Maintaining a GAPS household

Since starting this healing journey 

I have really struggled with the workload 

and the state of the house is not what I am comfortable with.

 Even though I have always been one to cook everything from scratch and we have always eaten most of our meals at home the kitchen hours have challenged me enormously, so much cooking and so much washing up but I do think we are getting a little better in this area. One thing is Master 11 is taking over some of the cooking, mainly because he is eating so much and no matter how much I cook he still wants more, so will steam a dinner plate of veggies for himself at least once a day and will also poach chicken fillets in stock. It is great to see him stepping in and taking on this independent role and it is also an indicator to me that he is healing, a couple of weeks ago this would have been too much for him. 

 What is keeping me so busy? - making stocks and bone broths, making fermented vegetables - ginger carrots, sauerkraut and about to do kimchi, making kefir and kefir cream cheese and kefir sour cream, cooking for every meal - meatballs, poached chicken, lots of different stock based veggie soups to get the stock in as Master 11 will not drink stock, casseroles and stews and the endless washing up and storing food. I am also needing to go and shop a lot more often as we are going through massive amounts of vegetables and chicken so trying to get to markets to make our dollar go further and source organic produce.

As time goes on I am discovering some better ways to manage the food side of things.

 I bought a stack of large coffee jars at the op shops to store the bone broth and stocks in, these take up less room in the fridge and are so much easier to clean the fat from than the plastic boxes. 

I am trying to only make enough soup for our lunch time meal so I don't need to tore more in the fridge- this is tricky because we are both hungry and Master 11 is quite often ravenous so judging the correct amount is still a bit hit and miss. 

I keep shredded chicken in the fridge at all times,

 I make chicken stock from a whole chicken and when it cools I save the bones and skin for bone broth and shred the chicken into a container so we can add it to soups or Master 11 will often have a snack of shredded chicken and sauerkraut or kimchi.

We make a pot of ginger tea and both of us like it hot or later cold.

Master 11 is really missing water kefir and Master 15 is drinking it everyday so it was a cause for grief for my little one- I bought him sparkling mineral water and he has this with a slice of lime.

As for the rest of the house it is a bit of a wreck, I am trying to squeeze 3 gym sessions in a week and Friday morning has traditionally been our house cleaning day where the three of us pitch in and clean the whole house, the last 3 Fridays I have been in town so have missed these days but my amazing boys have stepped up and done the whole house without me. It is not quite to my standard but we would be living in squalor without their efforts and I so appreciate them. Master 11 has also taken over all the lawn mowing off his own bat so the yard is pretty good. They have left my bedroom / studio and it is chaos but I am hoping to get it clean and tidy very soon. 

Once my bedroom is sorted I am hoping to start sorting out other areas in the house and garden, we need t do a big whipper snip around the house and have a general clean up out there and I am keen to move the chooks very soon further away from the house. I also need to find my groove and get a new routine sorted so I can manage all the things I need to do.