Rebecca, Catching up (Days 18-20, 25)

Free up time.
Do what you love.
Spend time with people you love.
Streamline your life.

Most of my time is spent doing what I love...except when I browse the web too long, a time-wasting procrastination-style habit I've been changing in the past few weeks. (Removing my facebook and google reader apps from my iPhone definitely helped.

But looking at these four items together, I want to make sure I've got enough time to spend with the people I love--and I think the key to the first item, freeing up time--with the goal of spending more time with husband and child--is streamlining whatever else I can.

My plan: On work days, I'm going to try to work more efficiently, with a clearer end point for my day in mind--for the express purpose of picking my son up early from day care. Even an extra half hour with my toddler is precious time that I don't want to lose.

To further increase our quality evening time together, I need to streamline our evening routines. Healthy meals are important to me, but it can be time-consuming to prep and cook good food on a work night.

So, I've been reading up on slow cookers and pressure cookers, with the goal of minimizing time spent cooking in the evenings. We already have a pressure cooker that we never use, and I asked for and received a nice slow cooker for my birthday.

If anyone has great, tried-and-true pressure cooker and/or slow cooker recipes that are vegetarian, please share--I'm all ears!

Christa, Day 20: This Is What Spending Time With the People I Love Looks Like

Day 20's voluntary simplicity idea is to spend time with the people you love. Check and check. While I did work a bit today and Tedd did go shopping all by his lonesome, most of the day was spent as a family. We walked, went to a sort of gallery opening in town, chased down a sunset (well, tried anyway), and played around quite a bit with toys. As you can plainly see.




All I can say is this if this is what quality time looks like, maybe it's a good thing I have a job, yikes! Kidding, kidding... this is a five minute toy pick up and laundry distribution project you're looking at. Thank goodness for toy storage and organized linens.

Julia's Days 19 and 20

Check them out here, where I talk about not being able to do it all, and here, where I talk about nothing at all.