Ideas to help parents juggle the children and the housework
As parents, we are, by necessity, housekeepers and managers, since we need to provide food, shelter, and clothing for the children. It is a time intensive challenge to keep children supplied with these physical necessities while attending to their emotional, spiritual, and scholastic needs. This article contains tips and methods to help parents set priorities and allocate less time and effort for less essential tasks. The underlying principle is that parents often do not have time to do everything the “right” way. It is more important for parents to keep a feeling of simcha than to exhaust themselves physically and emotionally trying to maintain high housekeeping standards.
Planning Ahead
Pre-planning allows parents to be more efficient with the time that they spend on housekeeping. There are a variety of ways to plan ahead.
Menu Planning
Either plan the week’s menus at the outset of the week or establish a fixed set of menus for each day of the week. Create the shopping list at the beginning of each week. A sample weekly menu schedule: Sunday – leftovers, Monday – homemade pizza, Tuesday – ground meat, Wednesday – chicken cooked with potatoes or rice, Thursday – fish or lasagna/ziti. Another approach to meal planning for families that want more variety is to create a long list of meals that a parent is able to cook on a weeknight. Parents may decide to plan their menus a month ahead, choosing from the menu list to create weekly shopping lists.
Shopping Lists
Maintain a set of shopping lists in the kitchen, one for each of the stores regularly shopped: the kosher store, the big supermarket, the department store, etc. If one stocks two of every essential item, the item is added to the list when the spare is opened. The object is to minimize the number of shopping trips by being prepared. In addition, it is useful to keep a shopping list on the fridge so that if kids need something for school or request specific snacks they may jot them down.
To-Do Lists
Keep a small short-term “to-do” notebook with a page allocated for each day and a larger notebook for longer-term planning. The daily to-do list is more realistic if it includes estimated timings for how long each listed task should take. It is a good idea to study the children’s school calendar(s) in order not to be surprised by early dismissals, late starts, staff training days, and the like. Before going on an errand that is likely to involve waiting, one might pack these notebooks, along with the yeshiva calendar, and plan during the wait.
Foreseeable Busy Times
Certain events may be predicted in advance: Yom Tov, simchas, vacations, school starting, etc. Parents may take the time, months in advance, to prepare count downs for crunch time and inject clarity into the chaos. This includes preparing shopping lists, menus, and to-do lists for two weeks before, one week before, and the day before the big event. Planning ahead should include determining how to minimize non-essential activities during these predictable extra busy times. Certain lists, i.e. Yom Tov preparation and menus, may be kept in a notebook for re-use.
Meal Preparation
Keep meals as simple as possible; save the serious cooking for Shabbos/Yom Tov. For example, whole wheat pitas filled with ketchup, cheese, and raw vegetables (peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes) with grapefruit or oranges for dessert is a healthy, kid-friendly, and easy meal. Another example: purchase pizza dough (freezer section of Acme, bakery section at Shoprite) or pizza bread (Kosher Konnection), cover with mushrooms, onions, spinach and/or broccoli, pour tomato sauce, and add cheese. Leftover Shabbos chicken may be sliced and added with vegetables to a wrap for another healthy, simple meal.
Acquire a freezer when financially feasible. Double recipes when possible. Meat balls, meat sauce, pureed vegetable soup (split peas, cream of zucchini), noodle casseroles all lend themselves to cooking on a large scale and freezing. Wrap food, first in heavy duty foil and then in plastic, to maintain freshness. Label the package with contents and date and keep a list on the freezer door of what has been frozen and when.
Begin Shabbos cooking/baking early in the week, preparing a little each day. Meats may be kept at least a week in the refrigerator if properly wrapped. Yom Tov preparation should begin a few weeks ahead: challah and most other baked goods freeze well.
Take advantage of sales of meat or chicken by purchasing in large quantities. Chicken may be cleaned, cut up or divided into meal-sized portions, and frozen in plastic bags. Meats may be cut, if necessary, and put into a marinade before freezing. This saves time later since the meat is ready to be used as soon as it is defrosted.
Train children not to display and share their negative reactions to food served at meals. This only prejudices others in the family against the food.
Shopping
Ordering-in groceries is a great timesaver for a nominal fee. For some parents, it is easier to just pick up the groceries rather than have to stay home for delivery.
ShopRite’s online site allows one to create and print a ShopRite list, which is not only item- specific (the 14 oz. bottle of ketchup, not the 48 oz. one), but also organized according to the store aisles. This makes it easier for teens or husbands to shop effectively, since they know exactly which items to buy and where to find them. The lists may be saved and labeled, e.g. “Pre Purim,” “After Pesach Stock Up,” “Summer Trip,” etc.
Shop at only one store per week, even though this will mean paying more for some items. It may pay to vary the stores to allow stocking up on sales.
Enter the family’s most important recipes on the computer, including Pesach recipes, so they do not get lost or damaged. Check ingredients in recipes against pantry supplies before shopping.
Laundry
Keep three hampers accessible to the entire family and teach children to put their laundry each night into the correct hamper: coloreds, whites, permanent press.
Teach children to keep track of their clothing from an early age: put into hamper, put away clean laundry, lay out clothing for the next day.
If there is no time to fold or sort laundry, have the children go through the basket one at a time to remove their own clothing. However, this may cause problems if a child covets another’s clothes. When children are allowed to pick through the basket day by day, the clean clothing may end up on the floor.
An alternative is to wash laundry per bedroom, including the linens. When the laundry is dry, return it to the room for each occupant to fold, sort, and put away. Making the bed with the same set of linens saves folding the linen. For those who are willing to wash small laundry loads, another alternative is to give each child his/her own hamper, and wash each child’s laundry separately, so that there is no need to sort.
Sock-locks are plastic circles that hold socks together in the wash. Children may be taught to put their dirty socks into a sock-lock so that the socks are together from feet through washing machine, dryer, and back into the sock drawer.
Write a big number (in an inconspicuous spot) in a specific color to identify siblings’ socks, underwear, shirts and pants. A silver marker is visible on dark colors. Girls might select a specific pattern for their socks at the beginning of the school year. This speeds up clothing sorting immensely when there are a few siblings close in age. If the family plans to hand down the clothes, put one dot for the oldest child and keep adding one dot each time the clothing is handed down.
Cleaning House
Keeping the entire house clean is not an option for many parents, given the multiple constraints on their time. It is important, however, to maintain a sense of order and to keep clutter in check. This means putting things away on a regular basis rather than letting the clutter build to overwhelming levels. It also means accepting that cleanup will not be perfect.
Tidy with the Kids – Children should be taught to put away their belonging before they go to bed. For younger children, it helps to make cleanup time a family activity, singing the cleanup songs while putting away the toys.
Set Food Boundaries – When eating is restricted to one or two places in the house it keeps the rest of the house much neater and reduces the likelihood of pests.
Set Playing Boundaries – Restrict playing to specific rooms so as to keep other areas tidy.
Set Priorities – If the family cannot afford cleaning help, parents should decide where to put their efforts. Rooms that are seldom used do not need to be cleaned regularly. If a child suffers from dust allergies, consider removing drapes rather than constantly cleaning and rehanging.
Involving the Entire Family
It is important than neither parent feel that s/he bears the entire burden of running the household. It is easier to maintain shalom bayis when expectations about chores are made explicit, rather than waiting for an emotional outburst from a parent who feels exploited. Communication is very important; both parents need to know who is going to do what and when it will be done
Children benefit when they are given their own chores. It may require investing time and patience to train the child, and parents may have to be satisfied with less than perfection. Nonetheless, it is worth it so long as the task is child-appropriate. The allocation of chores need not be gender-specific: boys or girls are capable of setting the table, cooking, baking, taking out the garbage, holding the baby, or cleaning the bathroom. It is more convenient to simply follow the child’s nature and interests when deciding which job s/he should take.
Another method for allocating chores is to assign each child his/her own day to be “on call” or available for any task the parent needs. On school nights, this might include setting and cleaning up dinner.
Erev Shabbos/Yom Tov should be seen as everyone’s day to help. Even young children may clear tables, fold towels, put away their belongings, and set the table; older children might help in the kitchen.
Miscellaneous
A daily bath is not always necessary. If the child is clean, the bath may be skipped. A timesaver is to install a handheld shower and allow children to give themselves a quick shower instead.
Making the beds is not a necessity, especially if family members spend little waking time in the bedroom. A compromise is to teach children to pull sheets up to the pillow when they get up in the morning and not expect a properly made bed.
Consider using disposable dishes to save time. Snacks, for example, might be served on the least expensive plates and using small cups. For families on a tight budget, cups may be labeled and reused by a child. Drawing a smiley face, the sun, or some other symbol allows pre-literate children to find their cup. Alternatively, children might be given their own personal cup to use all day rather than constantly rewashing cups.
Sometimes, it pays to use the local eateries. The pizza stores, for example, have specials on Mondays. In addition, Valpack coupons, which are mailed, have additional offers.
Getting Help
When interviewing for this article, we found that many mothers attributed their success to using hired help. Even mothers who do not work outside the home found that having help eased their workload considerably and allowed them to function better as parents.
Many working women prefer to bring a babysitter in their home. In fact, the decision to bring someone into the home for anything more than supervised cleaning is a halachic decision, to be reached only after consulting with one’s Rav. Aside from concerns about leaving children alone with someone the parents do not know well, there are halachic challenges in areas including basic kashrus, yichud, bishul akum, basar shenisaleim, and stam yainum (non-mevushal wine).
When a family hires help, one option is to use the help to allow the parents to spend more time with the children, rather than having the help supervise the children while the mother does housework. Parents should not leave children alone with the cleaning help even for short errands unless they have observed that the help is aware and concerned about the children’s needs, rather than focused exclusively on the housework. The parents also need some confidence in the cleaning woman’s willingness to remain in the house even if the parent returns after their cleaning job is over.