Now We Need To . . . -Part 2-

In my last post, I shared some of my concerns and the changes we are making because of this pregnancy. Here are some more changes we are making in preparation for our new addition . . .

Grocery shopping has already completely changed. I've decided that I want to begin some new habits now so that it will be an easier transition once the baby comes. It used to be that I would take the three kiddos with me and spend an entire morning every two weeks grocery shopping at Winco. Shopping with the children is inefficient, tiresome and it takes up a whole morning of homeschooling every two weeks. When I began considering making these trips with another baby, I decided something needed to change.

Saturday mornings have now become family chore time. Every other week, I take this time to go grocery shopping by myself. While I am out, the family begins the process of cleaning up the house. On weeks that I am not shopping, then I am home to help with that. By noon on Saturdays, the house is clean, the shopping is done and we often have the rest of the day to relax. This has made my week SO much more manageable. Without having to do the shopping and the cleaning during the week, I can spend more time on things more important to me - reading my Bible alone and to the children; teaching Veronica how to do a puzzle and how to finger paint; having more time and patience to teach Joshua and Noah their lessons. This has been a very good change.

The laundry monster is about to get bigger. Oh dear. If I didn't have a plan, this could be cause for nightmares. Right now, I try to stay on top of this by doing one load of laundry every weekday. For a while, I was letting this slip but in my renewed spirit to form good habits before the baby arrives, I am making sure to get this done each day again. And when we have more loads due to spit-up and blow-out diapers, I will be prepared to get two loads done a day. And perhaps a load or two on Saturdays. Now of course, I don't mean I'm going to be getting all this laundry done the day we come home from the hospital. Of course there will be a few transitional months when the laundry will just get done whenever we can get to it. I've just been brainstorming about how I am going to handle the workload of mothering four little ones.

And lastly for this post, I have been looking at every shelf, every closet and every space with a more critical eye. How can it be put to the best use? Because money has been so tight the past few years, there are many items that I would like to buy for storage and organization that I have not. But we plan to invest some time and money in the coming months in organizing our home and making the most of our space. I will be sharing some of this process with you over the coming months.

In my next post, I will finish sharing with you the answers I have come up with to my initial anxiety-driven questioning due to our newest blessing on the way.