Showing posts with label Community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Community. Show all posts

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Meals on Wheels

I'm always looking for ideas as to how to simplify life.

At the beginning of last year, my lovely friend Tracey (who leads the Mom's group I attend every week) was telling us about her friend out west who has 3 friends on her street and between the four of them they take turns cooking for each other. The idea was that on Monday night one girl would make 4 meals, on Tuesday night another girl would make 4 meals and so on. It meant that you cooked one night and then had meals brought to you for 3 nights each week.

I loved the idea and mentioned it to my friend Alison, who lives around the corner from me.  We immediately thought it was a fantastic idea and decided to give it a try between the two of us. So on Tuesday nights Alison brings my family dinner and on Wednesday nights I bring her family dinner.  We intentionally chose nights that each other would benefit most from receiving dinner.  We also talked about what each of our family likes and doesn't like and we agreed to be completely honest with each other.  In other words, if a meal is a big hit, we tell each other and if it wasn't then we tell each other that too.

We decided to try it for a month and we have never looked back!  It's almost been a year that we've been doing this.  We have both found that this really simple, non-rocket science idea is completely game changing.

 Here's what else I have found - it doesn't take any more work to double what you are making for dinner.  I would never have thought so, but it's so true!  And can I just say that Tuesdays are my favourite day of the week?  It's so relaxing during the day knowing that I don't have to think about making dinner :-)

Here's what my dinner table looked like after we received and ate a delicious meal from Alison!

As a Mom, I want to get better at living life in community.  It's so easy to live in isolation and loneliness.    The truth is that we need each other and we can't do this journey of parenting alone.  It's hard stuff!  Wouldn't it be awesome if we were each other's biggest cheerleaders and advocates?

There are so many great ways that we can support and bless one another and swapping meals is at the top of my list these days.  Now if only we could find 2 more neighbours to participate...

What are some ways that you depend on your female friends?

CJ