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Do you every feel like a short-order cook for your own family?
When it comes to meal planning, shopping, prepping, creation and distribution, we all fall somewhere on the spectrum between two categories:
1) I channel my inner Julia Child daily and live for the art of creating beautiful meals for my delightful family.
And…
2) Would it be so horrible to serve my delightful family cereal for every meal? Asking for a friend.
There are a lot of things out there that we know we should be doing regularly… eating right, exercising daily, getting 8 hours of sleep every night, etc.
The key to being effective at any of it, however, is finding an approach to said thing that works for you and hence yields results.
When we make the “rules” too stringent and unforgiving, we view breaking them as failure and fall back into winging things or worse, letting them drop off all together.
When we revert to “winging it” we aren’t being held to any standard or expectation. Hence, when we accomplish anything that wasn’t planned it feels like a bonus and our psyche does a happy dance!
In MotherShip, our mom-life management system, we’ve accounted for our often manipulative psyches…We’re on to you, Psyche!
We always start with a plan because we understand the value of a plan. However, where our MotherShip system is unique is that it incorporates grace – always!
Here’s how:
- It encourages moms to set realistic expectations from the start.
- It reminds moms to accept that the chaos is never totally going away. However, with a plan, we can stay ahead of it more often than not (though some days the chaos still wins).
- The system uses a recurring digital task manager (in an app!) that invites moms to assess their to-do lists daily with the touch of a button and check off the things that just aren’t going to happen “today” knowing that those things will pop again the next day.
Take that, Psyche!
Today we’re applying The MotherShip Method to meal planning. It’s not a cold-turkey (pun intended), do-or-die approach. Rather, it’s intentional, yet forgiving and is all your own which means it might not look like anyone else’s – and that’s okay!
In The List this week, we look at the why and the how behind meal planning in an effort to help get you closer to a plan that works for you!
Our Smart Reads this week cover things like a financial analysis of ordering groceries online (it’s not as boring as it sounds, I promise) and which meal kit programs might be right for you based on your lifestyle.
We also included articles on how to get the kids involved in meal planning (spoiler alert: they complain less at meal time!) and how to eat for improved productivity… What?? You mean I can eat my way through my to do list?
Amanda has put together another fantastic line up of eclectic episodes in our Grace in the Race Podcast Playlist for this week and finally, our latest Insightful Video is a continuation of our series of inspiring talks by kids!
Get it all in The List…
The List: 15 Expert Resources for Moms (updated weekly!)
6 skimmable articles to offer perspective on this week’s topic, 8 informative and/or entertaining podcast episodes to make the chores fly by, and 1 insightful video to inspire you to move forward with grace.
📖 6 Skimmable Articles
🎗 Awareness 🏡 Home 🗂 Productivity 🥗 Wellness 🧗 Growth 👨👩👧👧 Family
🧗🏽♀️ Let’s get real, the meal plan goes off the rails some days
“I refuse to become that crazy meal planning lady who has breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks planned for every day of the week—we all know that’s never going to work out and, hello, how would I get anything accomplished in my life?”
Read How To Meal Plan & Not Be a Crazy Person by Aubrey Golbek, RD
🎗 Sometimes the smartest plan is using someone else’s!
“But what I really want, is for you to eat simple dinners, together with your family, as many nights per week as you can possibly manage.”
Explore Wholesomelicious: Wholesome Ingredients. Delicious Food. by Amy Rains. Sign up to get her weekly meal plan delivered to your inbox. It even includes a grocery list – DONE FOR YOU!
🥗 Remember to plan your snacks so you don’t wind up diving face first into a bag of chips!
“Looking for some Easy Healthy Meal Prep Snack Ideas? Here are 4 meal prep snack recipes for work, school, or home! Healthy snacks for both adults and kids.”
Read Easy Healthy Meal Prep Snack Ideas by Carmy
🗂 Timing is everything… even when it comes to eating and productivity!
“When it comes to nourishing our bodies and brains for optimal performance, it turns out good nutrition involves both what we eat and when we eat it.”
Read The Productivity Diet: What to Eat to Get More Done in a Day [Infographic] by Lindsay Kolowich Cox
👨👩👧👦 Would you appreciate less complaining by your kids when it comes to what’s for dinner?
“Kids love to feel valued and important, and getting them involved with meal planning and shopping is a great way to teach good habits as well as give them part ownership of mealtime.”
Read 5 Simple Ways to Involve Kids in Meal Planning from Together Counts
🏡 There’s no place like home… keep it safe!
“There’s a growing number of online services that make buying groceries easy and convenient. But the real question is whether these services actually save us money.”
Read Is It Worth It To Buy Groceries Online? A Review Of The Best Options by Adrienne Silver
🎧 8 Podcast Episodes
KEY:
📰 Newsletter Topic
👸🏻 Society & Culture
💡 Ideas: Big and Small
🤰🏻 Motherhood
😎 Relax & Escape
🧗 Growth
👨👩👧👧 For the Family
⏭ Series
💣 explicit language
🌭 frank content
⚠️ sensitive topic
📰 Insider tips on successful meal planning!
“A step-by-step guide designed to teach parents the right way to meal plan without wasting valuable time. No more dreading the question, “What’s for dinner tonight?”!”
Listen to Maximized Minimalist Podcast | Meal Planning Secrets Revealed (31 min)
👸🏻 A rom-com about two Indian families who live next to each other in South Africa
Two families… and the moms hate each other. So, naturally, their kids fall in love.
Listen to The Indicator from Planet Money | Keeping up with the Kandasamys (10 min)
💡 “We’ll teach you how to recycle — properly!”
“It’s not your fault that single-use plastic is everywhere. But with a little planning, you can curb your use of disposables and maybe even save some money in the long run.
Listen to Life Kit | How To Use Less Plastic (25 min)
🤰🏻 “If you could time travel, what advice would you give your younger self?”
“Youth is wasted on the young. We wasted our youth taking the wrong classes in college and layering imaginary agendas onto other people’s dopey behavior. Here’s the best advice we all learned from doing things the wrong way!”
Listen to What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Best Advice We’d Give Our Younger Selves (47 min)
😎 “Words mean things, but some words are especially meaningful.”
⚠️ From America to Pakistan, a little girl is kidnapped. She finds a copy of Little Women and that’s what keeps her going.
Listen to This American Life | The Weight of Words (61 min)
🧗 Are lawns a good idea?
“Nearly two percent of America is grassy green. Sure, lawns are beautiful and useful and they smell great. But are the costs — financial, environmental and otherwise — worth the benefits?”
Listen to Freakonomics Radio | How Stupid Is Our Obsession With Lawns? (28 min)
👨👩👧👦 The “pink tax”
“School supplies, sports equipment, you name it, often cost more when they’re designed to look like they were made for girls. People have taken to calling this phenomenon the “pink tax.” This week, we’ll learn more about why it happens and what’s being done about it. “
Listen to Million Bazillion | Why can girls’ things cost more than boys’ things? (24 min)
⏭ “Get involved in the childcare revolution”
“Gloria chats with Elizabeth Warren about how we transform our country’s broken childcare system into one that’s accessible for all. “This is the moment to raise your voice. We have this opportunity to do it, but it’s going to take all of us to push until it gets done.”
Listen to No One Is Coming To Save Us | How We Save Ourselves (57 min)
🎬 Insightful Video
“What is it that makes you different?”
“What makes you jump out of bed? Cole Blakeway, a messy ten year old teaches us the value of celebrating differences as he describes his beautiful friendship with Steven, a 44 year old man with Autism. In a world that gravitates to being the same, Cole Blakeway reminds us that we are all different and that’s AWESOME!”
Watch We Are All Different – and THAT’S AWESOME! | Cole Blakeway | TEDxWestVancouverED (4:39)
That’s The List for this week!
Do you have go-to tips to for Meal Planning… or a take away from The List this week? Drop us a note in the comments.
As always, we hope our newsletter inspires you to get your ship together and get through your week with grace.
Have a good one and please reach out if we can be helpful to you in any way!
Love & Grace,
Rachel & Amanda
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🎧 Podcast Playlist 7/21/21