[The Tickle Momster]

I appreciate everyone's responses. I think part of my issue is figuring out how to manage when we are not all home for meals. Or before meals. I make a LOT in the intstant pot. I don't repeat meals more than once a month if I can help it. If I make it too often they tire of it and won't eat it.

I lessen the burden a bit by having each person choose one meal (so I have to plan less) - but then they tend to each pick their favourite meal every week, so that doesn't always work very well. I have my oldest cook one meal each week, and DH usually does at least one meal per week, so that also helps.

I do this too. I have Sweet Pea scheduled to make dinner on Sunday night. The ONLY night we are all home for dinner. However, with her schedule, she often forgets and doesn't plan ahead. Maybe if she & I plan a month at a time for Sunday night.

And the kitchen thing does make I huge difference. One of our houses had a very narrow kitchen, no wider than a hallway, and I hated cooking with a passion the whole time we lived there. Our next kitchen was much more open and it made an incredible difference in how I felt about making meals.

Thank you for this! I often feel ungrateful for not liking my kitchen. It really does make a difference.

The meals are a huge mental burden, as well as a physical one. Yet, when they are planned and done, the rest of life moves more smoothly.

Honestly, I do think that having a family on the larger side makes it more difficult. The quantities, amounts of chopping, amount of dishes, etc is just so much more. I seriously aim for having 2/3 of the 9 people eat it happily at dinner. Lunch and breakfast and snacks, I always have two kids that eat something else because they don't like what I made. The worst thing, though, is that sometimes, I will realize that one kid, usually a littler one, has not eaten all day until 3pm or so when he is totally melting.

My oldest two make a lot of smoothies when they have to go somewhere and will be gone at dinner time. My DD discovered Tone It Up protein powder (from Target) and it is super good- not chalky at all. She usually makes a shake with that, some spinach, some pom juice and almond milk, and whatever fruit. It holds here for 4 hours of dance. Would something like that help your oldest?

Oh, I recently discovered PrepDish. It is still a novelty for me, so it has made things a little more fun for the last few weeks. I only make three of the dinners, but it has helped a bit.

Yes, a mental burden. And, the quantity. We do very little veggies because the amount of prep time is way more than I often have. I really need to reframe my thinking and find a way to get it done. Dd does make smoothies. I need to look into that protein powder. We are a mostly df house. And, I'll look into PrepDish. Never heard of it before.

As far as kids having dishes all over. We homeschool and have a great room. So dining area and living area are one big long room. The dining table is often covered in kids books, papers etc. I would like us to have it clear for dinner. We have little in the way of shelves for storing their supplies and dd often leaves her stuff on the table as she heads out to work. That's all on me to work on fixing. I just don't have the energy to enforce many days.

Action steps I'm finding in this thread to make things better:
1. Sit down & Sunday dinner plan with dd
2. Meal plan
3. Work out a food prep schedule of some sort. Either veggie prep or something similar