Georgia Varozza - 501 Time-Saving Tips Every Woman Should Know

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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501 TIME-SAVING TIPS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW

Copyright 2015 Georgia Varozza

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97402

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Varozza, Georgia, 1953-

501 time-saving tips every woman should know / Georgia Varozza.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-7369-5950-6 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-5951-3 (eBook)

1. Home economicsMiscellanea. 2. Time managementMiscellanea. I. Title. II. Title: Five hundred one time-savings tips every woman should know.

TX162.2.V37 2015

640dc23

2014022641

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As always, to my beloved family.

You do life so well.

Heres a handy tip just for you

Love and honor the God of the universe and joy will be yours!

Contents

L ife can get busy. Many of us work outside the home, but we still need to carve out time to keep our houses clean and organized, feed our families, do the laundry, keep up with the kids school schedules and activities, shop for groceries, go to church, spend quality time with our loved ones, maintain important friendships, and romance our husbands. And we often think we must accomplish all of this while experiencing an amazing daily quiet time and looking like we just stepped off the pages of a womans fashion magazine. Its exhausting! And, of course, completely unrealistic.

Fortunately, a reasonable alternative to this superwoman illusion does existand its achievable. It just takes a bit of know-how, some tried-and-true shortcuts, and organizationand thats where this book comes in.

Now, Im not going to give you a set of steps to follow to magically turn your life around and suddenly get it all done. But I will help you with plenty of great ideas to streamline your routine, keep your home shipshape, feed your family with quick and easy recipes that dont break the budget, enjoy time with your family and friends, and lots more. Within these pages youll find 501 tips that can help make your life easier. By implementing even a few, you can rest assured that your days will be smoother and stress levels will go down. You and your family will be happier as a result.

I have organized these tips in general categories, but you dont have to read the book from front to back. In fact, you can open the book at random to any page and start reading because each tip stands on its own. Youre sure to find something that appeals to you and that you can begin implementing to simplify your routine and make your life more efficient. Many of the tips in this book take nothing more than a slight change in your routine or a new way of looking at something. You dont need to spend a ton of money or set up elaborate systems to benefit from the ideas youll find here. Really, these suggestions arent newthey have stood the test of time.

Before we begin, Ill give you tip number 502 (consider it a freebie): Learn to say no. That sounds easy on the face of it, but we women sometimes have a hard time with that simple, two-letter word. God created us to thrive on relationships, and we often mistake doing our best with trying to do it all.

Think of your relationships as the ever-widening ripples from a pebble tossed into a calm pool of water. The ripples closest to the center are your most important connectionsGod and family. Next might come work and intimate friends. Beyond that, the ripples spread and become fainterthose associations are there, but they canand must!take less of your time and energy. By learning to thoughtfully say no on occasion, you are freeing yourself to say yes to the best God has for you. And I firmly believe youll be grateful you did because you and your family will flourish.

I hope you enjoy these tips and ideas. My intent isnt to persuade you to do morein fact, wouldnt it be nice if we could figure out how to do less? Or to breeze through our days so efficiently that we actually have time for relaxing and enjoying those we love? I think its possible. I hope you do too.

Are you ready? Lets get started!

S o many ideas could go in this chapter on kitchen tipswe could probably consider 501 tips just for this room alone! Think for a moment of everything you do in the kitchen every week, and youll soon realize its a gigantic time pit. But it used to be even more time consuming.

In the early 1900s, women spent about thirty hours each week preparing food for their households. If they wanted cornbread, for example, many of them had to grow, harvest, and dry the corn and then grind it into flour or meal. Only then could they bake that batch of cornbread for dinnerafter they ran out to the chicken coop for some eggs and milked the family cow. It must have seemed a never-ending chore to get food on the table, and families were often large and always hungry from working in the fields. After World War II, time spent in the kitchen preparing meals went down to about twenty hours a week as labor-saving tools became available. Today, women average about five or six hours each week preparing meals, thanks in large part to prepackaged food and takeout. But for those of us on a tight budget, or for those of us who enjoy feeding our family healthy, fresh food that weve prepared with our own hands, the amount of time we spend weekly on cooking-related work is, of course, greater.

Getting meals and keeping up with a well-maintained kitchen can seem like drudgery for some. But being confident cooksknowing the basics as well as some organizational skills and shortcutswill go a long way toward keeping us happy and willing to spend the time it takes to feed our families and enjoy the process.