Mom Burnout - Is it possible to be a good mother and have a career?

It’s 11:09 am on a Tuesday morning. I’m still in my pajamas, and I’ve went back to bed once already, hoping a catnap will give me a spark of energy. Anxiety, fear, and confusion have been running through my mind for weeks. Feelings of incompetence weigh heavy on my heart, and I can honestly say that I’ve never felt more lost.

I can’t go on like this.

The pressures of running a cleaning business during a pandemic, overseeing my children’s homeschooling, and trying to keep the household functioning in a normal manner are making me feel like my head is going to explode.

When I’m working, I feel guilty because I’m not at home to help my youngest kids (10 and 16 years old) with their school. I worry the teachers think I don’t care about their education.

When I’m home, I stress about the bills and whether I’ll have enough money to make ends meet.

I’m never fully present in either situation.

Can SAM-e Really Help With Depression & Anxiety?

Are you tired of feeling tired? Do you struggle to make it through the day? Do you feel like a cloud of overwhelming hopelessness is hanging over your head? 

If so, you might be depressed.

No doubt, there are plenty of reasons to get the blues right now.

The world feels shaky and chaotic. 

Millions of people have lost jobs due to COVID-19. The way we interact in society has drastically changed. We have lost simple human connection. (I find myself not making eye contact with other shoppers in the grocery store because my smile doesn’t show through my mask.) Civil unrest makes us feel that we are more divided than ever. Food shortages and an overwhelmed healthcare system add to our anxiety.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention the extreme natural disasters taking place all over the world. The overall theme of 2020 is fear.

Sometimes it just takes a heart-to-heart conversation with a good friend to feel better. But what if it’s deeper than that?

Easy Homemade Laundry Soap Recipe Tutorial

I promised that I would share more money-saving tips to help you get through tight times. Laundry soap can be very expensive! This recipe makes several gallons and costs only pennies per wash and works very well. My original post can be found here.

Because some folks prefer to watch video tutorials, I finally made a video showing how simple making your own laundry soap can be! 

If you decide to make this easy and effective laundry soap recipe, I'd love to hear your thoughts! If you have your own recipe, please share with us in the comments. Thanks for stopping in!

Reducing Household Expenses (Every Penny Counts)

In addition to cutting your food bill, household expenditures are a prime area you can reduce spending. I learned many of these cost-cutting hacks from my grandmother, who grew up during the Great Depression.

1.  Laundry -

Wear your clothes more than once before washing. I remember being mortified when my grandmother told me that she only had three dresses at a time during the depression. One for school, one for play, and one for church. She was tickled when I told her that she must have been stinky. She quickly assured me that only her dress for play got dusty and smelly. 

While I’m not suggesting that you wear dirty clothes or let your children run around looking like street urchins, consider wearing jeans, pajamas, and sweaters more than one time before washing.

10 Tips For Feeding Your Family On A Shoestring Budget

I won’t insult your intelligence by going into great detail about the obvious changes you can make to save money on your food bill each month. Clearly, eating food from restaurants is generally more expensive than cooking your own meals. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely on the right path and have already taken basic steps to reduce your food expenditures.

The simple principles that I’m going to share with you have helped me immensely in keeping my family’s food cost low. Do I always follow these guidelines? No. There are times when I fail miserably. However, when needed, I use these “rules” to get myself back on track.

1. Plan Menus -

I find that it’s easy to get off track and give into that fast food drive-through whenever I’m pressed for time and exhausted. We’ve all been there, right? Your day was long; the kids are starving; and you feel like your battery is in low power mode. Even worse, the roast that you’d bought last weekend is still in the freezer.

Drastic Changes Coming Our Way - Surviving 2020 and Beyond

This year has been one heck of a ride so far. Not only have we been confronted with a global pandemic, strange weather patterns, and political unrest; our economy is feeling the pain of lost jobs, food shortages, and general instability.

It’s a time of great upheaval - leaving most of us feeling unprepared for what may come. Many of us have little, if any, money saved. Our modern lifestyle isn’t conducive to storing food. We make multiple trips to the grocery store each week or buy take-away meals on the drive home from work.

We have become a throw-away society, accustomed to simply buying new when something becomes broken or a little worn out. Most people lack the general skills to make small repairs to their home appliances and vehicles.

On top of our careless stewardship of our money, we are encouraged to give in to self-gratification. Easy payment plans, a constant barrage of advertising for the next, latest, greatest things, and the ever-present message on social media to accumulate more has given us a sense of entitlement. We are told that we must have the best of the best to be good enough.

We’ve become a slave to our things, putting in 60-hour work weeks to pay for what we are told that we can’t live without. Families are disconnected and marriages suffer.

My New Normal - Walking Away From My Business to Home-school

I’m about to make some big changes in my life. I’m talking about the kind of changes that make me question my sanity...

For over six years, I’ve worked very hard building a reputable cleaning service. The business has been good to me. It has allowed me to comfortably support my large family, as a single mother, with flexibility and control over my schedule that I wouldn’t find working for another company. In addition, my little cleaning business has put me in front of many wonderful people who’ve enriched my life in ways that I hadn’t imagined.

Which makes what I’m about to do seem all the crazier…

I’m going to turn my business over to my young adult children or mostly walk away from it. The “or” is because they don’t really know if they want to take it over. Either way, I’m letting it go within a week’s time. And I’m doing this without a backup plan to replace the income.

Why the urgency, you ask?

The simple answer is this – my two youngest children (ages 10 and 15) will be attending school remotely from home.