Question for family dopers - meals & cleaning

In My Humble Opinion
1

Some questions on schedules for meals, shopping, and cleaning:

  1. First how many people (family and guests) eat at your house during the average week? Do you do grocery shopping day (ex. sunday - when you have the time and the coupons come out) and plan meals for the entire week?

  2. What do you tend to run out of the fastest? Ex. with kids we tend to use 3 or more gallons of milk a week. With toddlers you always seem to run out of formula and diapers.

  3. Do you make up casseroles or other foods on one day then refrigerate so you have meals prepped for the week? (we dont but I know familys that do)

  4. Are their any food “bargains” during the week where it’s cheaper to eat out than cook at home? For example where we live the Papa Johns Take n Bake pizza has a special on Tuesdays - large pizzas for $10. The grocery store has this special on tuesdays - a big chicken dinner (8 piece) with sides for $12. Only bummer is so many seem to be on Tuesdays.

  5. On cleaning - do you set aside a day of the week (say fridays) where you go thru and do all the vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, and laundry? Or do you just kind of do things when they come up? (for us its thursday mornings)

  6. How long does it generally take to do a good house cleaning? Our house is about 3-4 hours.

  7. How many loads of laundry do you do in a week? (we average I’d say 4-5)

2

I can’t get anyone to help me clean or cook. The damned cats are freeloaders!

I generally shop once a week. I’m trying to do better about making things to take to work or eat for dinner when uninspired. Currently there is minestrone soup and pulled BBQ chicken in single-serving containers in the freezer.

Cleaning happens as I’m inspired, except for vacuuming. That I do at least every other day because of the aforementioned cats.

3

Our kids are grown and on their own now so our routines have changed.

  • Usually it’s just my husband and me eating. I got to farmers market each Saturday, then the grocery store. I go to Trader Joe’s about every two weeks or so for special things we like there. I like to go the the store early in the morning.
  • We run out of cheese the soonest. I always underestimate how much we will snack on and how much I will use in preparing a meal.
  • I used to prepare meals in advance when the kids were home, but not just for the two of us.
  • Every now and then we will get a little Caesar’s $5 hot and ready. If I recall, you live in the same metro I do (yes I was a long time lurker before joining) and I agree that it seems like Tuesdays are always the days for the grocery store to have the meal specials. Seems like the deli area is so busy on those days I don’t have the patience to wait after work.
  • Since it’s just us, cleaning doesn’t take long. I do a run through during the week and do more involved cleaning on the weekend. I do laundry then too. About 4 loads.
4

  1. Two people, me and my sweetie. She goes grocery shopping on Saturday or Sunday morning. I go several times during the week. I like buying fresh produce as needed on the day I need it.

  2. We occasionally run out of beer. That makes us sad. Garlic also; we both use a lot of garlic in our cooking.

  3. She makes huge pots of soup and chili. I make things like stuffed peppers or cold Thai spring rolls in quantity. We make casseroles for grieving friends/relatives and for TGiving, otherwise no to casseroles. I cook dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays, she usually cooks Sundays and Thursdays.

  4. Between us we earn enough that we can eat without money being a consideration. I like that. We eat out usually on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

  5. Housecleaner comes one day a month. My gf cleans every other Sunday. I clean my own bathroom and keep my man cave respectable. I bathe our three dogs as needed.

  6. No clue.

  7. We do our own laundry. Once a week I throw everything into the washer as a single gigantic load. My gf is the extreme opposite, doing multiple small loads. She launders communal stuff like the sheets. I launder odd stuff like the dog towels.

5

My wife and I- she still works whilst I am retired.

She looks after the front door in regard to better money and I look after the back door in regard to managing said money and ding shopping, cleaning, cooking etc. (To remove doubt I am male).

I try to shop fortnightly but there is always some items that need to be bought more regularly - fresh cat food, beer (for me) and such.

In our situation we don’t need to cook and freeze - if however there is a lot of food from one meal we will freeze it and have it as a main meal if we go for an afternoon out at the football.

Cleaning is done when I can find the time. That is the essentials are done every day but cleaning and polishing of the floors are done on a nice day when time permits.

Laundry- 3 or 4 loads a week but I guess that is governed by the size of your washing machine and also which season.

6

  1. Just two of us here. My husband does the bulk of the shopping on his day off. He looks through the ads and buys the meat when he can get a good price. I shop every week too though for my lunch and cleaning supplies.

  2. We live pretty rural and plan accordingly, so we don’t really run out of anything anymore.

  3. No. Although I did buy a quiche duo from Costco for my lunches this week. It’s been a nice break from sandwiches. They’re pretty tasty.

  4. No. But we almost never eat out at all. I do go out for lunch most Saturdays with my daughter and grandchildren. It’s starting to hurt my pocket book though, so that’s going to have to end.

  5. I clean every Sunday while my husband is at work. He’ll help with the tub scrubbing if I plead with him, but I do the bulk of the housework. He does the bulk of the cooking.

  6. If I include windows and blinds, it could easily take me more than 8 hours, but most Sundays it takes between 3-4. I keep it up during the week a little bit.

  7. I probably average between 2-3 loads a week.

7

  1. We have a four-person household, but the kids are in their twenties and frequently not around at dinnertime. I shop Saturdays, starting with the Publix sale flyer, and try to leave some flexibility in the menu in case the fish market has a good special.

  2. We don’t seem to run out of anything, though the wine always goes faster than we think it will. But we’re not out…we’d just have to open a bottle we’d been “saving”.

  3. I don’t pre-cook anything.

  4. It’s not cheaper to go out, but we do. Saturday night for certain, maybe some other nights too. Sunday afternoons after the gym we go to the neighborhood bar for happy hour and some appetizers (kinda negating the whole gym thing).

  5. Saturday is chore day, be it yardwork, housecleaning, shopping, or whatever. Sundays are laundry. We also clean as we go, so the house never gets too heinous, (besides animal fur which is eternal, ubiquitous, and doesn’t count).

  6. We rarely spend more than an hour or two continuously cleaning.

  7. By agreement, I am the only one who does laundry. It’s about six loads a week (work clothes / blacks / whites / kid work clothes / towels / “other”).

We actually live very regimented lives. I even schedule my reading time.

8

  1. Three. Me, my wife and our 19-month old daughter. We (well, I) do the shopping on the way home from work. After getting off the subway, picking up the daughter at daycare, I’ll go by the supermarket. Once in a while, if we’re driving somewhere out of NYC, we’ll stop at some kind of mega-market and do a monster shopping for non-perishables.

  2. Diapers. Milk. Bread. And Mr. Bubble, which my daughter thinks is the best thing in the world. It’s fun! And it’s food! I’ve tried to discourage the eating of Mr. Bubble, but I haven’t had much success.

  3. Yes, sometimes. My wife is also very into canning (she grew up in a rural area), so lots of stuff gets canned.

  4. No. Not in our neighborhood. Never.

  5. We (again, actually I) do the cleaning as needed.

  6. To do it all at once would take five or six hours.

  7. Four or five. Hard to compare, though – we have a tiny washer and dryer, so maybe it would be less for someone else. Work stuff is outsourced. My shirts are washed and ironed, lots of stuff is dry-cleaned.

9

  1. Three–me, husband, small daughter. I generally hit a grocery store twice a week. One trip to the “regular” grocery and one to a “fun” grocery like Trader Joe’s or Costco. I generally target ingredients to cook 1-2 specific meals on each trip, otherwise, I’m buying basics.

  2. Milk and bread.

  3. No. If I’m going to cook, all the effort happens on the day I cook. I often cook enough to have leftovers for the next day, though.

  4. Now that we have access to Trader Joe’s, we find some of their frozen stuff is cheaper and better quality than eating in a restaurant–or trying to source ingredients and time to cook it at home. We’ve established a “Trader Joe’s Indian” night, for example.

  5. I have set laundry days (one for clothes, one for sheets and towels), but housecleaning is catch-as-catch-can.

  6. I usually have a four-year-old on my hands, so housecleaning as I said is catch-as-catch-can. I tend to do just one big task at a time, like cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, or cleaning windows.

  7. Four in summer, five in winter: sheets, towels, light clothes, dark clothes, (and a winter intermediate-clothes because the volume is higher).

10

  1. Just two of us. We grocery shop when supplies are running low. Usually every two to three weeks. We both hate to shop so we buy a lot at a time.

  2. Juice and coke. My son can go through a half gallon or more of juice a day.

  3. No. I don’t make ‘meals’ that often anyway. I cook for myself and my son cooks for himself. If I’m making something I know he likes, or if he is making something he knows I like, we’ll make extra for each other.

  4. Don’t know. We usually do a pizza day a week but it’s whenever we feel like it, not by any specials. The places we order from have specials that we use that are good every day of the week.

  5. Whenever it needs to be done.

  6. Don’t know, probably not long. Around here it’s clean as you go. Today, if somebody were to call and say they were on their way over it would probably take 2 hours to clean. Most other times, maybe a half hour. We’ve been a bit lazy lately. The other problem though is the more I clean the more I see that needs to be cleaned. It’s never ending.

  7. For me 3-4, for my son 1-2. I sort my clothes differently, and I do the sheets and towels. He throws all his clothes in together.

We’re not real good with schedules around here. I work from home and except for some core hours I have to work, my schedule is flexible. He just started college, but all of his classes are online so his schedule is flexible. We eat when we’re hungry, sleep when we’re tired, clean as we go and shop when we have to. I’ve tried setting up schedules but it doesn’t work for me, trying to keep to one stresses me out and then nothing gets done.

11
  1. My wife and I make plans for the entire week and my wife does grocery shopping on random days.

Milk. My wife and my son are the only ones who use it, so I don’t know why they’re so bad at keeping it stocked.

They’re usually unhealthy and I find them unappetizing enough to not have any interest in locating healthy ones. We make slow cooker meals or pressure cooker meals sometimes in an attempt to achieve a similar goal.

We never looked for any.

We just do everything when it comes up. My wife does most of the cleaning while I’m at work.

I used to pay 2 maids to clean my house for 3 hours and they did a great job. I’m not really sure how long it takes my wife now that she does most of the cleaning.

3-4.

12

  1. First how many people (family and guests) eat at your house during the average week? Do you do grocery shopping day (ex. sunday - when you have the time and the coupons come out) and plan meals for the entire week?
    – Just the two of us. We usually shop on Saturday but sometimes Sunday. We do plan meals, and buy enough for the week unless a meal at the end of the week is going to require something fresh.

  2. What do you tend to run out of the fastest? Ex. with kids we tend to use 3 or more gallons of milk a week. With toddlers you always seem to run out of formula and diapers.
    – Breakfast food. But really, freezer space.

  3. Do you make up casseroles or other foods on one day then refrigerate so you have meals prepped for the week? (we dont but I know familys that do)
    – Not in advance, but sometimes the natural amount is more than we can eat, so we make a batch and freeze half of it for nights when we are rushed.

  4. Are their any food “bargains” during the week where it’s cheaper to eat out than cook at home? For example where we live the Papa Johns Take n Bake pizza has a special on Tuesdays - large pizzas for $10. The grocery store has this special on tuesdays - a big chicken dinner (8 piece) with sides for $12. Only bummer is so many seem to be on Tuesdays.
    – Never. Cheap takeout isn’t healthy enough. We might buy a cooked chicken from the store, but that is part of a regular dinner, not a substitute. The rare times we do get takeout is when we are rushed.

  5. On cleaning - do you set aside a day of the week (say fridays) where you go thru and do all the vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, and laundry? Or do you just kind of do things when they come up? (for us its thursday mornings)
    – The Roomba does not need a day off. My wife works from home, so she Roomba’s a room nearly every day. Our dog sheds enough hair to make several dogs. I clean bathrooms once every two weeks. We dust when needed.

  6. How long does it generally take to do a good house cleaning? Our house is about 3-4 hours.
    – don’t know since we don’t do it all at once.

  7. How many loads of laundry do you do in a week? (we average I’d say 4-5)

3 loads (one clothes, one sheets, one towels and heavy stuff) once a week, often Sunday.

13

  1. 2 adults, 1 small child
    I do the grocery shopping usually on Sundays. I try to plan at least four meals, with the assumption that we’ll wing it for other days.

  2. Fruit, I am terrible at buying fruit and sussing out how long it will actually be good for. We either have too much fruit or fruit that all turns immediately after purchase.

  3. Rarely do I make things ahead, although every once in a while I will make something that I know will have leftovers and make a plan for the leftovers in advance.

  4. Not because of bargains, but there is usually one day a week that both adults end up either working late or are working at home in the evening, so we try to reduce the stress of that by getting pizza or other prepared food.

  5. Generally Saturdays for cleaning, but with a small kid there is always something that needs cleaning in a more immediate way, like vacuuming up a million of those little plastic beads that get spilled. Then, if the vacuum is out, I might as well vacuum everything.

  6. About 4 - 5 hours, although again, I have a little kid “helping” me which I think adds at least an hour, maybe more.

  7. 3 loads of clothing, one of towels, one of sheets/bedding.

14

**1. First how many people (family and guests) eat at your house during the average week? ** 3. My wife, myself, and our son.

Do you do grocery shopping day (ex. sunday - when you have the time and the coupons come out) and plan meals for the entire week?

There’s a Food Lion just off the highway on the way home from work. We stop there when we need stuff, usually once or twice a week. (We don’t do coupons - potential savings are minimal compared to the time cost, and we don’t get a newspaper anyway.)

2. What do you tend to run out of the fastest? Ex. with kids we tend to use 3 or more gallons of milk a week. With toddlers you always seem to run out of formula and diapers.

Milk. Most other things we need, even other dairy products like half n’ half, have longer shelf life.

3. Do you make up casseroles or other foods on one day then refrigerate so you have meals prepped for the week? (we dont but I know familys that do)

No, but when we cook, we usually have a day or two of leftovers.
**
4. Are their any food “bargains” during the week where it’s cheaper to eat out than cook at home? For example where we live the Papa Johns Take n Bake pizza has a special on Tuesdays - large pizzas for $10. The grocery store has this special on tuesdays - a big chicken dinner (8 piece) with sides for $12. Only bummer is so many seem to be on Tuesdays.**

Not that I know of. OTOH, I go to the local farmers’ market on Friday evenings, and my son and I tend to eat stuff we buy there for dinner: whatever produce is in season, along with some bread from the local bakery.

5. On cleaning - do you set aside a day of the week (say fridays) where you go thru and do all the vacuuming, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, and laundry? Or do you just kind of do things when they come up? (for us its thursday mornings)
**
6. How long does it generally take to do a good house cleaning? Our house is about 3-4 hours.**

Our cleaning lady comes by every other Wednesday. She vacuums, sweeps floors, cleans the counters, the sinks, the showers, tubs, and toilets, changes the sheets on the beds and the towels in the bathrooms, dusts, and generally straightens things up. She’s fantastic.

I do the laundry for my son and me, and sheets and towels. My wife does her clothes. My share probably takes less than an hour a week: 10 minutes moving clothes to the basement and sorting into loads, 10 minutes moving loads from basket to washer to dryer to basket, and 30 minutes folding (minimal) and putting stuff away.

  1. How many loads of laundry do you do in a week? (we average I’d say 4-5)
    [/QUOTE]
    I do about 6 loads: one of sheets, one of towels, one of perma-prest stuff, and 3 of general clothes. Not sure how many loads my wife does, probably ~3.
15
  1. Just me and my Wife.
  2. Shop whenever. Sometimes I’ll pick up some stuff on the way home from work, sometimes I’ll do a bigger shop on the weekend mornings. Or sometimes my Wife does.
  3. I often make a big pot of someting on a Sunday and we just eat it for the week. This is about half our meals at home. I’m almost always the one that does this.
  4. We really don’t look for bargains. Well, if we go out to eat, during off season there are often 2 for ones that we look for.
  5. I tend to clean more on Weekends, my Wife will clean sometimes after work. No schedule. I cook more, my Wife cleans more.
  6. Don’t know if I’ve ever cleaned the entire house in one shot. I will usually do downstairs, or upstairs or the bathrooms or what not and then be done with cleaning for the day.
  7. About 5 loads of laundry a week.
16

Ok. Interesting. Looks like just 2-3 person families here.

17

  1. Now that we’ve got Daughter #3 off to college, there’s just three of us in the house. I typically have guests at least two days per week: Daughter #4’s boyfriend one night, and my parents and any other family members who wish on Sunday as well as our regular crew. I grocery shop once per week, typically on Saturday mornings, and I do plan meals for the entire week. I hate grocery shopping and will not return to the store if I can possibly help it during the week.

  2. We tend to run out of fruit the fastest. It’s always a gamble to ensure that we’ll use what we have before it goes bad, so I try to slightly under-buy.

  3. I don’t typically pre-prep any foods except turkey meatballs (I like my own recipe best) and sometimes cookie dough. We don’t ‘prep, freeze, cook,’ if that’s what you mean.

  4. I think there are some take-out food bargains but we rarely use them. Now and again a pizza, but nothing regular.

  5. With the exception of some minor chores done by my daughters, I am responsible for all the house-cleaning. I just changed up my cleaning routine, and I’m much happier. I use the Tody app to schedule a regular rota of an hour of cleaning, meal planning, and laundry daily instead of taking 4-5 hours on the weekend to do it.

  6. Well, good house cleaning, let’s see. A good four hours at our house, including weekly dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the bathrooms, changing sheets, taking out the recycling, etc. I also do the de-cluttering and try to spend some time on that every week.

  7. Laundry: this depends on the number of family members. My husband does 1-2 small loads per week that mostly consist of only his clothes plus a towel or three. When the girls are home, I do 4-5 loads of laundry per week of our clothes and some of my husband’s. However, when Daughter #3 is home, laundry is the main chore I ask of her. When she’s gone, it’s a good four loads per week and I do them.