How I intend to get organised and become the kick arse New Model Housewife I'd always intended to be and why I think my plans will work and not descend into total anarchy.

[Please note - This blog post was pre written in advance. I have used a Blogger tool to schedule when these posts appear. Pre written posts will appear once a day until they run out! I may go into labour any day now and am not necessarily monitoring this blog, able to publish or respond to comments or correct errors. Normal service may or may not be resumed depending on how this whole being a mummy thing goes]

So looking forward to 2012 this is what I intend to do.

Non numbered reason. Give birth if I haven't done so already.

1. Be a fantastic mum
2. Have a well organised home
3. Eat healthy meals most of the time
4. Help my husband as much as I can
5. Get out of the house occasionally and make some friends

It all seems so simple when its in a lovely neat little list like this doesn't it. I've even done the classic list makers thing of putting something on the list that is fairly easy to do and will soon be crossed off. Lets face it, I'm giving birth whether I like it or not! Also even though its a short list many of the items on there are huge and cover big expanses of time and action. 

I'm determined to make it work however by sticking to two core principles and I've already started planning with these principles in mind. My principles are

• Principle One: Don't try to do anything else. Stick to the 'big five' resolutions.
• Principle Two: Keep things as simple as possible. Take the easy route where I can. 

I already know from past experience that Principle One works for me. At the start of 2011 when things were going wrong in my life I cut right back and focused only on my 'core functions' and placed all my attention on the things I had to do. This worked well and I was able to keep my life going through my mental health crisis and therapy. Now that I'm enjoying good mental health I'm confident that Principle One will continue to work for me. I won't be focusing on superfluous things that I don't need to do or splitting my time on activities that, though worthwhile and fulfilling such as volunteer work, leave me spread too thinly and unable to focus on the main things in my life. 

Principle Two is more complicated and is not something I've been able to live by before. I have often been a very ambitious and overcomplicated planner and I have set myself a series of impossible standards and goals that I've been unable to keep. Aiming high is all well and good in some circumstances but only if you don't aim so high you find that gravity works against you and you drop the ball and hit yourself on the head. 

I have definitely dropped the ball on my head several times in the past. 

For example when I first became a housewife I set myself a rota of tasks. Not only did this rota plan what I was going to do each day but at each half hour and for how long. It included many tasks that were frankly superfluous such as cleaning the windows twice a week and vacuuming the carpets twice a day. In the long run it was far too complicated for me, I turned away from it, and as a result I became demoralised with myself and with the whole idea. I'd set myself up to fail and rather then face the failure I slunk away from facing it and  buried myself in other things. 

A similar problem applied to my cooking. I planned elaborate menus of recipes that involved significant amounts of time and effort. I spent a small fortune in some cases getting all the ingredients I needed. I spent hours looking at cookery books imagining myself capable of living up to the lifestyles they promoted. To this day I will happily spend an hour or more watching these lifestyle type programmes and imagining that I could be like that. 

Of course I set myself up to fail again. The exhaustion of pregnancy made planning cooking easy but actually preparing food difficult. Ingredients went to waste in the fridge and I would walk past feeling ashamed of my wastefulness while ordering in take away. I didn't consider my husband's needs or wants either. I'm a food lover and he isn't. For him food is largely fuel and he has simple tastes. I hadn't realised this about him until a few weeks ago when I watched him put away a meal of chips, baked beans and vegetarian sausage with twice the enjoyment and relish he'd shown for a more complicated aubergine curry I'd made the month before. The former had taken roughly 20 minutes of my time and been assembled from ingredients easily obtained from my freezer and the pantry. The later had taken hours of research and planning and then more then an hour in the making. 

It was these experiences that led me to realise I needed to apply Principle Two to my cooking. What's the point of preparing a fancy meal when your husband is happier with something that takes you half the time and effort? I've also realised that once the baby is here I won't have the time to plan weekly menus like I used to and I won't  have much time for cooking either. However if I want to eat well and have an organised home I need to plan.

To achieve this my husband and I have agreed that we will stick to one weekly menu for at least the first few months. Yes it means we will eat the same 14 dishes every week for a long time but at least it will be easy. 

I've already drawn up a weeks meal rota and these are the reasons I think it will work whilst helping me stick to the big five resolutions and general principles. 

• I've done my research and ensured that it will provide us with a balanced diet which covers resolution number 3. I've ensured we are getting enough protein, 5 portions of fruit and veg a day, enough portions of calcium and plenty of fibre. I've even planned it down to each cup of tea to ensure I'm drinking enough fluid which has been one of my health pitfalls before. 
• The meals I have chosen are really easy to prepare. Easy in terms of simplicity but also in terms of speed. The lunches are pretty much bung it all in a bowel type meals. The dinners are bung it in the oven and some veg in a pan type meals. I could even do much of it in a microwave if needs be. This means on really bad days my husband can cook them. It also means I won't be too over faced and find myself wasting ingredients and cooking a simpler meal or being tempted by the takeaway because I've given myself too much too do.
• One day I'd like to eat as much fresh food as possible but for now I'm utilising all the frozen and tinned ingredients that I can. This means there shouldn't be any waste or at least less waste then before. It also allows me flexibility if I need to make changes. This means I shouldn't go into a wasted food shame spiral which causes me to give up the plan altogether. 
• Having the rota means I won't be spending time thinking about cooking or wasting time in the kitchen. It will even make shopping easier. As I wrote my plan I also wrote a shopping list of what I will need to buy each week and what I'll need to check on to see how my supplies are going. I already do the majority of my grocery shopping on-line, so this should be fairly easy. It should hopefully mean that this part of my household is organised too and I shouldn't for the most part find myself running out of things. 

I appreciate that cooking and organisation is difficult when you have a new baby but I really believe that I've found the best solution for our family. I don't want to make myself ill because I haven't been organised enough to get myself some decent food. We won't have a fortune to spend on last minute type food and takeaways anyway. I really hope that I've found a happy compromise between ease and organisation and I hope that the time I've invested in planning this now will mean I have more time in the long run. 

Next time - The big five resolutions, Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5.