Parenting Survival Tips
Congratulations! You’ve decided to do it all by yourself! Here are a few pointers from others who have done it before you:
On Child Care
As always keep children, especially preschoolers, where you can see or hear them. If you have an infant, make sure you have him safe in his crib, far from your preschooler’s reach.
Keep your kids busy while you take your bath or are cooking. Drawing, reading, coloring books or a video can do the trick.
On Cleaning
Don’t always expect the house to be spic and span. The goal is a semblance of neatness and cleanliness. Train the kids to fix their beds, pick up their toys, and pack away their own things.
If you have a big house, consider getting someone — perhaps one of your mom’s helpers on loan — to come in once a week to do a thorough cleaning.
Have the laundry done by someone else (or use a laundry service).
Have a place where the little ones can make a mess. If you allow them to play with clay or paint in the living room, don’t get angry when the rug gets soiled.
Don’t clean the bathrooms daily. A once-a-week thorough cleaning — with twice-a-week touch-ups of toilet bowls and sinks — will suffice. Your teenage children can alternate cleaning schedules with you.
If your kids are all under six, have them use just one bathroom — the easiest to clean in the house — since they will use it frequently during the day.
Impose house rules that will facilitate things for you — like, leave muddy shoes or slippers outside the front door, eating and drinking allowed only in the kitchen and the dining area, and so on.
On Meals
Have set menus good for a month, which you can rotate weekly. This will make marketing easier. Have a couple of favorite recipes at hand for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries.
Choose recipes that are realistically possible for you to cook, time-wise. Look for flavorful dishes that are easy to prepare.
Make a mental note of what you regularly buy in the supermarket and how quickly you run out of them, so you’ll know how many and how often you have to purchase them.
If worse comes to worst, you can always order for delivery or eat out. This is, of course, a last resort and shouldn’t be done often (because if cost cutting is one of the reasons you did away with having helpers, well, eating out defeats the purpose).
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