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Tips To Enjoying Life With Your Family

15 Tips To Help Make Family Mealtime Less Stressful

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This last week I was asked to teach a class on Simple Suppers for over a hundred ladies in my stake {a stake is about 6-8 wards combine}.  I was pretty nervous mainly because I had 4 months to prepare so I thought about it WAY too much! I am all about simple suppers right now in my life.  It’s really the only thing I have time for with how buys our days get.  I thought a lot about how important I think it is to have family meals together.  Especially dinner.  We always wait for my husband to get home for dinner, even if it is late, just so we can eat together as a family.  As stressful as it can be sometimes running around getting a meal on the table I love my time with my family as we sit down and eat together and enjoy talking about our day!
Why is it so important to have family meals together?
 
Elder Oaks in his talk Good, Better, Best said, The number of those who report that their “whole family usually eats dinner together” has declined 33 percent. This is most concerning because the time a family spends together “eating meals at home [is] the strongest predictor of children’s academic achievement and psychological adjustment.” Family mealtimes have also been shown to be a strong bulwark against children’s smoking, drinking, or using drugs There is inspired wisdom in this advice to parents: what your children really want for dinner is you.”

In my Creating Home as a Sacred Center college text book I found these great quotes…

Studies have shown that when family members are mutually involved in the process of procuring, preparing and sharing food, they enjoy opportunities for creating memories, offering gifts of love, and increasing the sense of love that is inherent in casual communication and mutual experience.  Shared family meals also promote healthy eating habits, social adjustment and a sense of personal well being.  

LeGrand R. Curtis said, “ To have a time when the family meets at the kitchen table may take considerable adjustment and careful planning, but what could e or more importance to the unity of the family, the spiritual growth of the family and bridges built between members of a family as they talk, listen, and respond surrounded by love?

Sometimes I feel just like this around 5:00 every evening!

One of the challenges of family meal planning lies in it’s ongoing nature.  It always has to happen.  Although most people enjoy cooking somethings, preparing dinner every night can become burdensome and tedious and totally overwhelming.  It often takes much longer to prepare a meal than it does for the family to devour it, and all that is left to show for the effort is a huge stack of dishes and rice all over the kitchen floor! However the importance of family meals makes it worth the effort.  The thing I have found helpful is to simplify the steps along the way so the focus can be on the fun shared meaningful aspects of family meals rather than the task itself.  So I am here to share with you 15 tips that have helped me feel less stressful at mealtime.

I first want to share the tips my sons and husband wanted me to share at my class…. Go out to eat or get take out, Get Pizza, or eat Mac and Cheese or Ramon 🙂   While doing this is fine every once in a while I also think it’s really important to eat simple suppers that are healthy!

Here are my tips that help me when it comes to meal planning and simplifying.

  1. Have an empty dishwasher in the morning, and a clean counter so that being in the kitchen is more motivating.
  2. Don’t put your dishes in the sink, rinse them and put them in the empty dishwasher.
  3. Buy your meat on sale and pre-cook it and freeze. If it needs to be seasoned or marinated do that before freezing. Then it is easy to pull it out and have it ready to go!
  4. If you don’t pre cook your meat set a timer to go off to remind you to get it out to thaw in the morning.
  5. Have a weekly menu plan before you grocery shop. It will be difficult to figure out what’s for dinner if you don’t have a plan.
  6. Have a master grocery list! {Below is the Master Grocery List I use)
  7. Have a menu on the fridge or somewhere in your kitchen where you will see it to remind you what you are cooking for dinner. {Menu’s Below}
  8. Make two of everything and freeze the other.
  9. Use your Slow Cookers! They can become your best friend!!
  10. Make freezer meals all in one day. (I did this here and it was great!)
  11. Clean up as you go so you don’t have a mess after.
  12. If it’s time for dinner and you don’t have anything made, my grandma always said, fry an up some onion and garlic on the stove and at least your husband will think dinner is ready when he gets home from work!
  13. Get your kids involved in the kitchen. Kid usually love dinner they help cook!  
  14. If you are really busy set certain meals for the week, like Tacos on Tuesday and Spaghetti on Wednesday and Breakfast for Dinner of Friday.
  15. Do not to stress about making sure you have planned side dishes. Just make sure that you buy plenty of fruits or veggies or even canned veggies to make something for a quick side!
Here are a couple of my weekly Menu’s. My cute daughter helped me make this one….
 {To Save, Right Click and Save to Desktop}
Here in my Master Grocery List. I keep in on the side of my fridge in a plastic sheet protector and we just put a dot with a wet erase marker by what we need when we shop next.
View Here
 

Comments

  1. Great tips!! We are really good about keeping a clean kitchen, mostly because I’m a psycho about it. I really want to start having a weekly meal calendar once I am home for good. Some of my fondest memories are stories told around a dinner table!