Have you ever felt that nagging pull that you need to be perfect at keeping up with your home and raising a family? Like you should have the most fun day ever with your kids every single day, and still have a clean and organized house, a fully stocked pantry and fridge, and a gourmet meal ready when your husband gets home from work? Like you should have a huge group of best friends that you talk to all of the time, have playdates with every week, and your kid is the most well behaved of them all? Yea, I feel those pressures too. But you know what? That's not what my life looks like at all.

We all wish we could actually get our spring cleaning done, especially in the kitchen, right? The kitchen is usually the most lived in room in our homes, so it takes quite the beating and naturally accumulates a lot of dirt and grime, even more so if we have messy little ones! It definitely needs a good deep cleaning every now and then. I can't come help you clean your kitchen, but I can give you few tips I've learned over the years that could save you hours of scrubbing!

I always thought I wanted a white farmhouse sink... until we moved into this house! It has an almost 25 year old white porcelain enameled cast iron drop-in sink in the kitchen. From afar, it's beautiful. But when we moved in, it was so stained and dirty that I thought I wanted to get rid of it ASAP! I have tried everything to clean this sink over the past few months. No matter how much elbow grease I put into it, I could not remove the stains that had settled into the surface scratches from normal wear and tear over twenty-something years. Well, I'm excited to say, I finally found a solution, and I will not be getting rid of our farmhouse sink just yet 😁 Add this to your spring cleaning routine for an almost new enamel kitchen sink!

Have you ever actually taken a close look at what you spend on groceries? You might be really surprised. I know I was. We used to be pretty good about cooking at home and sticking to somewhat of a budget, but after having a baby and moving, some bad habits took over. We did a lot of eating out and convenience meals. Almost six months went by before we realized the damage we were so easily doing each week at the grocery store (damage on our wallets and health!)

One night we sat down to update the labels of transactions in our Mint.com account for the first time since moving. I was shocked to find that we were averaging about $200-250 each week for our family of four 😳 (and one of those four was still exclusively breastfeeding at the time... so really it was all for three people!). And that wasn't even including what we were spending on eating out.

It's no secret that my family and I have had a lot going on over the past year. We didn't exactly plan on making a long distance move and having a baby all at the same time, but sometimes life happens and you have to make fast decisions to do what's best for your family. We couldn't be happier with the big changes we made, but it was still a lot at once, and we are still trying to adjust and get settled.

Aside from the boxes that still need unpacked, or the ordinary life of parenting two kids age two and under, one of our biggest struggles these days is dinner time.