Balancing Your Life: Healthy, Happy Homemaker

I wanted to wrap up the “Balancing Your Life Series” with some inspiration and resources to inspire you.

I don’t think there can be balance in your life without talking about balancing your responsibilities as a homemaker with physical and emotional health.

I can have all my homemaking ducks in a row (which never happens, by the way!) but if I’m physically under par or emotionally drained, things aren’t going well.

I recently wrote “Easy Health for Busy Moms” because I wanted to show women how easy (and painless) it can be to ease into a healthier lifestyle. Small changes can make a big difference in the way we feel and feeling well significantly affects our performance as wives, mothers and home-managers.

I’ve touched on keeping our spiritual lives vibrant (though much more could be said), but emotional health is closely tied to our physical health and can make such a difference in the way we function! Besides a healthy diet and exercise (I mention an excellent 5-minute exercise in the book!), I am of the opinion that women who are productive are emotionally healthier.

That will look very different for different women, but part of our nature that reflects our Creator is…creating! I think we have to be careful to make room amid all the chores and work that must be done to create, produce, and enjoy being a homemaker.

For some, it may be a ministry of hospitality, making cards to send to someone who needs a kind word, sending a meal, or some other venue of service.  Some enjoy turning a simple meal into a culinary work of art.  Some sew, some paint, some garden, some are simply encouragers and exhorters of others.  Some enjoy entrepreneurial endeavors and act as their husband’s helper exercising those gifts.

What do you enjoy?  Consider it an important part of your homemaking duties. This is the secret–homemaking is NOT just about the nuts and bolts of keeping a house. It’s about the freedom to create a home that is bustling with productivity, using our gifts to bless our family and those around us.

As you seek to become more organized, remember the goal:  making a home that radiates joy, freedom and the love of Christ.

Some resources you may find helpful:

Sarah Mae’s new ebook:  31 Days to Clean

The Fly Lady:  Getting Organized

Back to Scratch:  Saving Money in the Kitchen

Think Outside the Classroom: A Practical Approach to Relaxed Homeschooling

Easy Health for Busy Moms–Get the Introductory Price!

It’s here!

Easy Health for Busy Moms

“Balancing Time, Money & Good Sense”

It’s an easy-to-read, dense Ebook full of nutritional facts, health “short-cuts”, recipes and simple suggestions and reminders to help the busy mom improve her and her family’s health without radical diet changes!

• What are the top 12 super foods you need to be eating?

• What one, simple ingredient boasts a whole list of incredible health benefits including the ability to stop a heart attack or stroke?

• What 5 minutes exercise is as good as walking and better for your lymphatic system, even helping to prevent cancer?

• Which foods can help you lose weight?

• What are 6 simple substitutions that will improve your family’s health?

Find the answers to these and much more in Easy Health for Busy Moms!

• Plus, healthy breakfast ideas and easy homemade recipes.

• And there’s a bonus: my daughter has included a simple guide to growing and using five medicinal herbs that every home needs!

And for 1 week only, buy it at the introductory sale price–

$5.97

$4.00!

Be sure to tweet and facebook your friends to let them know about this offer before it ends!

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Top 12 “Super” Foods—Boost Your Health Today!

3. More Healthy Foods You Need to Add to Your Diet

4. Foods to Try to Avoid

5. Simple Substitutions

6. Juicing

7. Exercise

8. 6 Foods That Help You Lose Weight

9. Miracle Foods?

10. Top Vitamins & Nutrients Your Body Needs and How to Get Them

11. More Easy Ways to Improve Your Health Immediately

12. Don’t Forget Your Emotional Health

13. Healthier Homemade Recipes

14. Whole Food Supplements

15. Bonus: Medicinal Herb Gardening

Buy Easy Health for Busy Moms Now!

Remember: If you sign up as an affiliate, you get 50% commission from any ebook sales you make!

Raw, Healthy Snack

Lately we’ve been trying to improve our health through nutrition–juicing some, adding some things to our diet and removing some things.

I’m a “snacker” most of the day, so inspired by my neighbors, I set out to create a snack that satisfies my sweet craving but is healthy enough to eat all I want

I’ve come up with one that I really like so I thought I’d share.  I am so cursed with an entrepreneurial spirit that I couldn’t enjoy the first few hours of my new recipe without a flood of marketing ideas.  (“I can call it ‘Raw Power’, package it in bite-sized pieces…logo, I need a good logo….let’s see, now what was that website that sells the packaging bags in bulk?  I’ll charge $2.00 a bag”, (quickly figuring the cost)…more random thoughts….“Great.  I should be able to profit about $2 a week.”

Moving on to just enjoying the snack….

Here is the versatile, substitute-what-you want recipe I came up with:

3 Tbls. coconut oil, warmed to liquid state

Mix in the following ingredients–I didn’t measure   But I probably put in about 3-5 Tbls. of most ingredients:

• Ground flax seed
• Hemp seed
• Chopped cashews
• Oats (I ground up some of them with a hand-chopper)
• Coconut flakes
• Cocoa
• Honey to taste (or dates for sweetness)

I’m going to try adding mashed bananas next time.

Either roll into balls and let harden, or press into small glass dish and cut into bars after hardening.  Yummy!

Get Easy Health for Busy Moms, a practical, no-nonsense ebook for improving your health today!

Let Your Kids Eat Dirt

My Dad told me of a report he had heard about the natural immune-building results of kids being exposed to a fair share of germs…namely, eating dirt.  I’ve been feeling this to be true for a while.  We are really lax about germs.  Not that I don’t bathe in hand-sanitizer as I leave our local thrift store, but it’s not uncommon for my children to eat lunch straight from the back yard, skipping the hand-washing all together.  They eat stuff we’ve dropped on the floor, unless the floor is a public restroom  They don’t take baths every day, unless it’s a grimy, summer day.  (They’re kids already…how dirty could they be?)  We don’t live in filth, but germs is just not one of those areas where I freak out.  Glad to know at least part of the medical community is justifying my lackadaisical approach to dirt!

I found a concise article about it at Nourishing Kitchens (and this looks like a great site, btw):

“The current germophobia with all its use of sanitizing hand gels, antibiotic soaps, antimicrobial kitchen sprays, germ-killing sanitizing wipes, pasteurized milk, irradiated food and antibiotic pharmaceuticals may actually contribute to a society plagued by autoimmune disease….” Read more…

I especially liked the acknowledgement, particularly since we are now drinking raw dairy milk, that pasteurized milk, intended to be helpful, actually creates a disadvantage by killing the good bacteria our bodies need.

And I loved this point, quoted from a doctor who advocates the “Hygiene Hypotheses”:

“When we visit the doctor to suppress a lot of things like colds, rather than, in effect, letting nature run its course, we’re making immediate treatment the priority rather than long-term prevention.”

Organize Your Life After the Holidays!

It’s no coincidence that the approach of a new year finds us making resolutions, new goals and priorities. There is just something so motivating about coming out of December–with all the stress behind you…but the mess still with you. You’re still suffering from a sugar high and you know this is the time to move toward health again. The house has taken the back burner to your overbooked calendar and now it begs your attention. You notice that the lack of routine and schedule has your kids a little out of whack and you’re eager to return to normalcy. Perhaps your spiritual food has been displaced with holiday food. Your finances need an overhaul too.

And you’re up for the challenge. So before I go tackle my ginormous to-do list, I thought I’d offer you the same encouragement and tips I’m trying to give myself (some of these came from my husband):

Regarding the house:

• Drink your coffee first (unless you’re trying to give it up, in which case, I have no idea how to encourage you there.)

• Tackle one room or area at a time. THIS is a hard one. You know the routine. You pick up an item from the kitchen and take it where it belongs and alas, that room is a disaster too, so you busily begin cleaning there. Resist the urge. My husband suggested that I take the stray item to the room it belongs and wait to put it up until I get to that room. Another tip is to have a box for stray items and just place them in that as you go through a room.

• Create a place for everything. If you can’t do that, toss it. Resist the urge to pine over each item, painfully imagining how and when you will use it. Once you toss it, you’ll feel much better, and you won’t miss the item. (Tip: Ask yourself, “Do I love it or do I need it?” If you answer “no” to either, it’s history.)

• If you have children, delegate. But be specific, because it is overwhelming to them too. Let the littlest ones be your “go-fers” taking trash and stray objects to their place. Give one a trash bag and make it their job to collect all the trash, or a basket to collect stray items, etc. Let them help you tackle the one room. Make it a race. Set a timer.

• Purge, purge like never before. This is the time to get rid of things you know just take up space. I try to remind myself that as soon as I toss it, I won’t remember it anymore.

• If you homeschool…give yourself a “reorganizing vacation”. Don’t feel the pressure to rush back to school until you’ve gotten everything under control. School time will be far more productive and pleasant if you’ll allow yourself that time. If you still feel pressure, maintain your daily reading and wait on the more stressful subjects.

• Study to get some great crock pot recipes and use it about twice a week.

Regarding your health:

• Last year I wrote, “Easy Health for Busy Moms” and I find it encouraging myself, even as I go back for a refresher. Great information and motivation in there to get your new year off to a good start.

• Change in baby steps. Add an extra glass of water to your diet (maybe switching at meal time).

• Find a good, whole-food multi-vitamin. I like “Alive”. Research on-line and ask around. Getting the proper nutrition is important to having the energy to accomplish all we must do in a day!

• Find some kind of exercise you will do. More than ever, at my “older” age, I’m realizing how important it is to exercise. Rebounding (jumping on a mini-tramp is an excellent, cold-weather exercise.) Not only does exercise do the obvious for your health, but it improves your mood and sense of well-being (by releasing endorphins). Who of us couldn’t use that?

• Just adding fruits, nuts and vegetables to your current diet is a great step. Make a glass of fruit juice or vitamin-enriched drink part of your morning routine.

Regarding your finances:

• Despite how painful it can be, a written budget is really the only way to stay on top of finances. We have found too, that the more variable your income, the more important it is to write out a yearly budget. For us, the bulk of our income comes in the summer. So unless we plan to spread it out over the year, we find ourselves lacking in the winter months. Dave Ramsey has the best resources I know of and I would encourage you to check out The Total Money Makeover–it was a life-changing book for us…truly.

• Actually use your budget Ramsey suggests the practical method of an envelope system. Whatever you have allotted for a certain category (food, clothing, entertainment), spend that and no more.

• Start a change jar. This is a very simple, painless way to save a little extra money for a rainy day. We’ve done this for years–sticking our spare change in a jar, and it adds up in a hurry. Think of something to save for and write it on the jar and get everybody involved!

• Learn to sell on eBay or Amazon. With a little forethought, extra cash throughout the year can be earned by selling items around the house. You could designate a specific savings goal for your eBay selling.

• Read our book, Finding Financial Freedom to see how we paid off $38,000 in consumer debt in five years, making less than $60K any year.

Regarding your spiritual life:

• Make a sermon part of your day. Or at least, every few days. With the convenience of Sermon Audio and similar sites, getting spiritually fed has never been easier. A few of my favorites: Voddie Baucham, John Piper, David Platt, Paul Washer, Ravi Zacharias, Alistair Begg, Joe Morecraft, Mark Driscoll…to name a few.

• Make Bible reading a priority. Even if you don’t get up early enough for quiet time, gathering the children around to read a portion of Scripture daily is not only a great spiritual benefit, but it paves the groundwork for habits in their own lives for years to come.

• Memorize Scripture as a family easily by playing By Heart Scripture Songs throughout your day.

Other random tips:

• Commit to reading a spiritually-challenging book once a month.

• Make a list of character traits you would like to improve, and begin praying, being deliberate and working toward those. (For me, cultivating a gentle spirit is at the top of my list.)

• Engage your children in more thoughtful discussion. Remind yourself that discussion is a primary means of education–and it can happen anywhere!

• Determine to be a blessing to your husband. So often this gets overlooked. But it should be a priority!!!! A family where the husband and wife are a team, where they cultivate friendship–that’s a family that will thrive. Just a sincere word of gratitude can go a long way toward being a “crown” to your husband.  Make him laugh, smile at him and just focus on being pleasant. You are the one person given to him to be his cheerleader. Encourage his strengths, and do not focus on his weaknesses. (It helps me, when I tend to want to dwell on his weaknesses, to redirect my thoughts to my own weaknesses. Wow. Changes perspective quickly.)

• Add laughter. This has been on my mind a lot lately. Life can really squelch out the fun if we let it. Adding a bit of laughter can change the quality of everyone’s life! Find something to laugh about…make jokes with each other, smile at your children’s antics. Nothing is so important that it has to squash our joy!

Praying the Lord would bless our homes this year as we endeavor to make them places where people thrive in the joy and comfort of our Father.

Homemade Skin Products Sale!

Just wanted to turn your attention to this month’s special (posted half way into the month as is customary for this busy mom).  Use the coupon code “shipit” at check-0ut to take $5.00 off any skin product order over $10 (including our new baby skin yummies!)  In my opinion, this would be a good time to stock up for Christmas gifts   (Hurry…sale ends October 31!)

Remember to check out our cute, new “Honey Bee” baby soap (which anyone can use!)

How I started the Nurtured by Nature Skin Product Businesss