In My Home This Week: Reset

She (the housekeeper) shall keep a clear record of all expenses, what is paid to tradesmen, what is bought on credit and comparison of those bills to the credit given.   An intelligent housekeeper will by these means be able to best judge the average consumption of each article by the household; and if that quantity at any time is exceeded, to determine the cause and the matter rectified, whether it's waste or carelessness. ~Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management <<Amazon Associate link>>

In my home this week, I started thinking about April on the last day of March.  A little late by any standard but I knew my actual work for the month wouldn't begin until the weekend was over, so I felt safe waiting to plan a new month until then.   There was so much I thought I didn't get done last month that I did and other things I thought would be easily done, weren't, some of which have been on my list for months on end.   I can look back over March and see progress even if it wasn't the progress I'd planned.    Progress is progress. 

It makes me feel anxious to see things on a list that I've been saying I'd do for months.  Those areas where I've not done things needed to be looked at long and hard and addressed. Either they were not as important as I deemed them to be, or circumstances have not come together so that those things might be attended to.  I'm trashing the carry over list and starting fresh!  

Work:

I work best with a monthly list of goals, not just the weekly goals I post which may or may not get done.  I may not post it.  I have so many post ideas already that I'm wondering how I can fit them all in, lol.  But it's true I work best with a list of monthly goals. If I have a list, I have all month long to work on those things.  I review them at least a couple of times a week and remind myself that I'm focusing on those things, so my mind is constantly being reset to consider how I'm spending my time.   

February was a heavy month of expenses.  We covered them all, but I think it's time to reset the budget as well.  We need a month of lower than usual spending and that's just what I mean to aim for.  I have ideas of areas where I can tweak and others where I can cut back hard.  It won't change things dramatically but it sure won't hurt either.

My homemaking routine got a sort of reset last month when I reinstated my Zone work and reset the zones.  That went well enough.  No need to reset that, but I do need to regroup about what I am going to do in each zone week.  Some of my old tasks that were done just once a month, are now such a part of my routine that I no longer find it necessary to keep that as part of the zone work.  I want to focus on other tasks that I've been tossing in as an afterthought that I'd like to be doing at least monthly, nor just when I am at loose ends.

I was listening to Lisa at Farmhouse on Boone yesterday talking about the things she does to feed her family.  She pointed out that she could be making yogurt or cheese, but it had never yet become part of her routine.  She'd noticed that the things she routinely did seemed to fit into her weekly schedule just fine, but things that she hadn't incorporated regularly felt like an overwhelming addition and she never got around to doing them.  She noted that making yogurt wouldn't be so terribly hard, and could be incorporated easily, but she's just not at the stage of mothering where she feels she can spare time or space for cheesemaking.  

That made sense to me.  I've made some of the zone tasks part of my normal weekly work over the last few months, so they are routine and the idea of doing them doesn't overwhelm me.  There are jobs I don't do routinely, and I'd like to now incorporate some of those as part of the zone tasks. I'll be altering my zones listings 

I'll set to work on Zone 1 this week.  That was designated as the kitchen last month and it will remain so.  It also includes the inside back entry and laundry area.  I have a couple of tasks to do in the kitchen, but I certainly need to focus on the entry and laundry this month.  Both have been fairly neglected over the last few months.    One job I mean to do this week is to mop the floors.  I've done it this year but in thinking back I'll wager it was probably February or even the last January whenever Katie finished that training class, was between assignments and started keeping Caleb at home.

Walk about the yard and see what's growing.  I did a little of this yesterday afternoon.  That's how I found the bit of rosemary I'd rooted had wintered over.  And why so few iris have bloomed (Maddie chose the iris bed for a place to lie...Argh!).   There are tiny clematis tendrils.  I had no idea clematis is such a slow growing vine.  Mine get a little bigger each spring but never big enough to bloom.  The herb planter needs a bit of cleaning out and additional soil. I've no idea what else I have outdoors, so I thought I'd do a walk about to see what's peeking through.

Make an eye appointment.

If John is able, we will go to a couple of furniture stores and examine chairs. I'm sure I can order online more cheaply than I can buy in store, but there appears to be a trend, at least in the chairs we've looked at online of very low armrests.  And who knows?  We might find a sale on something that we like and can afford.

We're having a rather intensive service thing done on the car.  They've been telling us for the last few visits it was time to get it done, but no emergency service even so.  We've decided to just go right on and get it done, especially while we're a one car household.  Again, the fact of being a one car household bothers me not at all.

Kitchen:  

I finally got bagels made last week.  I had a total of 14 from my batch of dough.  That will do us for at least a month.   I make mine smaller than those from the grocery and I mind less if John eats one of the homemade ones for a snack.  They are so good and so much cheaper than those we buy.  John saw an ad for English muffins on TV and said, "Boy wouldn't an English muffin be nice?"  Sure, I can buy them, but I also can make them.  I just need to practice perfecting them.  It took months of making pizza crust to know exactly when it was 'right'.  Now I need to put that same effort into learning English Muffins.

Make up a batch of brownie mix.  I made my old tried and true brownie recipe earlier in March and you know?  I didn't care for them!  I spent 21 years perfecting that recipe and now I don't like them!  Truth, they are more expensive to make than some recipes and, in this day, and age, I just don't want to spend the extra money for the ingredients when I can make up that 1950's brownie mix recipe and make very tasty brownies a whole lot cheaper.  

In my inventory of the freezer the other day, I realized that I rely heavily on ground beef and chicken when I'm cooking, which is not surprising as both tend to be the cheaper proteins to purchase, and I have copious recipes calling for them.  But I have some cuts of beef and whole chickens that have been in there for quite a long while. I want to incorporate a few of those into meals and not let them just sit there.  

I also became aware that I don't date meat as I put it in the freezer.  Some has the store dates on it but other pieces that were re-packaged do not.  I need to be sure and do that in the future, so it will be a reminder to use those other cuts of meat while they are in their best stages.  I cycle through breasts and ground meat often enough that it never gets a chance to stay too long in the freezer.  Still, a date would make it handy for me to know which I should be using first even in those areas.

Meal plans this week will be a little different. I'm out of lettuce and eggs.  I'm low on many items and it's another twelve days until I have a fresh grocery budget.   After the March madness of shopping mostly at the higher end grocery for convenience's sake, I need to reset.   I'd normally allot a portion of money for the first of a new month, but I consider what I spent last weekend, when we shopped the Kroger digital sale, my first of the month money.   I'm going to try to get by with just lettuce and eggs and nothing more until my budgeted money is available.  Not one sale on anything tempted me to spend more last week and I'm hopeful it will be the same this week.   However, fair warning, if Kroger has a fantastic digital coupon sale, I'll be on it if it's something I am going to require.  I can't really afford to pass those up!

Finally, I'm going to call it a loss and feed one entree I made last November (I do date those) to the dogs.  I like this casserole fine made fresh.  After it's sat in the freezer and been thawed and then heated the texture is pretty much just mush, as I discovered when I cooked one of these three months ago. I have tried and tried to make myself pull that last one out to use and each time I remember how displeasing that texture was.  None of us liked it (Caleb was here at the time and he's like Mikey, he'll eat just about anything, but not that!).  I just can't bear the idea of trying to eat this last one.  The dogs won't mind it and since it was all scraps of this and that put together anyway, it's not a huge loss.  I will make this fresh in the future.  I just won't try to double the recipe and freeze any of it.  Lesson learned.

Meals:

Polska, Sour Kraut and Red Potatoes.  This is one of those meals that can go to the table in 15 minutes with little prep. The sauerkraut was leftover a couple of weeks ago.  Glad it's a long keeping item in the fridge.  I usually do this dish with cabbage, but John likes Sauerkraut and I think he'll enjoy tonight's meal just fine.

I was so happy this week when Kroger sent me customer appreciation coupons and one of these sausages is a FREE item in the packet!  I'll be sure to pick that up so I can have another round of easy meal prep ready to use when I pick up the eggs and lettuce.  

Just as a side note, a few months back when I was shopping more routinely at the discount store, I picked up a couple of cans of cooked seasoned cabbage.  I think it was Margaret Holmes brand.  I finally tried it last week and the taste is pretty good, but the texture is decidedly mushy as you'd expect with a canned cabbage.  It was definitely worth trying.  I tend to keep fresh cabbage on hand and all in all, it's a relatively cheap food to purchase.  I still want to try freezing.  I never did get a second head to try doing that with.

Whole Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary,  Roasted Potato Wedges, Tossed Salad.  I'd love to have asparagus to go with this meal, but there you are.  I haven't got it and didn't see a great sale on any last week when I was shopping.  I have ideas for how I'll use the leftovers, hence the seasonings.

Macaroni and Cheese Casserole, Salad  I keep putting mac n cheese on the menu and I never make it.  I know John really enjoys it.  I'm going to make more of a custard cheese sauce this time.  We both agreed yesterday when eating from a buffet that we both like a custard cheese sauce better than just a cheese sauce.  I'll have eggs by the time I make this.  I can use less cheese and the eggs and the dish will have as much protein at less expensive.

Cubed Venison Steak, Mandy's Brown Rice, Green Beans, Sliced cucumber.   Cubed steak has been in the freezer for too long.  Time to use it up!  I don't have anything on hand for this recipe.  I don't have the soups called for. Mandy's recipe calls for white rice, but I think I can adjust the recipe so that I can use brown rice, bouillon and reconstituted French onion soup mix and have the same flavor.  We'll see, lol.  

Greek Style Chicken Pitas, Cucumber Slices, Kalamata Olives, Chickpeas with Tomatoes I have pitas in the freezer.  Normally I'd use oregano to season the chicken, but my oregano has only just begun coming out once more and is tiny.   I snitched a wee bit to make pizza sauce this weekend, but I was cautious in the amount I cut.  Tzaziki sauce  isn't something I care for.  I may try a Greek dressing.  I'll see if I can find a recipe for it that sounds good.   Rosemary winters over for me here and my bush is so huge that I've actually been pruning the lower branches as well as some of the sides that stick out too far.  I discovered that another bit of rosemary I started last summer kept well in a pot over by the heat pump which was my hope.   I'll have to decide where I'm planting that one. 

Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Coleslaw, Corn Muffins. I'll make one regular amount of meatloaf mix then divide it in half.  Half will freeze and half will be supper tonight.  The mashed potatoes may change if I have a good portion of mac'n'cheese leftovers.

Chicken Noodle Soup.  It's meant to turn off rather cool once more on Friday, so soup will be a most welcome meal.  I'll probably still have chicken leftovers.

Personal/Leisure:

Last week I picked up Jan Karon's, At Home in Mitford.  I was so at home there myself that I'm longing to jump into the whole series all over again.  I've a huge stack of books to read on the shelf, and the next book in the series isn't even in it but I think I need more of Father Tim just now.  He's a great comfort to me and I can see why Jan Karon couldn't shake his character when he came to her mind one night.   So this week I expect to be reading, A Light In the Window.  <<Amazon Affiliate Link>>

I'd like to also read that last Harry Potter book.  Then I'll be done with that series.

Set up a wardrobe for April.  Maybe work on a post?  Our temperatures are all over the place again this week with as much as 25 degrees between one day and another.  

Make an apron.  Start wearing the darned things.  I've just noticed I have ruined another of my house shirts.  I think having one for each day of the week would be just about right. 

I've been considering getting new capri athleisure pants to wear about the house this year, but I think perhaps I won't.  I have a maxi skirt that needs to be taken in and I think I would enjoy wearing that about the house.   I'll risk sounding like my mama and say I thought it would be something I could wear to a funeral, but I do have black dress pants that would suit me better and I'd like to get some use from the skirt.   Good intentions, anyway.

I'm quickly getting out of balance again with my to do lists and my recreations.  So here's more recreation:  While John and I are taking the car for service this next week, I'm just going to walk next door to the shopping center and look around at Tuesday Morning.  I can't buy anything but looking never hurts.  It's something I enjoy, even if John doesn't.