Christian Homekeeping

Now, we are facing an economical attack on the family that could become successful during my lifetime of making it almost impossible for Americans to live on one income; that is, if you keep the American mindset of what normal is.  Americans think that we all must have our own house, fully furnished and eat meat at every meal and anything less is poverty.  No wonder the world scoffs at us when we talk about hardship!  

Is it really impossible to live on one income in America today?  Let's see what you can do going forth to be obedient to God rather than make excuses for your disobedience:

1. Multigenerational family living - Women will disobey God's Word of being a keeper at home because she deems it necessary due to her husband's low wages, when she hasn't even considered multigeneration living with her parents or in-laws or even her adult children.  More and more Americans are starting to do what the rest of the world has always done, living in a multigenerational home.  I would rather share a home with my adult daughter and her family than her (or even me) forsake God's commands and God forbid work on a job to have a singular family home.  When push comes to shove - do you look for alternatives or are you quick to rebel against God's Word?
2. Extreme frugality - I see it all the time, women think if they can't get their nails and hair done, eat out everyday and shop for clothes every week, then they are struggling.  God has to be nauseated at the American lifestyle!!  Practice a little frugality to bring yourself down to earth and have some discipline.  Eat meat only a few times a week and learn how to make good, nutritious meals with beans and other meatless options.  Not only is this good for your wallet but it is very good for your health, not to mention your waistline.
3. Giving up American luxuries - Most Americans don't view things such as high speed internet, new cars, name brand clothes, cell phones and eating out as luxuries but they are!  You could could cut out your high speed internet and downgrade to a cheaper plan or get rid of home internet altogether and use the library public Wi-Fi and computers that tax dollars pay for.  Buy cheap, used cars and keep up on the maintenance to help them last longer.  Shop thrift stores and yard sales for clothing or just make what you have last longer by taking care of it.  Cut out expensive cell phones and plans and go with a cheaper option or get rid of your cell phone or landline altogether and just have one.  Stop eating out and spare yourself disease that restaurant food attributes to and cook healthy food at home.  This king of goes hand in hand with #3 but we tend to view these luxuries as necessities and it just isn't so.
4. Sell things - As a wife, you could possibly find time to sell your crafts or goods online or at fairs.  You could also resell things from second-hand shops on eBay.  It's an option and one that I personally feel is acceptable if it doesn't take you away from your responsibilities.
5. Move and live where you can afford - If you can't make it where you are, don't stay there after exhausting the above list - MOVE!  Many cities and small towns in America are affordable, just pick up and move.

I don't normally read the Christian Post but I just happened to come across it and saw this:

I think everyone should watch this excellent video by Ben Shapiro detailing the factual history that debunks all the false narratives we see prevalent at this time:

Doing these monthly meal plans really frees up time for me throughout the month!  For some reason, I'm craving a lot of chicken and so, I planned a lot of chicken meals this month.  My daughter cooks half the meals usually, so I don't have to cook every day thankfully when she's available to help.

We've tried a lot of new recipes and liked most of them!  Here are a few of the new recipes that I remembered to take pictures of and then some oldies but goodies.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs - we usually have this on basmati white rice with a side of broccoli and it is one of my new favorite meals!

We all liked these Greek pitas with falafel and I made the tzatziki sauce and added some PB in it and water to make it more of a sauce.

I grew up on sauerkraut and weenies and thought maybe my son will like it as he's never had it, so I made some with kielbasa.  Well, he said it was the worst thing he's ever tasted in his life LOL! 

Here is the monthly meal plan for July:

We endeavored to cut our grocery budget in half in April and we were successful but over a bit, we ended up coming in around $300 less!  So we made it on $500 for April, compared to previous months at $800.  

We are aiming for $500 for May and here is the monthly meal plan for dinners:

These White Chicken Enchiladas were so delicious!!  Definitely a keeper for us and I used olive oil in place of a lot of the butter and next time I'm going to use whole wheat tortillas to add some fiber.

Salmon Cakes I've shared before but of course they are great, we had them with home fries.

We've made a few more of the new recipes I picked to try for April and here are our reviews for each of them.

- Smoked Sausage Rice Skillet - we didn't care for this.  It was edible but just not a favorite, so I'm not even linking to it.

- Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit topping - absolutely delicious!  Definitely a keeper when we're in the mood for comfort food.  I cut the butter way down, it just doesn't need that much butter in my opinion as the recipe calls for.  I didn't use butter to drizzle on the top of the biscuit topping, I just sprayed them with olive oil.

In Part 1 I posted a list of the dinner meals I planned for April.  To come up with that list, I spent a while searching online to find some new recipes that fit our needs.  I have some food restrictions, my son has some preferences and then we also needed meals that would be cheap, yet filling.  Then, I combined them with recipes I had on my computer that we haven't tried yet, along with ones we already love.  It took me 2 hours to come up with that list!  I like using highlighters, so I color-coded the different categories I was aiming for:

I set out to cut our grocery budget in half from $800 down to $400 for the month of April.  I prayed and felt the Lord giving me wisdom and spent several hours and came up with a list of dinner meals that fit our needs and then made our grocery list and planned out the other meals and went grocery shopping.  I was able to get what we needed for the month for $237 with $163 leftover for our weekly trips for bread, milk and produce saving $400!

I had 26 meals to plan out because I don't cook on Sunday, it is fend-for-yourself day and usually leftovers, hot dogs, boxed mac/cheese, etc.  I planned out 5 chicken meals, 5 bean meals, 5 beef or pork meals, 4 pizza meals, 3 fish meals and 3 turkey meals.  Here is the list of dinner meals with links to the recipe (some of these are new to us and we haven't tried them yet):

• Homemade pizza - The sauce recipe is in the post at the end and the pizza crust recipe is in the comments.
• Smoked Sausage Rice Skillet
• Creamy White Chicken Chili
• Turkey Meatball Spaghetti
• Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo - FYI: website name has cursing
• Tuna Mac and Cheese with broccoli
• White Chicken Enchiladas
• Beef and Bean Burritos
• One Pan Sour Cream Enchilada Skillet
• Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping
• Creamy Turkey Spinach Curry
• Salmon Cakes and home fries
• Black Bean Burrito Casserole
• Cheeseburger Helper
• Pasta Fagioli and Baguette bread
• Cheesy Sausage Pasta
• Falafel Burgers and home fries
• Mexican Casserole
• Turkey meatloaf sandwiches and veggies
• Tuna Potato Bake
• Southwest Mac and Cheese
• Creamy Sausage and Potatoes

I'm doing something that I don't think is impossible but is going to be hard, I'm cutting our grocery budget in half for the month of April.  We have been spending upwards of $800 a month lately with inflation.  It gradually crept up until one day I realized how high it had gotten.  We have never spent that much on food in a month that I can think of until the past few months.  I wanted to see if I could in fact, cut it in half.  I've been brainstorming and my daughter and I are working on all the details tonight and I hope to have my plan completed by tomorrow.

I hope to gather a lot of recipes together we're going to be using and share them with you all, along with what we will be eating for breakfast, lunch and snacks.  I'm going to use the money I save for April, to stock up for May because we have a huge change coming in our lives come May and I want to ease any stress by stockpiling ahead of time.  What better way than to use April to get ready for a smaller food budget and get a month ahead possibly as well for May.

I really hope I'm not aiming too low but from what I have seen others online accomplish with families even larger than mine - I'm up for the challenge!

Matthew 5:44  

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 

Don't you remember when Jesus started his earthly ministry and went into the brothels and whipped them out and then he headed over to the places of ill repute and told them they were horrible people?  Oh wait, I'm sorry, my bad - I got it backwards!  Jesus actually went into the CHURCH and whipped them out who were making God's house a house of merchandise!  Jesus told the religious leaders just how horrible they were and that they were a bunch of hypocrites!  Jesus ate with the sinners and allowed one to even wash his feet with her tears and dry it with her hair.  That's Jesus.  I'm not sure who these people are today that are impersonating being Christ-followers that are rejoicing over the death of a recent shooter and being glad she is rotting in hell.  They aren't Christians and I'm really tired of them bringing a reproach to the real Christians.

If Christians would judge those within its walls and get right, maybe others would recognize what we are supposed to be standing for.  Yet, Christians are busy on social media bashing trans people, homosexuals, the world's pop stars and whatever else, when we aren't supposed to be even judging those without!  We should be displaying love, giving our enemies a drink, turning the other cheek and on and on - remember those instructions left by our Saviour!?  They'll know us by our love!!

John 13:35  

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. 

Leave the abortion clinics alone.  Leave the Only Fans community alone.  Leave the LGBTQ people alone.  It isn't the mission of the Christian to march in public crusades against sinners.  God has already condemned sin in the Word of God and we are just to preach the Word and His salvation of deliverance.  What we should be doing is judging from within and cleaning up our churches.  But yet, churches leave the people in the church alone and let them remain in their pews steeped in sin and allow wolves to devour the sheep.

Clarke's commentary fits well:

If all the fornicators, adulterers, drunkards, extortioners, and covetous persons which bear the Christian name, were to be publicly excommunicated from the Christian Church, how many, and how awful would the examples be! If however the discipline of the visible Church be so lax that such characters are tolerated in it, they should consider that this is no passport to heaven. In the sight of God they are not members of his Church; their citizenship is not in heaven, and therefore they have no right to expect the heavenly inheritance. It is not under names, creeds, or professions, that men shall be saved at the last day; those alone who were holy, who were here conformed to the image of Christ, shall inherit the kingdom of God. Those who expect it in any other way, or on any other account, will be sadly deceived.

Time to clean the church up and start showing love to a lost and dying world!  God doesn't call Christians to activism against sinners and politics aren't something we should be striving for.  God never advocated for crusades and wars in the New Testament and He sure didn't tell us to set up a utopian Christian government and force others to obey the Bible.  We are to live peaceably with all men, love our neighbor as ourselves, love our enemies, do good to those that persecute and hurt us - in other words, BE AN EXAMPLE and a light to this darkened world!  I'm reminded of the old song, get right church and let's go home!

Just face the fact that you have to set aside a time in your schedule to manage your data.  You will need time to sort, organize, store and definitely backup your data.  If you don't, then you will risk losing your digital data upon the occasion that malware, ransomware, natural disaster or a thief captures your data.  Are you ok with losing everything?  Most of us aren't and it would be devastating, especially to lose our photos.  You can replace a lot of things that you lose or have stolen but you can't replace memories that were preserved in photos.  You must set aside a weekly, biweekly or at least monthly time to do your downloads, organizing and backing up to keep up with all your ever-growing data!

Most of us have our files and photos saved on our desktop or laptop computers and some only have them on a device, such as a tablet or phone.  I recommend that everything be on your computer as a first line of managing those files and also to organize them.  It is a lot easier, in my opinion, to use a keyboard and a mouse and a larger screen to manage the files, then it is to use a smaller screen with just your finger maneuvering through the process.  However, more importantly, is that your phone can easily be stolen and isn't a safe place to store your data.  I recommend you download your data, specifically photos, to your computer for the first step in backing it up.

Once your files are on your computer, how do you manage or organize them?  You create folders, just like you would in a physical filing cabinet.  Envisioning your digital files in comparison to physical ones in a filing cabinet will probably help you grasp how to manage the data.  Let's start with the main folder called "Pictures" - this would obviously be where most people store their photos - then, "Documents" would be where most people store their other files.  Under each of these, you would create folders with various categories and this is personal preference, but for example, I have mine organized as such: Google Backups; Extended Family; Weight Loss; Inspiration and Ideas; Graphics; Blog Pics; MISC, etc.  Inside each of these folders, I further break it down into categories.  For instance, for Google Backups, which is my downloaded copy of Google Photos, I prefer to go by folders of years and then months.  This makes it easy for me to find the pictures and videos I took during a certain year or month.  For Extended Family, I use categories such as: My Family and Husband's Family - and from those subfolders, I further break it down into Older, Old, and vacations or reunions.  I think this way of organizing pictures will help my children in future years find whatever they are looking for.

For documents, I use categories such as: Finances; Homeschool: Christian: Articles; eBooks; Manuals; Recipes: Songs, etc.  Again, these categories have subfolders to organize even further.  What if you have files that you just don't have time to sort?  Simply make a folder on your desktop called "Sort" and throw the files in there and set aside a time to go through each file and organize it where it goes.  Also, make sure you regularly keep up with clearing out your downloads folder in the same way.

Now, that we know how to manage, organize and have a first layer of storage of our data, let's talk about backups!