Make a plan!

Part of my journey back to feeling healthy has been getting more organised.
You see its a bit of a vicious circle, you start of thinking that you've not got anything done today, so you're a failure, so why try to get anything done.  Ouroborross.   However the solution to feeling overwhelmed is to break the problem down into smaller tasks, right?  So I've started making a plan.

Now I have a list of tasks to do everyday- the list starts small and includes things that have to be done, as you start to accomplish more you can add more to the list.  I do mine in excel so that I can keep track and it looks nice, but a piece of paper will work just as well!

Doing it in excel has the advantage of enabling me to combine the to-do list with menu planning; we're on a post-christmas budget and the best way to cut my spending is to menu plan!  By keeping it in excel I can check back on what we've eaten over the previous weeks and ensure variety, use leftovers efficiently and save links to recipes I want to try.  

Having it all laid out in front of me makes it easy to think about other commitments and incorporate them into my menu planning too.  For example on Tuesdays me and my husband have a regularly board gaming club, which means we need something fast for dinner.

When you have two little children who go to bed right before supper-time "something fast" means cook in advance!  So tonight we're having a lovely pot roast!  Which I cooked yesterday and to make dinner time go even more smoothly I even prepared the side dishes in advance- they were on my to do list yesterday!