Margins

I have been watching an amazing video series. It is called Take It To The Limit - Andy Stanley. He talks about creating margins in our lives. Financial margins, emotional margins, margins at work, margins in our downtime, professional margins.

(I just bought the dvd for myself last week and it was available, so if it is out of stock it should be back soon. Very watchable - this guy knows how to get your attention!)

I was at a point when I would get to my Bible Study on Tuesday, where I was supposed to read a chapter of The Shack, to discuss it, that I wouldn't have read it because I was too busy. That particular week I had watched 4 minutes of this video because I was too busy. I had no time to do anything.

The guy says that when you say, "Not now!! I can't think straight." "I can't deal with that right now." etc - that we have no emotional margin left. We need to create margins.

An example of a good margin is my financial margins. I always have funds for this and that and because of it I have been in a good place when it came to things like taking holidays and such. I am squirreling away money for that holiday right now. And then when it is time, I will have the funds. I saved for Ray's ATV - the unattainable, can't afford it, will never be able to save $11,000 ATV - in the same manner.

So when Ray was finally at a point of buying a new truck this year - I could do it. Let me tell you how this went. We had pondered for 18 months whether we should buy a truck or not. His truck is 20 years old, over 450,000 km on it and is rusty and got holes on the side. Anyone looking at it would know where Ray's priorities lie - with his family!

But we knew it was on death door. We also knew that our van loan would run out in 2009 March. A full 16 months later. So we put it off. We began thinking about it again a few months ago. We read papers, talked about prices and thought about it. Finally, we decided to pursue it. I knew our van was not paid off until March, which meant swinging paying off the balance - $1500 now, before the bank would give us a loan.

We found the truck we wanted. Funny enough, we both picked the same vehicle separate to each other! It was $29,999 on sale for $19,999 and we offered and got it for $18,999. It is a 2007 with 64,000 km. It is a 4 door 6 passenger 4x4 beauty. My husband has never had a new truck before.

When my husband went to the bank they told him that our van loan was paid off that very week. There was only $40 owing on my van!! I believe we were prompted to buy the truck that week because God knew the van was paid off early. How? Because I had been making biweekly payments for the last 4 years and forgot the benefit! It saved us over $1000 and we were paid off early.

As well as this, we only needed to take a loan for $10,000 because I had a "Margin" in the bank. I have been saving for Orthodontic work for the last 5 years - $100 a month for the child that needs it. So far, so good. No children in braces and we keep on putting money aside. Not only that, but I have been diligent about putting aside a little bit per month in our Savings Fund for emergencies.

I was able to 'lend' my husband the $11,000 out of my funds, instead of borrowing from the bank. He was able to see that the biweekly payments have been a good thing, and that me squirreling money away really pays off in the end!

So that is my Financial Margin story. It is worth doing!!

As to how do the Margins work in the rest of my life? Not. I have to work on that. The first Margin I am working on is my time spent in the kitchen. I have often written menus and not stuck to them, or got to busy to remember, so I am often at a loss as to what to cook that night. I lose time thinking, defrosting things, and then rushing to get things done. I feel like I lose 1-2 hours per day in this mess.

So this is what I have been doing in the last two weeks:

I am schedule resistant. I write schedules but resist putting them into practice. I hate regimented lifestyles. I am the type of person that would pack my bags and go on a road trip tomorrow if the desire arose. I believe life should be fun and free. Who cares if I have eight kids. They can come too!! *laugh*

So the first thing I did was write a two week menu. This means that we will know what we are eating for a two week period. And yes, the second set and third set and fourth set of two week periods will be the same. Such is life if you are trying to create a Margin.

The menu was created with CHILDREN COOKING in mind! Monday - Meatballs - Cassidy, Tuesday - Sloppy Joes - Mum, Wednesday - Spaghetti - Mum, Thursday - Tuna Lasagna - Cassidy, Friday - Roast - Dane, Saturday and Sunday - Chicken and Rice / Stroganoff - Austin.

Okay, so that was one of my two weeks worth of meals. The deal is that my meals come out of the freezer. I make a batch of spaghetti or sloppy joes and freeze them. Then only every few weeks will I have to make another batch.

When it is the child's day to cook then I take them through it step by step. I have taken the recipes I like and typed them out in very simply format. They have each set of ingredients in the order they are used and then below this is a very child-friendly write-up of instructions. They then know which ingredients for each step. Super simple.

Cassidy Making Tuna Lasagne

To show you: I gave Dane a new recipe and went to my room to wrap presents. He had no problem doing this recipe because each step was outlined so clearly. I came down to a wonderful smelling kitchen and felt like I was visiting someone. Something I have noticed is that when I cook the meal I don't smell the food! When I enter after someone else has done the work I can smell it!

This way the boys each have only 2-4 recipes to master. It makes it so simple. The recipes I choose for the 9 year old are easy, easy!! They are simply a few ingredients that you mix together and then pour over chicken to put in the oven. The rice recipe is a little more complicated, but really easy also. By keeping this up, they will be self sufficient on these particular recipes in a matter of a few months.

On Saturday, which is the 9 year old's cooking day, I help him and he does two recipes. One for that night and one for the Sunday.

I am working on my next Margin. My next Margin is having more time off on the weekend. It is so easy to spend our Saturday with my husband at the jobsite, and then Sunday is shot with trying to get to Church, get yardwork done and then it is gone with no rest.

The plan: Sunday is a day of rest.

Ray saw the video too, and he saw how it was really planned well for us to take the Sunday off. It is a margin and God saw how we needed it when He created us and the world.

This week we got up on Sunday and it was simply a matter of eat breakfast, wash breakfast dishes, no running laundry, no housecleaning (except I couldn't bear to not run the vacuum later in the day on the hardwood), reading books, clearing the icerink, watching a family movie, playing a board game, and then putting kids to bed. We did take Sunday off from church because it was so darned cold I didn't want to leave the house (-33*).

To attain this day off we did a few things:

Ray stayed home on Saturday; I vacuumed and cleaned the little kids rooms with them; I caught up the laundry; Austin and I made dinner for the Sunday.

Not a big change, but it was enough to make us have free-time on Sunday, and we all really enjoyed the time off!! I think Ray is hooked. Now to keep him going this way when things get busier in the summer. I just need to remind him how much better we feel when we have a margin to play in.

And relationships are built in the Margin.
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