Working Moms - How do you plan your weekends ??

I think the only area you would concentrate is food. Simplify cooking , turn to dishes which can be done in less time , lot of South Indian breakfast items are done in a jiffy. Make the for dinner . Also try one pot rice dishes/pulao .

Invest in a slow cooker - very useful , it will cook while you do other things . You can start it in the morning and come back to cooked food in the evening or start it when you go out in the weekend and it will be ready by the time you come back . You can start when you go to sleep and wake up to cooked currys and daals . It works on 4/6/8/12 hrs timers , so you can chose depending on the time you have . It requires some trial and error to have things to your liking.

use rice cooker - start before you go out it will be down and will turn to warm mode till you come back .

I make some basic masala pastes , pasta sauce I use and store it in freezer in cube size , easy to use .freeze dosa batter, idli batter which stays fresh when thawed . You can freeZe roti atta in aluminum foil , it will stay fresh .

Rest of the chores - depends on available time .

 

I'm not a mom yet but work, and we have significant time commitments to volunteer activities.
I try to minimize routine shopping as much as possible. We do one grocery outing during the week.
I order a lot of things through Amazon Prime, and get most of my clothes, shoes and beauty and body products online. The only times we go to the mall are when our parents visit.
This may not work for everyone, but I cook and freeze lunches for my DH for two weeks at a time. He is not fussy about food. Then during the week it is simple to throw dinners together. If we have to go out during the weekends I try to get chores done a little at a time during the week. The traffic in our area is terrible so minimizing time spent on mundane store trips keeps me sane

 

Try out some dal and currys when you have time so you know what you can expect . I do dals, some veg curries , chiken , kheer etc .

i had a rival 3 quart one which is wonderful and suits well for small families . Then I bought crockpot 5 or 7 quart and it was not so good . So you have try little bit to completely rely on it.

 

We follow no-cooking-on-weekday policy at home...we(yes DH too ) spend our sundays in preparation for the coming week like cooking/cleaning/laundry/folding and putting away clothes/vaccum/ironing clothes for next week...we have a tidy home with cooked food filled in refrigerator by the evening. The entire weekdays are spent in DS lunch box in the morning and after school activities in the evening..we will just cook rice/chapathi/quinoa according preferences...

This really helped us to give full time to DS after coming home...thanks to DH, he helps me a lot...

 

I can understand, when regular schedules got disturbed with unexpected commitments, its hard to go back to routine..but dont stress yourself take it slowly and plan one day at a time, if you have Menu plan for the week it will be much easier to do cooking on the same day. If possible outsource cleaning around the house on one weekend in a month, this will leave you time for other important things..

 

You are doing good job already...take it slowly