I am a stay at home parent/wife. Mostly because I can’t work reliably at all as my migraines, fibromyalgia, and ATFP like to flare up when introduced to weather, barometric pressure changes, florescent lighting, perfumes and colognes, the wrong kind of air freshener, and stress.

One of the things I struggle with is feeling as though I am contributing to the house as those same difficulties listed above make me an intermittent cleaner, gatherer, and cooker of foods.

When I hit a long stretch of particularly unwell-ness I blow through the easy to make foods that I stock in the house and we often end up ordering in. This is expensive and unhealthy and as it usually corresponds with ER visits or expensive PT copays, exactly what our household budget doesn’t need. Spending the extra money on expensive pre-made foods stresses me out even more.

So what can we do? Last week it hit me.

When I was in law school I used to make huge meals in the crock pot or soup pot and freeze them in portions for future meals. 4 person portions for future dinners, 2 person portions for lunches, etc. I did this because I was so busy running around and being successful that I didn’t have time to prepare a meal every day but I wanted to save money and eat healthy.

I am such a monumental dumb ass. This is exactly what I should be doing now. Just because I am home all day doesn’t mean I am not super busy being very, very sick, most of the time.

So I have a new plan. I am preparing healthy, tasty soups when I feel well and preparing extra for freezing when I do. The I am freezing them in pre-portioned, pre-labeled and dated containers and popping them in my deep freezer.

So when I feel like I am going to die I can just throw one on the stove and I have still made a healthy dinner for myself and my family. I have still reduced grocery costs by cooking from scratch because it’s just as easy to heat up my cooking as it is to microwave something store bought.

So, as of tonight I will have two future dinners in the freezer. If I manage to do this once a week I will build a stock up and then I can relax, beat up on myself less, and enjoy once again managing the cooking part of the household responsibilities like a fully abled and organized person, even while I am rarely either of those things.