Ellen's Blog, Professional Organizing for Kingwood & Houston

COVID-19 Cooking with your Quaranteam

May 14, 2020/3 Comments/in Home Organizing, Wellness and self care/by Ellen

COVID-19 meal times are the best times of the day! According to Google, the most searched items are recipes especially breads and banana bread! It is a great time to take advantage of cooking with those in your home and on your quaranteam. On FoodTV we are seeing quaranteam cooking in everyone’s homes like Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman. Join the fun of cooking with those in your home or who you are isolating with you!

Meal Planning

When I talk with families, the biggest fail at family meal time is deciding what to cook! The parents feel the ownership of what to prepare and feel compelled to decide. That decision making creates paralysis. Let’s share this responsibility with your family by creating a menus with their input. Families have been creating theme nights during the pandemic to spice up their time together. This includes different countries’ cuisines to cooking in different times in history. Work together to plan and write out a menu so everyone looks forward to dinner together.

Dreading your online grocery order? Our kids are digital natives and can help with this too! When groceries arrive, plan a group effort to organize and put away the items.

Dinner preparation

With many people at home, making dinner is a team effort. You can partner on different nights to prepare dinner. Cooking is a life skill that requires math so you are learning as you go. Reading the recipes require following instructions. Dinner prep is a great time for out of the box learning.

Dinner time chatter

Make communication the key during dinner. Set aside all technology (and that includes the parents.) Make dinner time talk more fun with these prompts.

What’s one word that describes your day and why?
What is the Best of the Week (BOW) and Worst of the Week (WOW)?
If you could be a famous person for a week, who would you be and why?
If you had a super power, what would it be and why?

Cafeteria, aka Leftovers

Because there are 3 meals or more a day at home, be sure to cook extra for leftovers and other meals. Get creative on how you plan to convert meals into a multi-purpose menu. Here are some ideas.

Tacos become quesadillas and taco salad
Marinara with pasta becomes pizza sauce
Extra rice and beans become burritos
Roasted veggies become Italian subs

Help your family be self-sufficient with an organized pantry.

Dinner clean up

No one wants to be left in the kitchen to clean up. How do you establish standard operating procedures for clean up after dinner? There are no reasons not to do this as a group now. Everyone can do one small part. There are paper plates too! Be sure the dishwasher is empty and ready to receive incoming plates, etc.

The best part of being together is the communication during dinner. Keep dinner time as together time during this “new normal.”

COVID-19 How to Use This Time Purposefully

May 12, 2020/0 Comments/in Guide for Uncertain Times, Wellness and self care, Work From Home and Work At Home/by Ellen

There are many emotions and daily changes that are happening. Some days are better than others. It seems that the only constant is change with daily updates on how to live life, what’s next, and what is being put in place for our community. We are all cultivating resilience and courage, as well as learning more and more. Please know I am here to support you and be part of your Quaranteam.

We can use this time purposefully. This pause has given us the gift of time in an unusual way and that hopefully we will never have again. We can be intentional with this time and give ourselves the gift of purpose. I have chosen two strategies to give purpose to each week. For me it is building new habits and giving back. These two elements have given me structure, focus and meaning.

Building new habits

Being at home more, I have the opportunity to build better habits that have been harder to develop. There are many strategies to make habits stick. (Yes, certified professional organizers are a work in progress too.) Simple habits like exercising more and drinking more water have eluded me because I was not able to work these into a reliable time during the week. Early appointments and long days made it hard to get in enough steps. Carrying a water bottle seemed cumbersome during the week. Time at home has given me an opening in the morning to accomplish my 10k steps a day. The benefit I imagined, such as improved sleeping and ongoing positivity, are reason enough to continue past the end of quarantine. Drinking more water, with a sliced lemon, has become my beverage of choice through the day. Just adding these two simple parts of daily life are important to my well being, my work and my family.

I encourage you to choose one small, valued habit to make a difference during this time. On top of my list would be a great sleep routine, next being healthy eating. These foundational self care elements help you live your best life!

Giving back to others

How to Help and Give Back is front page news on the Wall Street Journal. Research fully supports the value of helping others during times of stress. Helping others does not have to be big. It’s in small acts and gifts. Thank you to everyone making masks. These contributions are already making a difference for everyone (especially as we are now required to wear masks.)

In addition, here are some amazing stories I am hearing. A friend brings Chick-fil-a to a “work from home” family with 2 kids under 5 to brighten the day. A friend writes “I miss you” notes and tapes these to the her friends’ back yard gates. There are countless donations of gift cards to service industry professionals like nail salon workers, hair stylists and cleaning ladies. Do what you can with what you have to be a contributor.

There are big needs for our community too. These are links to needs local to Houston.

We have some bumpy roads ahead as we make our way through this dark time. The time passes more quickly if we all have purposeful intentions and actions. Comment below on how you are making a difference! I’d love to hear from you!