As a military spouse, the demand for keeping you and your family’s lives running smoothly is high and mighty. Like our soldier counterparts, military spouses are also superheroes in our own way. Why not give yourself a break by adopting these simple tasks to help alleviate your overall responsibilities and also give you and the family something fun to look forward to!
Meal Prep
Sure, making a large meal consisting of one meat, one starch and one vegetable every day of the week sounds delicious to the people eating it, but when you are the one preparing the meals and cleaning the dishes, the monotony can become overwhelming.
Every Sunday afternoon/evening grill up one or two different meats—marinating chicken tenderloins in a teriyaki glaze for 24 hours before grilling is one delectable option. While the meat is cooking, prepare your favorite starch. You could whip up a large pan of risotto or bake some seasoned red potatoes. Lastly, choose your greens. There is nothing wrong with taking the easy way out when it comes to dinner vegetables by buying bags of veggie steamers (in the frozen food section of the grocery store). The broccoli and honey roasted sweet corn steamers by Green Giant are great complements to any meal. You can hold off on cooking the veggies until the day you wish to eat them, so they don’t get soggy sitting in the fridge.
Once your meat and starch are cooked, place them in either large Tupperware containers for bulk storage or in individual Tupperware, so that the serving is already dished out and ready to go for easy consumption.
Not only will meal prepping help save you time, it can also ease any stress that may revolve around your cooking schedule. The cherry on top? It will save you money, and everyone can get on board with that.
Squeeze in Some Laundry
Most people will agree that laundry is definitely in the top five when it comes to most disliked chores. It’s also one of the most necessary. Even when our lives seem like they can’t get any busier, making time to do one or two loads of laundry during the week will greatly benefit you when it’s most important.
If you can accomplish a couple of loads Monday through Friday, then by the time the weekend arrives you’ve got less to do, which translates to having more quality time to spend with your family. See how nicely that works out?
Make Weekend Plans
Get excited for the weekends! For some military families, the weekends are the only time they get to spend together, which is nothing to complain about when you compare it to not getting to spend any family time together when the active duty member is deployed for months at a time. So, let’s be grateful for those special weekends together and capitalize on them.
Making weekend plans doesn’t have to mean spending lots of money on a hotel a few hours away in a destination you’ve never explored before. It can mean something as simple and sweet as dinner reservations at the steakhouse in town or a camping trip to a nearby lake.
The act of making plans for your family’s weekend is to give everyone something to look forward to throughout the week. The anticipation of your plans will make their reality even better when the weekend finally rolls around. For added fun, switch off with your partner or kids each week when deciding who will choose what to do. It gives everyone a chance to get the family together to do what they desire most. In the end, family time is full of precious moments that turn into memories, so be sure to plan ahead for it.
Go forth and make the most of the little things!
