and sometimes exciting eluded me (and oftentimes, some of the dailies still eluded me!).

It would be a couple more years until I grasped the joy of fulfilling my daily priorities. And many more years until I understood that the quote by Aristotle is absolutely, positively true: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”’

(Find out how that happened for me in this productivity video)

It’s funny because today, after thirty-two years of homeschooling and now two years of empty nesting, some of my greatest joys come in prioritizing and fulfilling my priorities each day—my dailies first then the “grandeur, non-daily, and exciting”!

So how can you (1) Determine your priorities and do them? AND (2) Find encouragement through doing them?

There is something amazing about sitting down (with spouse, if possible) and writing out your true priorities for the year or the month or the week. And then writing the actions that it will take to make those priorities happen.

But there is something magical about following through on those things during that year, month, or week. Being able to look back and see that you really did the things that you have pre-determined are true priorities is the ultimate encouragement for homeschooling parents.

I know this isn’t the typical “outside encouragement” from a motivating article or moving speaker. (I love those too!)

But I also know that nothing felt as good or brought me as much encouragement as prioritizing and following through on my priorities did. And I so want this for young homeschooling moms.

Of course, it doesn’t just give you encouragement…you are heading towards big goals when you prioritize and follow through. Your preschoolers will learn to obey and sit still and be kind. Your new readers will be reading fluently before you know it. Your pre-teens will become independent with their daily school lists. Your teens will follow through on their assignments.

And you will be encouraged.

So encouraged.

So….some prioritizing and encouragement tips!

1) Prioritize your day.

Put the most important things first. And do those before you do anything else. Only put the things in your schedule for the first part of the day that truly need done every single day.

2) Make a List of Priorities for the Month and Attach Actions to It That Will Help You Fulfill the Priorities

We say something is a priority. A lot. However, we have to understand that a priority is only a priority if we do it. Otherwise, it is a wish or a dream. Many times we are unsuccessful in carrying out our priorities because we have vague, dreamy ideas of what they should be—but we don’t put real actions with them to be sure we DO them.

Priorities are what we do. If you were to pull out your virtual calendar, daytimer, or daily to do lists, anyone could read them and give you a list of your priorities. You might argue about their observations. You might say, “No, that thing is not my priority. My priority is this….” Something loftier, more noble, or more similar to what you would like your priorities to be. However, if we do not do something consistently it is not a priority because priorities are what we do. (Read 5 Influences to Determine Your Priorities)

3) Put the Actions That Help You Meet the Priorities in Your Daily Schedule—and Don’t Do Anything Else Until You’ve Done These

If Priorities Are What We Do, it follows that they are ACTIONS. Therefore, in order to meet priorities, we must DO something. Once my husband and I determined our priorities, we made action lists and put them into the daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. If these are our priorities, they should come ahead of everything else.

I know these steps sound simplistic. But there is nothing simple about following through on priorities. Tyranny of the urgent takes over. Messy diapers and boiling oatmeal take over. Our own lack of diligence takes over sometimes.

But I know through my life, prioritizing and following through on my priorities have gotten me where I wanted to go in graduating seven kids from homeschooling and maintaining an amazing marriage.

Blessings and encouragement to you—as you seek to prioritize!

I’ll leave you with some other articles, videos, and podcasts to help you learn to prioritize even more—and encourage yourself in the process:

1) Podcast: Overcoming Obstacles in Parenting

2) Podcast: Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home

3) Video: How to Prioritize

The post Finding Encouragement Through Prioritizing appeared first on Character Ink.

So now that you are convinced that “delighting in the dailies” will help you accomplish your goals, how do you get them started (and keep them going) during the initial stages—when there isn’t a lot of fruit to show for your efforts, and you are convinced some day that you should just forget making dinner and go play solitaire or buy some sort of farm equipment (on the computer…lol)?

Here are some tips for learning to truly “delight in the dailies” and make those dailies a long-term reality in your home:

1. Start out with a few of the very most important dailies—and make these things happen every day for a couple of weeks.

(See “Delighting in the Dailies—Part I of II” here.)

Don’t make a huge dailies list and wake up on Monday morning assuming that the magic list will all happen on that day. At times, my “dailies” (not including the children’s daily chores) could be thirty tasks long. If you are not used to doing certain things every day, this can be very overwhelming.

There are two ways to start tackling your dailies (which will eventually lead to your delighting in them):

a. Start with the four or five most important dailies for yourself and one or two per child and tackle these. Attach them to something that you already do every day (get up in the morning, eat breakfast, eat lunch, etc.). And start carrying them out over and over again. Once this is going well, add more. See my post about making a change a week or a change a month here.

b. Start with the first thing in the morning—and do your morning dailies only (for everyone in the family). (You might do others, but focus on making sure the morning ones are done consistently.) I often give the advice that when you want to change the way your days are going, start with the first hour of the day. Get this hour looking exactly like you want it to look (constantly!). Then move on to the next hour, etc. I personally like this approach because I love to make my day great by getting my morning started right.

2. Find someone who “delights in her dailies” and get a vision for this way of life from her.

Believe it or not, I actually knew several moms (either in person or through seminars/conventions) who were “delighting in their dailies” as many as thirty years ago! And this prompted me to make this a way of life. I could see the fruit of their daily disciplines, and I wanted that in my home as well. A well-run home is a beautiful thing, and we older moms need to teach and help younger moms learn these vital skills.

3. Believe in the daily approach to life.

Additionally, as an incremental type of teacher, I knew that “precept upon precept” and “line upon line” was the way that my children would master their subjects—and that incremental learning comes through dailies. I also knew from past experience that skipping things that needed done all the time in favor of things that either didn’t HAVE to be done or things that needed done less frequently didn’t work.

I had to believe in this approach in order to really carry it out. If you are waning in your ability to carry this out, make a list of all of the benefits to doing the dailies on your list (i.e. new reader will blossom through daily reading aloud to Mom, no more five o’clock scrambles for dinner, etc.). Pull this list out to help you “believe” when your faith is weak (and, once again, Farmville is calling!).

4. Notice the fruit (the real fruit!).

After a very short while, you will notice that something (or more than one thing) you have developed as a daily in your life is REALLY benefiting your family. Note this! If your struggling mathematician suddenly knows his x8’s because math drill became a daily for him, you have some juicy fruit! If your husband happily puts on his clean dress shirts in the morning (instead of the former morning clothing scramble!), then you have fruit. If you don’t dread four o’clock any more but actually sit down and read online articles for a while until sweet angels wake up from their naps, you have an entire fruit bowl! Notice it. Enjoy it. And realize that this fruit is there because you learned to delight in your dailies.

5. Believe that these dailies are truly the most important parts of your ministry to your family right now.

Anybody can swoop in and be a hero once or do something big here and there—and those have the potential to be ministries to your family too. However, when we understand and truly believe that what we do when we get up first thing in the morning is truly a ministry to our family, we will look at our dalies differently.

I know there are entire books written about the ministry of magic of motherhood. And they are right. But we have to do more than believe it in theory. We have to have it deep within us that when we consistently cook with our ten year old every day for lunch, we are doing God’s work. We have to breathe it in, take it in, and know it at that moment. When we lie down at the end of the day, we have to feel, believe, and KNOW that we have fulfilled an amazing calling on our life that day—because we did our dailies, God’s task list for us at this time in our lives.

6. Realize that you have accomplished a great thing.

Have you ever heard about the research for mastery in life? Some studies show that it takes repeating an action ten thousand times to become accomplished in it. Just look at each time that you do something (plan the next meal, do a reading lesson with a child, reach out to your preteen’s heart) as a step towards mastery. It really works. You will become so good at the things that you do over and over and over again!

It is rare to find a “work-at-home” mom who can juggle really well. How many times have you personally heard someone say that she could never do what you are doing—that she couldn’t spend all day with her kids or that she wouldn’t have the motivation that you have or that she can’t get organized without the structure of employment? What we are trying to do here—manage a home well, educate our children, and spend all day every day with kids—is not easy to do. If you continue to improve yourself as a home manager and a homeschooler, year after year, you will get more and more accomplished—and you will soon realize that you have done something very rare and very great.

7. But don’t get smug! 🙂

After delighting in your dailies for a while, and continuing to add more and more important dailies into your life, you will be amazed at the skills you have. Bask in that. It is such a great feeling to delight in your dailies. Such an awesome peace that comes with knowing that you are doing—day in and day out—what you are supposed to be doing. Actually, this feeling alone is enough to keep you going. (While I don’t advocate in living on feelings, there is a calm and peace that comes with doing what you are supposed to be doing—and THAT is a great feeling!) So enjoy it…but don’t be smug! Soon there will be someone else who wants you to help her learn to “delight in her dailies”—and you will be just the gal to do it!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies—Part II of II appeared first on Character Ink.

If you have heard us speak or read any of our blogs, you have probably heard my stories about how I used to be a “closet lady.” That is, I always cleaned out closets, organized toy cubes, shelved books in order, and made one hundred freezer meals in one day—instead of doing the dishes, laundry, trash, and other “dailies.”

It took me a while as a young mother to get to the point where I could set all of my projects aside—all of the more “creative,” fun, and cool things–in order to do the things that I needed to every day….the dailies.

But once I did, my life was forever changed. You see, it is the daily ins and outs that truly make us successful in homeschooling (and in life!).

Stop and think for a moment about successful businesses. Every day a successful business has multiple lists of things that are done by various departments every single day.   They have checks and balances in place to ensure that these dailies are done consistently. The people responsible for these dailies don’t branch out and do grandiose tasks or launch new projects. The daily people do the dailies—because without the dailies no great idea or new product really matters.

While homeschooling mamas do not usually have someone to take care of the dailies for us so that we can do the “grandiose” (if you do, power to you!), we still need to do those dailies in order to be successful.

What constitutes a daily? For me, a daily was anything in the home that needed done every day—either by me or by someone else. At various times, this could include any or all of the following: dishes, trash, and laundry (see my posts about never getting behind on these again!); morning decisions for evening meal (with some preps if needed); morning routines by all; reading with a new reader; writing with a new writer; Bible memory recitations; morning read alouds; two chore sessions; and more.

Some days, throughout my thirty years of homeschooling, my dailies felt heavy and overwhelming (and never-ending because they truly are!); however, more often than not, they made me feel successful. It didn’t matter what else I got done on any given day. It didn’t matter how many projects were left undone. It didn’t matter how accomplished I was (or wasn’t!) in other areas. Because I did something that is extremely difficult: I did my dailies.

And guess what? Not only did I do them, day in and day out. But I also got good at them! Talk about feeling super successful.

I got up, nearly every morning(!), and did what I needed to do in order to manage a large family, homeschool several children, live a Christian life, and keep a wonderful marriage going strong. Sometimes I even did other things—but, like I mentioned above, it didn’t matter if I didn’t.

Dailies are the building blocks to success. They are the things that feed a family, keep a home in order, build strong readers, instill Christian virtues in our kids, and more. They yield amazing results—over a period of time—without our even realizing that they are doing so.

After a while, I learned to Delight in These Dailies (due to the feeling of achievement and the success they brought about in our home). After a while longer, I taught my children to Delight in the Dailies (which have led to their success as adults today!). And now I am teaching you! 🙂

How do you learn to delight in the dailies when you are first starting to make these tasks priorities in your life? Stay with me! Next week, I will give you some tips in how to Delight in the Dailies!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies–Part I of II appeared first on Character Ink.

The grocery fast is going strong! Weeks 5 and 6 found me spending more money than I wanted to–but my food stores are going down! I even had room in my deep freeze for two gallons of my daughter’s breast milk in dozens of 4 ounce bags! I was so excited to say that I had extra room!

Financially, it definitely got harder in weeks 5 and 6 than the first four weeks! I finally decided that the grandbabies’ food, diapers, and wipes that I get here for when I keep them each Wednesday would not be included in my grocery fast budget. When I needed to purchase these, they came up to an entire week’s budget, so I didn’t include them in my totals. (I am including all of our food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies, but not eating out, which we aren’t doing as much as I would like to for empty nesters because we have so much food to use here!)

My boys are crazy about their air-fried appetizers!

We went to Costco and got $70 worth of fresh foods, so I was happy about that purchase. That takes our total up to about $35 a week average (since Ray made a small Wal-mart run in there too)–a little more than I want to spend for the $25 a week–but did I mention, we are using things up!! Yay!

Tender, amazing roasted pecans in a few minutes!

So here are some details about these two weeks of the “grocery fast”…..

1) I still have appetizers from our Christmas Decorating Night and our family Christmas Eve! I definitely over-purchased those! However, I have been learning more and more how to use my air fryer (see my first air fryer post here–and my amazing healthy croutons!). Thus, when my sons and sons-in-law stop in, I let them choose from my appetizer selection and stick them in the fryer for 10-15 minutes….wahla! Appetizer platter! This is especially fun because we often have mostly healthy leftovers that they sometimes don’t like as well. Now I always have something to throw in the fryer for them! (Not sure what I’ll do when I run out of them!)

Lightly-breaded chicken legs and stir fried veggies!

2) Another great way to use up bits and pieces of food is the amazing omelet!  Eggs are inexpensive to add even into the grocery fast budget, and bits of sausage, bacon, ham, and veggies abound in my freezers, so I have made these a couple of times. I also use leftover cheese and ham for air fried hot hamaramas–think grilled cheese with ham. They were delicious and a wonderful accompaniment to all of my fresh veggies!

Working on making my Sprouted Low Carb Flour Mix work for low carb Real bread!

3) Besides using my fresh veggies for roasted veggies and stir fries, as my Jungle Jim produce got depleted, we’ve been diligent about getting bags of frozen veggies out of the freezer. They’re a little water-logged with ice crystals and definitely not the freshest, but we are determined to use them! (Frozen green beans, especially the long ones from Sam’s, are actually pretty good in this Homestyle Skillet Green Beans recipe!)

The dough….

4) I have been doing Daily Intermittent Fasting for two months now, and I am finding more success when I open my window with a low carb, nutrient-dense snack. Enter roasted pecans. I had already picked them all out of the mixed nuts that we had from Christmas, and I was really craving them (and NEEDED them! ha ha). However, roasted, salted pecans were more than twice the price of lovely, tender pecan halves from Costco, so I bought a big bag of them and learned how to make salted, roasted ones within a few minutes in the air fryer! Check out my recipe. Super easy!

The artisan bread!

5) We’ve been using up meat out of the freezer! Even drumsticks and other “less desirable” ones! Actually, these were some of the best chicken legs I have ever made. The breading (and method for breading) makes them so light–nothing like the heavy breading when i used to do oven fried thighs. I seriously loved them! AND….it forced me to finish perfecting my healthy breading mix, which has been on “the back burner” for some time now! Win-win! Watch the Donna Reish blog for this recipe in the upcoming weeks!

Steak and Potato Foil Packs. Super yummy!

6) Speaking of perfecting something, I had a lot of my Sprouted Flour Mix in the pantry, so I started experimenting (again) with making low carb artisan bread. It’s not quite ready to share, but we enjoyed the loaves that I made, and I am still working on perfecting it as I want to get it under ten net carbs per serving. So watch Donna Reish.com for that!

7) And lastly, I am still working on my steak supply! (Terrible problem, huh?) I made those amazing Steak and Potato Foil Packets that you might have seen the video of floating around FB. And they did not disappoint. Still trying to figure out how to make steak every week! 😉 Again, watch the Donna Reish blog for this yummy recipe!

Only two weeks left of the grocery fast, but one of my three refrigerators is almost empty and my deep freeze is definitely a third of the way down! Yay!

P.S. What would you do with 20 more 5 ounce sirloin steaks? I’d love some more ideas?

The post Eight Week Grocery Fast – Weeks 5 and 6 appeared first on Character Ink.

Well, I am at the three week mark in my grocery fast, and at the beginning of this week, I had only spent $35 (of the $50 I had budgeted for two weeks). (See Weeks 1 and 2 here.) I was encouraged about the dollar amount, but I was somewhat discouraged that it didn’t feel like any of our food stores were going down that quickly. That part didn’t really get any better during Weeks 3 and 4 as I went on a five day writing retreat and ate out each evening with my daughter (who was there for her master’s seminar) for my one meal a day. (Interested in OMAD–One Meal a Day??? Check out my Daily Intermittent Fasting videos, audios, slideshows, and posts here!). While I was gone writing, my husband did manage to use up veggies, broth, and tomato juice since he made himself vegetable soups every night! He didn’t use up any of the meat we had shredded and frozen the previous week, so our stores didn’t really get depleted. But…here is what we did use and do:

Holiday cookies in January? When you’re trying to empty the freezer, you bake them and take them!

1) Still trying to avoid the whole “I really want to make these bars with these ingredients” mindset,

so I took Christmas cookies to a dance, using up the dough balls I still had in the freezer. I was also careful to not throw away foods just because we were done having them for leftovers! I froze leftover mashed potatoes that I will use for Shepherd’s Pie and leftover egg casserole. Now the trick is to get into the freezer and use them!

6-acre grocery store during a grocery fast???!! What was I thinking!?

Huge reduced produce section gave me fresh produce to go with all the meats in my freezer!

I had $65 left and spent $66! Yay me!

2) At the end of my writing retreat, my daughter and I traveled home via Cincinnati, Ohio to the largest grocery store in the area

The 6-acre Jungle Jim’s. I tried to talk myself out of my grocery fast, noting that going there is a once-a-year-or-less event, but I really wanted to keep using my food stores. So….I decided to keep my list to a minimum, do some comparison shopping, look some of the foods I was after up on Amazon for future reference, and not buy anything extra pricey. As it turns out, I had $65 left for the month–and without even counting as I went, my total was $66!!! I was soooo excited! You can see my cart and grocery belt in the pics–I really cashed in on their huge reduced produce section! Ray Baby was snapping reduced green beans for hours during Sunday football the next day!

Nothing was wasted! If it didn’t get eaten, it was frozen for a later date!

3) As I mentioned, I have been trying to be super diligent about not just tossing a little of this or a little of that.

When we had seven kids at home, it felt like things just eventually got used up. Not the case with just two of us! So I cleaned out the fridge and made a great 7 Layer Salad for our grandson’s birthday party that everybody really loved–and true to not throwing out soft apples, I made Ray some apple salad.

Apple salad is a great way to use up soft apples!

Mayo-PB Apple Salad!

4) I used the veggies over the next two weeks and am happy to say that I didn’t throw any of them out–not even a soft green pepper!

Yay me! I made stir fried zucchini, peppers, onions, sprouts, and mushrooms (see steak picture). I made roasted green beans. I made salads. I made dip for fresh veggies. I just babied those produce items every day, using them to their fullest!

Parmesan green beans—my favorite snack to open my eating window each day!

7-Layer Salad is a great way to empty the fridge!

5) We had a unique problem that I knew we would have to face–we HAD to eat steak!

For five years, we had accumulated Omaha Steaks that our business received as gifts a couple of times a year. We didn’t really know how to make steaks! With seven kids on one income for over two dozen years, we never bought steaks. We used meat as more of a “condiment” in combination dishes–lasagna, chicken spaghetti, tuna casserole, enchiladas, etc. We didn’t serve that many meats as “per person” entrees (except chicken breasts…oh the chicken breasts! ha ha). So we dug in the freezer and committed ourselves to using them. We started with the most amazing Pan Fried Sirloin, which I was sooo happy with. I learned how to make steak–and make it really yummy tasting! Read all about that experience and the recipe here!

My first pan-fried steak was a huge success! Now I have to make steak every week for the rest of the grocery fast!

I ended the month on budget–with $25 a week average spent! And we ate like a queen and king! 🙂

Jason and I did a great job depleting the ice cream supplies!

P.S. What do you like to make to “use up” produce? What is your family’s favorite stir fried veggie combination?

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