If you've read my previous post, I've been feeling pretty tired. My old friend coffee has me in an embrace usually felt only by smokers and crack addicts. But I'm a positive person I will win out in the end no matter what.
So last weekend I thought I would kick the caffeine addiction, easily done I thought, don't have coffee. By 2pm Saturday I was struck with one of the worst headaches of my life, caffeine withdrawal is a bitch. But a bitch that was my bitch after I drank some water and had a paracetamol.
Woohoo I thought, that was easy. But was it too easy? Yes it was. After waking up three times in one night, with a very grumpy baby who's teeth will not stop popping through his gums, I felt tired again. In the morning I still managed to stay away from the caffeine, but as soon as I returned to work I was brought back in to the fold of the daily coffee round cycle. Oh well I'll just have one I thought. It DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT, so 4-5 coffees a day later, I'm having trouble sleeping again. Ho hum.
So I'm going to tackle it from another direction.
Exhausted from doing so much? Do less stuff!
So I thought: What do I do on a daily basis that could be simplified or the time taken to do that thing shortened or where in my life can I remove stress.
Then this got me thinking what are the main causes of stress in my life.
I don't like being late, so when I'm running late I get stressed.
If I'm being rushed to do something for a deadline I get stressed due to not wanting to break the deadline (be late for something, see above).
When my son is hungry he get's hangry, he normally gets hangry when we are running late, as he's in a pretty strict routine and is used to getting fed at certain times of day.
There's a pretty consistent theme in all of this. So how do i combat it.
So I can give myself more time to get to places - for work this would mean waking up earlier, meaning reduced sleep, so I think this would be against the whole point.
Remove or stretch deadlines. This is not always possible, ever tried asking your CEO for an extension of a deadline, you won't do it twice!
So hungry son, this maybe an easy win, carrying snacks should tide him over when I'm really stuck trying to get somewhere. He's always at his worst when the food is being cooked though. To combat this I really need to shorten the time it takes to cook his evening meals.
A couple of solutions spring to mind when looking to shorten cooking times.
Batch cooking, cook 5, 10, 20 meals at once and freeze the extra for another day. These excess portions can then be reheated quickly, usually in the microwave or hob. Some good recipes for this are chilli, spag bol, risotto. Off the top of my head these all seem to be pasta or rice based dishes.
I love batch cooking however, overall you aren't really saving any time as all the time you save you have to put in at the beginning to make the batch.
So maybe outsourcing the cooking would be an idea, this would rid me of the time I'm taking to cook in the first place.
You can outsource cooking in a few ways.
Get a chef! Umm... I'm not made of money!
Takeaway meals. With pizzas, Chinese food, Indian food etc all coming in at around £20-30 per meal this would add up very quickly to be a proper budget buster. Also these kinds of foods are usually quite fatty and not really suitable for children.
Ready meals. This would be quick, reasonably cheap, they seem to be around £2-3 per meal, so say £4-7 per night for an evening meal (family of 2.5 people). If this was eaten constantly that puts it at around £120 - 210 a month. The downsides of these are that often they aren't very tasty, again are unhealthy and are possibly too small a portion for someone with my appetite.
So I'm thinking of trialling this last option for tastiness sake. On maybe two days a week, my two busiest days (10-11 hour day).
This will hopefully get me focusing on my food budget a little more which seems to have GONE crazy over the last few months. Although I think it's probably increased due to baby sundries bought at the supermarket (I'm looking at you nappies / baby wipes) as I put all my supermarket spend under the food category (for ease) rather than splitting it into my baby specific category.
If you have any other ideas to help me move into the easy life please feel free to comment, you can also tweet me at @moneybeta!
See ya!
Dom
