Note from Crystal: Mandi asked me if she could blog through my new book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode. She'll be sharing one post per chapter per month. I know many of you are reading through the book right now and I thought you'd enjoy hearing her thoughts — and joining in the discussion to share your thoughts, as well.
The only problem? Three weeks ago my husband had a power kiting accident, and we were thrown right back into actual survival mode by necessity.
Work, homeschool, chores — these things all still needed to happen, but I was suddenly responsible for all of it by myself, on top of taking care of the man I love while he dealt with several complications and the worst pain of his life. I also ended up with mastitis for the first time in my life, which made survival mode even more crucial.
So instead of talking about goals (truthfully, my goal at this point is to just get through each day without dropping any major balls!), I thought we’d pause a minute and talk about a few strategies to survive when the unexpected strikes:
1. Clear your schedule.
The hardest part of the past three weeks has been the number of pre-scheduled activities on our calendar. The big girls had been preparing for months for the children’s musical at church, and the week after Sean’s accident included four straight days of practice and performances. Not to mention the pinewood derby we had signed up for during that same weekend.
While I know my girls would have bounced back if we’d needed to cancel one or both of those activities, they’d been working hard, and I didn’t want them to have to miss out. However, in order to make it through, we did have to cancel various play dates and parties.
2. Lower your standards.
Not only were we canceling outside activities, though; we also lowered our standards at home. Paper plates? Yes, please. Despite the fact that we’d been planning for a screen-free week, the TV ended up being on a little more often. And we’ve been eating a lot of simple fare, with a few more processed ingredients than usual. And while canceling school wasn’t an option because we’re just getting back in the groove after our baby boy’s arrival and we have standardized tests coming up, we did reduce the workload for everybody to focus on the basics.
3. Say yes to help.
Asking for help doesn’t come easily to me, not because I’m prideful and want to do it all myself, but because — as an introvert — sometimes trying to come up with ways for other people to help can be more stressful to me than just getting it done. But when a friend offered to set up a meal train, I gratefully said yes, and the pile of freezer meals we received from our local homeschool community made surviving those first couple of weeks possible.
I also had friends offering to watch the girls for doctor’s appointments and to make our crazy schedule that first week bearable, and my sister-in-law saved the day with her awesome pinewood derby skills (I’m not sure we would have made it to the derby without her help!). And when a friend offered to come meet with Sean to see if he could help him deal with the excruciating pain he was experiencing that first week, I was tempted to say no because it felt like such an inconvenience to their family, but we humbly said yes and it has made a huge difference in his recovery.
It’s not always easy to ask for or accept help, but it is worth it!
4. Encourage your kids to help as needed.
I am so very proud of how each of my girls has grown through this experience. They’ve taken on additional chores, they run to help daddy when he rings his bell (as funny as it sounds, I find a bell much easier to deal with than him yelling across the house when he needs assistance!). My oldest has taken over a huge amount of our breakfast and lunch preparations and can now make many recipes without any help at all. Our 8-year-old has spent hours holding or playing with the baby while I jump in the shower or take care of something someone else needs. And even our youngest daughter has grown up over the past few weeks.
As a side note, they’ve also needed time to decompress and cuddle up for a story or a hug, and I’m trying hard to balance both of those things. That first week was tough on all of us, and protecting their childhood is important to me, but I also think the responsibility and working together as a team has been a great lesson for them and one that I’m glad they’ve had time to practice.
5. Routine, routine, routine.
If routines are important in every day life, they’re even more important when your family is actually in survival mode. I almost wrote that that’s especially true for children, but honestly, it makes a big difference for my own sanity as well!
Routines help everyone know what to expect and they also take the thinking out of certain tasks, which makes our days less stressful. For example, the only reason I was able to get all five kids out of the house by 7 a.m. on two consecutive mornings that first weekend was because we have our “Sunday morning” church routine down pat (early mornings are just not something we do the rest of the week!) and everybody was able to get ready with minimal help from me.
Joy isn’t about pretending things are easy or okay when they’re not; it’s about choosing to see your circumstances in light of eternity and looking for ways to glorify God in the midst of them. That’s what I mean by a choice. It’s not an easy one, but it’s a choice nonetheless, and one I hope to keep practicing for all of my days.
And hopefully next month will include more goal setting — and achieving!
Mandi Ehman is an entrepreneur, online publisher and author who is passionate about encouraging other women to live intentionally. She's the blogger behind Life Your Way, the author of Easy Homemade and the founder of BundleoftheWeek.com. Mandi and her husband have four spunky little girls plus one baby boy, and together they live, work and homeschool on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia.
Every week for 52 weeks, I'm sharing a different way you can save $100 this year. If you do all of these things, you'll be able to save over $5,000 this year alone! Many of these things will likely be things you're already doing, but hopefully all of you will pick up at least a few new ideas or some inspiration from this series.
My number one tip for keeping things simple and saving money is to stay home more. Staying home is one of the easiest ways to have more time, spend less money, accumulate less clutter, and well, to plain just live a less frantic lifestyle.
Staying Home = More Time
A lot of times I'm asked how I get so much done. Let me tell you, I'm no wonder woman, but I do know that one of my “secrets” to efficiency is that I stay home a lot.
I love quiet days at home and I find that we function best when we have at least a few days every week where we are home all day. It’s not always possible for this to happen every single week, but I do my best to make it a priority that we have at least 1-2 full days at home every single week.
I've purposely said “no” to a multitude of outside activities and opportunities because I know that running around with three children not only wears me out, it is a surefire way for me to spend more money (i.e. trips through the fast-food lane while we're out, swinging by to check out a sale I see signs for when I don't really need anything, or ordering carry out for dinner because I'm exhausted and didn't have time to make anything for dinner) and get less done. It's just not worth it, folks.
Now, am I saying you need to cut out every outside activity and commitment and never step foot outside your doorstep? No. What I am encouraging you to do is to carefully evaluate all outside commitments and see if there are some that are really necessities or if they are just cluttering up your life for no good reason.
Staying Home = Fewer Expenses
It's pretty much always true that the less you shop, the less you buy. Stay out of the stores and you won't be tempted to purchase things you didn't know you needed in the first place!
Challenge yourself to stop spending money for a period of time — whether that's a day, a week, a month, or longer. {Well, start small if this is a brand-new idea to you!} You'll likely find that you begin to have a whole new appreciation for what you already have… and you'll realize that you spend a lot more money than you need to.
When you think that you need to buy a replacement or just something new altogether, see how long you can make do without it. I've sometimes gone for years without replacing something that I once that was a must-have!
When you feel like you "don't have anything to wear", shop your closet before going shopping at the mall. See if you can come up with some new outfit combinations that you hadn't put together before. It will feel like you went shopping — and you didn’t leave your house or spend any money.
Not only are you less tempted to spend money on things when you don’t go out shopping, but you’ll also spend less money on gas and have less wear and tear on your vehicle. It’s a win all around!
Staying Home = Less Clutter
One of the nice side effects of shopping so rarely is that we don't have a lot of clutter. In fact, some would probably think our home looks really bare, but I'd much rather have only things we need, use, and love taking up residence in our home, than to have our rooms bulging with stuff we don't need, haven't used in a long time, and don't like in the first place.
I want to end this post by sharing a post I wrote back in 2008 on how much I learned from our law school years when we didn’t have money to spend and I spent almost all day, every day at home:
A lot of you know that my husband and I spent the first three and half years of our marriage with him in law school and us living on a part-time income. We never went hungry and we always had a roof over our head and clothes to wear, but it was a very lean time.
During those years, we lived in a little basement apartment that only had four windows on one side. I could plug the vacuum cleaner into one outlet and vacuum the entire apartment without ever switching outlets.
We only had one old vehicle almost the entire law school tenure and Jesse usually used it for transportation from work and school. We knew hardly anyone in town we lived in–in spite of many efforts to try and make friends–and there were really not any safe places I could walk to from our apartment.
It would have been easy to have been swallowed up in despair and I won't pretend there weren't moments when I felt sorry for myself or wished we could be living in a little better circumstances. However, I decided, with God's help, to try and make the most of what might seem like a less-than-ideal situation.
Maybe we didn't have money to go out, but I challenged myself to think up creative ways we could still have fun without spending money. We'd check out a movie from the library and have homemade pizza. In the winter, we'd brew some coffee, pop some popcorn, and play a board game. Sometimes, we'd go to the park with a picnic or we'd browse the book selection at Barnes and Noble.
We didn't have money to spend on decorating our home, but I still found ways to make it homey and inviting. For starters, I tried to always keep it clean and clutter-free–even if it wasn't very pretty, at least it could smell nice and look clean! We tried to have music playing in the background and that always spruced up a rather bare home, too.
We couldn't afford fancy foods or restaurant meals, but that didn't mean we couldn't eat well. I had fun trying new recipes, searching out good deals, and stretching our grocery budget as far as possible. I discovered AllRecipes.com and enjoyed using their ingredient search feature to come up with new recipes to use what I already had on hand.
Instead of going out and buying things, I'd go to the library and check out a stack of books. Sometimes we'd check out CD's too, so we'd have new music to play in our home throughout the week.
It was also in this little basement apartment that I first began blogging and tinkering around with online entrepreneurial things. Had it not been for the free time and lack of friends, I would have never even considered pursuing blogging or had the time to learn about basic web design, online marketing, or producing an ebook or ecourse. Little did I dream that in a few years, those same skills would allow me to help supplement our family's income by doing something I very much enjoy while keeping my priorities as a wife and mother first and foremost.
And guess what? It was holed up in this little basement apartment with sometimes only $20 to spare for groceries for the week that I was searching grocery deals online and came upon this store called CVS that everyone in a now-defunct savings forum was raving about. I could never have imagined what that simple search would uncover for me that day, nor how many thousands of other individuals I'd have the opportunity to introduce to CVS, as well!
Yes, living in that little basement apartment in an unfamiliar town barely squeaking by financially would never have been something I would have chosen for myself, but I'll always be grateful God allowed me those three and half years of learning to be content, learning to love simplicity, and learning to make the most of what I had. And I hope I never forget those lessons.
A cheerful attitude can go a long way in less-than-ideal situations; you can either complain about the thorns or you can savor the roses which bloom in the midst of those thorns. Choose to bloom where you're planted–even if it seems like it's among thorns!
How does staying home more save you money? I’d love to hear!
How did you do on last week's goals? What are your goals for this week? I'd love to have you share your progress on last week's goals and your goals for this coming week in the comments. Of, if you've blogged about it, leave your direct link below. Let's cheer each other on to live purposeful and productive lives! You can download a free customizable weekly goal-planning sheet here.
As I shared in January, I'm changing the way I'm approaching my reading goals in 2014. Instead of picking books for the whole year, I'm just choosing books a month at a time.
Here's my list for April (some of these are repeats from my March list since I didn’t get all the books read in March that I’d hoped to):
What books are you planning to read in April? Leave a comment and let us know — and then you can come back at the end of April to tell us what you ended up reading and what you thought of the books you read!
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