The Frugality of Cleanliness: Your Sink

I happen to like FlyLady. She's very down-to-earth in her advice and doesn't try the "let's get everything clean now" approach I see far too often in books on cleaning. She'd rather get at the root of the problem. The very first thing she asks her "FlyBabies" to do is shine their sink (you can even get directions on how to do it from her website).

Because each sink is different (and each woman's means of cleaning her sink is different), I'm not going to go into the "how" of this simple, yet foundational project, here. I'm going to briefly discuss the "why" and how it relates to frugality.

FlyLady says it was her goal to keep her sink clean for one whole month. Others I've read have done the same thing, though with different items in their house (like this woman who started with her medicine cabinet). The House That Cleans Itself calls it your Home Base Zone... the one area in your house that must stay clean or you go crazy.

I could never find my Home Base Zone. I wanted everything to be clean, and with so many kids I've found that the only way to keep my sanity is to make sure key points of the whole house need to stay clean. I've learned that every room -- or zone of the house... more on that later -- has its own "shiny sink" (for me in the master bedroom it's the bed, office is the computer desk, bathroom is the toilet, laundry room is the top of the dryer, etc.) Making sure each one of these gets taken care of is vital to your sanity and frugality, but the most important I've found is your sink.

Now, here's where I tie this in. :)

Cleaning your sink means taking out the dishes. But once you've taken out the dishes, you no longer have any counter space (or oven space if things have gotten really bad). So, you do the dishes. You may spend an hour or so getting them all done -- some of you more. But once they're done, they're ready to use: no paper plates, no excuse for not making breakfast, and so on.

And if you set up a routine for doing the dishes (after every meal, run the dishwasher once a day, etc.) then you will probably find you're more able to cook at home, thus cutting down on eating out, a huge expense. There are plenty of cookbooks out there that cater to the idea of making your own freezer meals or meals inside of 30 min. It doesn't take long to find them, though I'll have some links at the end of this post for those who are interested. The point is that as you get better at keeping your sink clear, you will, at the same time, more than likely keep up with the dishes and that will allow your kitchen to become what it needs to be, what it was built to be: the place where you prepare food.

And, once again, making food at home is the best thing you can do when trimming your food budget. Not to mention the health benefits. I mean, have you heard about the 12 year old burger? I'm tempted to try that experiment myself but I don't want to spend the money. :)

Next time, I'll discuss the importance of having an after-meal routine and on routines in general.

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The couple of links I promised:

Saving Dinner's Freezer Meals - I've personally tried these and think it's worth the money if you must have something fast and easy but don't want to spend the time and money eating out. And the recipes are much healthier than anything out there for a similar price. It's a .pdf you buy that contains the recipes for assembling and cooking the meal (after you take it out of the freezer), as well as a grocery list for all the items you'll need for the freezer meals. I'm not sure if she's incorporated this into the mega menu mailers, but I know that ours came with an addition that broke the dinners into various kinds of meats, so you didn't have to buy everything at once if you couldn't.

We enjoyed ours. The beauty of it is that the food often isn't cooked before freezing, so when you thaw the meal out and cook it, it you've retained many of the nutrients that would have been lost by cooking the food twice.

I haven't tried this particular cookbook of hers, but I have really enjoyed the recipes we've used from her other cookbooks: Sue Gregg's Meals in Minutes. Unlike Saving Dinner's recipes, these are not cooked fresh... they are reheated. I've taken extra and frozen it before, so I know that sometimes reheating a food doesn't taste bad at all. I'm including it for those families who would rather simply make double of whatever food they're having and freeze it. I also like her focus on whole foods as opposed to processed (Saving Dinner is more focused on that as well but Sue Gregg is more instructional than Saving Dinner).