However, I felt like my eldest’s room wasn’t necessarily living up to its potential. It has lots of light. We bought furniture for it from the previous owners, and bought an additional book case and desk, but things weren’t terribly well-organized. Or, they were, but it was hard to maintain them that way. My son is busy and he’s also grown a lot in the past few years, which means he’s grown out of a lot of clothes — sometimes clothes I swear I’d just bought a few months before. It’s hard to stay current on that, plus old school notebooks/notepaper, etc.

He’s been away for the last three weeks at camp, so with his permission, our house manager and I have been busy upgrading the space. (I don’t have permission for pictures yet — hopefully later! But this is why this isn’t a design blog haha).

First order of business: clearing out the too-small clothes. The good news is that because he is at camp, we’re pretty sure he took his favorite things with him. So a lot of the other things could be dispatched to some giant Rubbermaid-type containers, ready for the 14-year-old to “shop” if he desires. (He is also gone, so we’ll have to wait on that.) Trash was removed, books put on the shelf, etc.

We purchased a rug, so that is now grounding the space around his bed. Also on the decor front: framing posters! Several years ago, right before we moved into the house, he received a number of movie posters as a Christmas present. We were going to frame these and put them up and then just…didn’t. But that finally happened and they are being delivered today, so that is going to make the space look a lot more coherent.

We also got some new lamps, which give the bedroom a much more homey glow. Clear off some horizontal surfaces and the place looks a lot better. I’m looking forward to the big reveal when he comes home (though given that he’s getting home after midnight maybe it will be more of a wake up in the morning reveal).

Of course, I’m also realizing we should have done this a lot earlier. He’s likely going away to college in approximately 13 months. But I assume he’ll come home for vacations and long weekends so it will be good to have a more attractive space to welcome him home.

The problem, of course, is that food delivery isn’t instantaneous. It tends not to be cheap or necessarily all that healthy either, but the wait can be particularly onerous when one is tired but also hungry. So, over the years, I’ve come up with a workable alternative-to-GrubHub meal.

I chop up either chorizo or pepperoni, but the key is that it’s a spicy meat. I add whatever veggies we happen to have around (there’s usually at least some spinach leaves somewhere, but I’ve done peppers, cauliflower…). Then I scramble three eggs or so, mix it together, and make it a meal.*

This takes ten minutes, max, so it’s much faster than getting something delivered. The labor is minimal. It’s cheaper for sure. And reasonably appealing — spicy flavors are always good, and bold flavors are one of the major upsides of restaurant meals (something to keep in mind for transforming otherwise brown bag lunches…) Wash it down with a bit of sauvignon blanc and I don’t feel deprived.

I’m not saying I don’t sometimes order sushi…(indeed, I did the next night after making the meal in this photo) but in general, delivery is more fun when you’ve planned it ahead of time and are looking forward to it all day, rather than resorting to it because no one feels like cooking. A 10-minute meal is hardly cooking, so it’s all good.

(Children can eat chicken nuggets!)

Do you have any back-pocket meals?

*No cheese. I love dairy but it doesn’t love me back. But a good goat cheese could probably make this even tastier/creamier.

Anyway, the new store (and this week’s Best of Both Worlds topic) had me thinking about meal prep and organization.

I get antsy when people say they are “saving time” by prepping ahead. Sometimes they are, but often what people are doing is moving work around. This may have its benefits, but I’m not sure it’s a clear-cut win. In some cases, people actually add to the total time because they will, for instance, cook something elaborate on Sunday, freeze it, then have to thaw it on Thursday AND they decide to do some side dishes, which take time. Maybe everyone is eating better, but this doesn’t save time vs. just cooking something simpler.

However, this past week I did try one experiment in meal prep — for my lunches. I cooked chicken with rice and a jar of an Indian sauce for Sunday dinner, but instead of just cooking one package of chicken, I cooked two. Then I didn’t mix the second package in with the sauce. I put it in a Tupperware container in the fridge, then pulled it out over the next four days to make myself a curried chicken salad for lunch.

It was tasty! I didn’t save time, as in the past I’ve just used canned chicken to make the same thing, but it did taste better. And since I’d already cooked the chicken I didn’t need to think about what to eat for lunch.

Our household approach for most nights is just to cook something easy at dinner time. Monday tends to be pasta. We use jarred sauces jazzed up with extra veggies and Italian sausage. Wednesday is often breakfast for dinner, which I now have the three older children do (one makes pancakes/waffles, one cooks bacon, one cooks eggs). Friday is make-your-own-pizza with pre-made dough, and then various toppings. Every meal is served alongside cut up fruits and veggies.

One upside of being a big family is that going out to dinner is so ridiculous, on both a financial and logistical level, that we tend not to view it as a back-up option. So we are always cooking. Just not very elaborately most nights. It seems to work pretty well.

What’s for dinner in your household? Have you ever prepped ahead for lunches?

Sticking to my bedtime. I need to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays for the morning to go smoothly. As I need 7.4 hours of sleep daily, this means my bedtime is 11 p.m. (I tend to fall asleep pretty quickly…) I’d say I make this four out of five weeknights. On weekends I’ve decided I can be flexible within about an hour. I’m usually in bed around 11:30 p.m., and set my alarm for 7:30 a.m. If I have not built up a sleep debt during the week — which, thanks to the bedtime and all my kids being over 3, I tend not to — I am usually up before my alarm. Orderly sleep is truly wonderful.

Kids in their rooms by 9 on weekdays. This is enforced with the big kids. The 3-year-old is sometimes not asleep and sometimes needs someone sitting with him as he tries to fall asleep, so I might not exit his room until 9:30 or so. But sometimes it is earlier, and minus a 10-15 minute interlude for chats and lights-out, that means it is possible to have over an hour of kid-free leisure at night. I love my kids and I also love having a little time to do stuff like reading or puzzles with no interruptions!

Reading on the Kindle app. I do this on my phone while sitting with the 3-year-old as he falls asleep. Otherwise it would totally be lost time. When I hear about a book I’d like to read, I first check the Libby app, though my library doesn’t have a huge collection (I more need to rely on serendipity for finding books that way). Then I go to Amazon to see the Kindle price, and on several occasions recently, I realize I already bought that book like four years ago (thankfully, Amazon tells you this!). Whoops. But that means I can find it in my Kindle library and reread it (or read it for the first time…)

Themed + standard easy meals. Generally, we do breakfast for dinner on Wednesday and we do make-your-own pizza on Fridays. For the other nights, we almost always have ingredients for fajitas, pasta, or some sort of chicken and rice combo (generally with a non-dairy-based Asian sauce for the adults and children with adventurous palates; we had Thai red curry last night). We grill something on weekends, and the kids can often get away with a mac and cheese night in there somewhere. This seems to cover enough nights that no one is complaining too much.

Doing my laundry separately. My husband and I used to throw our laundry in together. But as we did it once a week there was often a bit much for a load. And then, with the end result of clothes all mixed together, neither of us ever felt like diving in to the pile to sort it (if you wait for the other person to do it first, putting away your clothes goes a lot faster, so I guess this is a game of laundry chicken…) Now we do our laundry separately and putting the clothes away seems to take a lot less time.

Outsourcing organizing. The stuff crammed in the kids’ closets, and the various boxes around the house, seemed to be lingering for a while. So we now have someone who is working through the backlog. The kids’ rooms have become a lot more manageable…and our squeeze pouch snacks (yogurt, applesauce) are in their own basket and the LaCroix supply wound up in rainbow order. Things might not stay in rainbow order, but hey…

The activity bus. I’m not sure why we never used it until this year but it is a huge time saver. At 4:30 and 5:30 p.m., a fleet of buses leave the middle school and high school, and go in various directions. As there are usually only a few children on each bus, it’s almost like a private taxi service. And since getting to and from the middle school tends to take about a half hour roundtrip, this opens up more work hours in the afternoon if the kids want to stay for activities.

Time Outside After Dinner (TOAD time!). Now that the days are longer and warmer I have been designating some evenings as TOAD time. The younger kids go outside and play in the yard in the evening, often until it gets dark. We have a dig site (an uprooted tree where we’ve been excavating beneath the exposed roots) and the remains of a cut down tree that we’ve been chipping away at, discovering creepy crawlies. It’s good off-screen fun.

The camp spreadsheet. Yep, it’s made a reappearance for summer 2023. I put the weeks of the summer down the left hand side and the names of the kids along the top. This helps immensely with organization and seeing at a glance what weeks are available and not available.

Virtual training. I am working out with a trainer once a week via FaceTime. It actually works pretty well. I bought a bunch of resistance bands and the house’s prior owners left a weight machine that isn’t great, but can work as an anchor point for a few exercises. When I’m on top of things I then repeat the exercises the trainer had me do on a second day of the week (I’m not always on top of things).

Listening to my choral music in the car. As one way to increase practice time, I find recordings of the trickier works my choir is performing and I listen to those as I’m shuttling kids around (usually while they are not in the car…I listen when I’m going to get them). We’re singing the Bluegrass Mass (here is the Gloria) in a few weeks.

Washing the sheets right before the cleaners come. We have a weekly cleaning service, and on one week they do the kitchen + first and third floor (which is mainly the playroom), and then the other week they do kitchen + second floor (the bedrooms). Timed right, we wash sheets right before the cleaners do the bedrooms. Everyone puts their sheets back on the beds in a rough fashion, but then the cleaners make the beds look nice.

My Stanley. Yep, I was influenced. I bought one of those giant insulated tumblers with a straw, and I put ice water in there and sip it at my desk and I am probably staying more hydrated (though that cause is also helped by the numerous strawberry acai lemonades from Starbucks I am drinking with my 15-year-old…)

Kizik shoes. I love that you can just slide your feet in these sneakers and you don’t have to bend over or pull on the heels. I now own a pair and so do two of my kids. Possibly everyone will soon. It makes getting out the door faster or at least less painful.

Creating the weekend schedule on Thursdays and the weekly activity schedule on Fridays. So, every Thursday, I send my husband a copy of the weekend schedule — an activity that forces me to create the weekend schedule. Usually I have a rough idea of what we’re doing by the Friday before (when I plan the upcoming week) BUT stuff comes up, or gets filled in, or we come up with new things to do. If we have open gaps or things are unclear I ask my husband to suggest stuff or figure out how to solve any logistical problems. He’s game for doing most things, so this approach generally works (I am not saying it would for everyone).

I also create the kid activity schedule for the upcoming week on Fridays and send it to my husband and nanny. Sometimes it has to change (we dropped a voice lesson this week and added a karate Parents’ Night Out) but knowing the general parameters is helpful. For instance, the 15-year-old likes to run at the gym as we are training for our upcoming 5k. By looking at the activity schedule, we knew that a Wednesday night visit would work during the week. When people see the whole schedule, they can also make considerate choices. My husband, for instance, was supposed to bring a child to an orthodontist appointment, and when something came up that would preclude that, he moved it to a time that would work with the activity schedule and that he could cover, rather than just assuming I would cover it, or calling me and asking many questions about when could work.

Scanning directly from my iPhone. This is a total game changer with permission forms, medical forms, and other such things that were a pain to send in back when I had to scan on my printer, use a USB stick to transfer to my computer, etc. Now I just scan directly from Notes, it turns the image into a PDF and I can email from the phone. I apologize if 99 percent of people already knew about this capability, but I didn’t know until about a year ago and I have used it literally 100 times since then.

Lots of extra phone chargers, lots of headphones. Why do these always seem to disappear? I’ve decided they are like bottles of sunscreen. Better to have extras anywhere you might need them.

Cheap long sleeve T-shirts from Amazon. I get the idea of having fewer, nicer clothes. But I’m a little wary after the whole moth episode. So I’m mostly wearing a rotation of five long sleeve T-shirts that I bought off Amazon. They were each $20. If they don’t last long…oh well (though knowing me I try to get a couple of years of wear out of things anyway…)

What little life hacks are you using right now?

I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know what I’m looking to gain from these books. I just find them vaguely pleasant and not terribly demanding.

Anyway, when I read the books with pretty pictures (or follow such accounts on Instagram) I have a realization. My stuff almost never looks anything like that. But my stuff is organized. One is quite possible without the other.

For instance, my kitchen is now set up in such a way that you can empty 90 percent of the dishwasher without moving more than a step or two from the dishwasher. The only items that require a walk are the mugs. It made more sense to locate them in the cupboard above the built-in coffee maker than a cupboard farther from the coffee maker but closer to the dishwasher. Do the mugs all match? No. They do not. But they’re in the right place.

The pantry, likewise, does not feature snacks organized by color, nor are dry goods decanted into clear canisters. But the cereal is in one place. The snacks for lunches are in another, where the kids can grab them.

The shoes in the mudroom aren’t lined up. The backpacks tend not to get hung up. But they are all in there.

You can organize for function without worrying too much about the aesthetics. My general sense is that you can make yourself crazy trying to get other people to buy into the aesthetics. But if you have a big family, it is highly unlikely that everyone is going to be equally enamored with systems that look pretty but require extra effort. Why decant cereal into other containers when cereal comes in a perfectly useful container — namely, the cereal box? The net result of such a system is that you — or whoever cares most about the aesthetics — is going to spend your time decanting. It will be your job.

Whereas if the system is just that the cereal goes on a certain shelf, then other folks will put away the cereal after the grocery run. So that is the system you need.

Where is your cereal hanging out these days?

In other news: I was excited to see Tranquility by Tuesday mentioned on Cal Newport’s Study Hacks blog! Check out his post about building in a back-up slot and creating enough space to work.

I’m also excited that Eric Barker’s Plays Well With Others was chosen as a Next Big Idea Book Club selection. He’s had me on his podcast before and he is always great to talk to. Be sure to check out this book, which is full of counterintuitive insights that will help you navigate relationships.

(Tranquility by Tuesday made the nominee list for October!)

Photo: We eat a lot of Cheerios around here

Over the weekend I did cross a major parenting milestone. The 2-year-old can now reliably sit and watch a video like Peppa Pig or the wide variety of YouTube offerings (“Hazel’s Mom” is a particular favorite). So when my husband took the 10-year-old and 7-year-old out for the afternoon, I left the little guy in the care of the two older boys while I went for a run in the neighborhood. He sat at the computer with the video on, and I had the 12-year-old sit in the same room with him (watching his phone), and basically neither moved for the 30 minutes I was gone. Success!

Speaking of the 2-year-old, he has been on a strike against napping in the crib. So over the weekend, I gave in and let him nap in my lap both days. In related news, my screen time totals on my iPhone are quite high…

I’ve been showering at night because it makes getting ready in the AM much faster. Unfortunately, I’m sometimes cold at night (though we’ve now set the bathroom heat to come on around my shower time). So I’ve come up with the strategy of hanging two towels over the shower door. When I turn the water off, I immediately wrap one around me. Then I can use the other for my hair without getting too shivery.

I also found my real towels this weekend, so I’m no longer using beach towels, though I did like that they were very large.

The 7-year-old recently celebrated a birthday. Since writing is a source of real tension, we had him record video thank yous to the people who gave him gifts. This inspired far less resistance.

We now have our “real” fridge and freezer, which is great, because we have more capacity. One current helpful life strategy is having set meals for certain nights. Wednesday, for instance, is always breakfast-for-dinner day. This tends to be pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit. Easy, and everyone eats it. Friday is pizza night. This will be make-your-own-pizza night again once we get our oven but for now I’m ordering in. We do Sunbasket kits on Monday and Tuesday (usually) as a way to have some variety. We often have steak one night over the weekend, which only leaves two days to sort out. In the morning, I almost always give kids toaster waffles plus fruit. (Some people add milk, or yogurt, and the occasional handful of chocolate chips). Most people have one toaster waffle, though my daughter has two. If you do the math this means we go through a normal box of toaster waffles in two days. This explains the appeal of Costco!

Photo: Ice on a trail from one of my weekend runs.

However, this weekend, the amount of mess in the house had reached what I consider a maddening point (if anyone has seen my desk that is saying something!) There were also a large number of things in my brain that, while I am not thrilled that I am the one remembering them, were things that needed to be remembered. My husband had plenty of logistical things he was in charge of as well, such as booking a trip for him and some of the older kids to a family memorial service in a few weeks, signing a kid up for tennis, various complications with bids on chimney work, etc.

I realized that if I didn’t make a list to get these things out of my head — did I wash the pool towels? The kids’ sheets? Did I order lunches? Did the piano and alto sax get practiced? And by the way, the kids need to sweep up the paper bits the dog chewed up and get their clothes put away and… — I would be thinking of stuff that needed to be done all day, in addition to the normal Sunday logistics (does the 6-year-old have his soccer cleats? A water bottle? Is he wearing sunscreen?)

So I made a Sunday checklist. I listed the things that needed to happen with check boxes next to them and the person responsible. My husband took the 6-year-old to rock climbing (during which he dealt with chimney matters…good times), and during this time my older kids and I traded off caring for the toddler and working through the list.

I think it worked pretty well. The house is cleaner. The upstairs hallway is no longer covered with a ridiculous amount of kid flotsam. We got clarity on some future scheduling — knowing that people are not doing something is important too. People practiced their instruments. Thank you notes got written (not addressed yet, but baby steps…) By batching all this, we were still able to do some fun activities, like spending a long time in the pool when a family friend came over mid-day.

In general, I’d like the kids to shoulder more of the task load around here. The big ones are definitely old enough. They can take on some of the housework and weekend baby-help that I’m not sure needs to be outsourced anymore with so many capable people in the house. In KJ Dell’Antonia’s book, How to be a Happier Parent, she mentions that many people get upset because they want their kids to do chores without being asked. That might be the gold standard, but if you don’t get so hung up on that desire, you can wind up with the chores done. Which has some real upsides too! So I may start making a Sunday list more often.

How do you tackle kid responsibilities?

Photo: Growing in the new yard! I took the 9-year-old and toddler over there for a short walk after dinner on Sunday. This is part of my desire to log 1000 steps after dinner, as I suggested in a recent Before Breakfast episode.

I suppose the growth has been gradual. In 2011, my (smaller) family moved from a 2-bedroom apartment in New York City to what seemed like a palatial suburban house. We bought new furniture but still had lots of open space. We hosted a party not too long into our tenure here and people exclaimed when we opened the coat closet to put their coats in there and there was…nothing else but their coats.

Ten years and three children after that move, we’ve filled that coat closet, partly with off-season clothes that came out of the master bedroom closet, which we half emptied to accommodate a crib, rug, and chair — a space that serves as the toddler’s bedroom. The new (old) house has space for all of us but at least some of the stuff that occupies this house isn’t worth taking along.

So I’m trying to clean it out. But “clean out house to get rid of stuff” is a large to-do item. Overwhelming really. Which is why I spent some time yesterday breaking it down into more doable chunks.

I made a list of all the spots to be addressed. This is a very granular list. I didn’t just say “my office.” I separated out the desk drawers, the corner baskets, the filing cabinet, the wire files, the book shelves. Honestly, I am thinking I will make each drawer its own separate project. Same with the basement. The closet downstairs has three shelves, and each needs to be its own entry. Each bin in the basement needs to be its own separate line on this list.

That’s because the goal is to have each section take 30 minutes or so, rather than all day. I don’t have all day! Sometimes even what seems like they might be small projects takes longer than expected. My daughter and I cleaned off the two basement craft tables a few weeks ago, and it took an entire weekend nap time. That is not the way I wish to spend nap time! One craft table, or even half a craft table, might have been easier to tackle

But the good news is that when a project is broken down into small enough parts, it feels pretty doable. Indeed, I’d venture that 100 small projects feel, in total, more doable than 20 big ones. Because a list of 20 spots would include something like “garage.” And the garage is not going to get cleaned out in 30 minutes, or even a weekend toddler nap time.

Have you purged before moving? How did it go? Any recommendations on what to do with old stuffed animals?

Photo: Mr. Bunny is a relatively new addition — a gift from the big kids to the baby last year. But some members of what we call the “stuffy pile” have not emerged in…a while. 

Theoretically, we could just keep a giant spray bottle and tube in the mudroom, since that’s where we generally exit the house. But over the years, I have learned that the sunscreen is more likely to make it out of the bottle and onto bodies if it is ridiculously convenient. And so, we now have a stash by the backdoor, ready for anyone going into the back yard. We also have a bottle on the back porch, in case anyone made it out the backdoor without noticing the stash. We have bottles in the cars. Kids going to camp? They get tubes in their bags. A little extra means we’re not hunting around. We’re not moving the sunscreen from place to place. And so it gets used.

Same with other things. A booster seat or two in each car (even if children rarely travel in it) means we’re not scrambling on the way out the door. The baby likes white noise while he sleeps. He moves back and forth between the bassinet in my room and the crib in another bedroom. I had been moving the white noise machine back and forth when I realized this was quite the headache with a sleepy fussy baby. I bought a second machine. Problem solved.

Of course, I realize this may be obvious to some people. I’m a chronic under-buyer. I have a strong tendency to make do. Sometimes this reaches the point of ridiculousness. One of our kids went through a massive overuse-of-toilet-paper phase, continually plugging our toilets, and my husband and I were squabbling over where exactly the plunger had gone in the house, and was it upstairs or downstairs, and someone else who walked in on this situation said “um, can you go to Target and get another plunger?” Oh yeah. Turns out they sell them.

There’s a point of diminishing returns here. A plunger near each bathroom might be helpful. More plungers than bathrooms, not so much. But sometimes buying an extra of something can actually cut down on clutter. We bought an extra laundry hamper to put on the first floor of the house. Now, people are marginally less inclined to leave dirty laundry lying all over the place when they’re too lazy to carry it up to the second floor laundry room.

In any case, if you find yourself carrying something from room to room, or car to car, or from home to your office, or if you’re constantly saying “hey, where’s the…?” consider buying an extra. A little bit of money might save a lot of hassle.

Of late, however, in dealing with the children’s schedules, I’ve been considering a different metaphor: Tetris.

In this beloved video game, various shapes — all composed of four blocks — fall from the sky. You turn the shapes and move them to fit them together. If you find the right spot and create a full row, the row disappears. If not, the pieces stack up and when they reach the ceiling — game over.

Anyway, this week I’ve been playing what feels like Tetris with my children’s activity logistics. Theoretically, we should be able to set activities on certain days and then just follow the schedule. But in practice, things shift week to week, necessitating a new round of the game.

For instance, in any given week, we aim to get the 12-year-old and 10-year-old to swim practice twice. The 8-year-old goes once. The 8-year-old goes to karate twice; the 5-year-old goes once or twice, depending on how things are going. The 12-year-old has an online tutoring session. The 8- and 10-year-old have an (in home) music lesson. There is early morning choir for the 12-year-old twice a week and the 10-year-old has a morning Reading Olympics practice. I sing in my church’s choir, which meets once during the week and then on Sunday mornings.

These things generally occur at certain times. However, the 12-year-old is also in his school musical, with after-school practices that run to 4:15 or 5:15 p.m., and happen (usually) 1-3 times per week, on different days each week. This week we have the Boy Scouts Pinewood Derby, which requires checking in our cars on Friday evening in anticipation of the Saturday morning event. Both of these mean moving activities from their default times to other times.

The good news is that many of our activities do have other time options. Karate meets most days of the week; you choose which ones to go to. Same with swim. This makes Tetris (turn the piece by choosing Thursday instead of Tuesday!) possible. I spent some time this weekend creating what I have to say is a pretty pro-level round of Activity Tetris for this week, moving pieces such that everyone gets to go to their things — well, most of their things; it was not possible to get the 10-year-old to swim twice within the game’s parameters — with the bulk of the activities happening on days we have multiple drivers.

Of course, Activity Tetris does take time and mental effort. But I’ve decided it’s kind of fun when I do see it as a game like Tetris. Because it’s really not a big deal if someone doesn’t make it to swim practice some night (the Tetris pieces stack up). And I can celebrate those rows that zip away as everyone — including me — gets where we need to go.

Is your household playing Activity Tetris?

Photo: My rendition of the Tetris shapes…