Tips and success stories, please?

imasinger

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 12:45 pm

I am utterly exhausted. So are pretty much every other woman I have seen today.

Most of us feel like we were floundering in too much to do and too little sleep.

I am sure there must be some ideas to keep the sanity. So if your Purim ran like clockwork or close to it, and you got enough sleep, what are your management tips? I really want to feel less chaotic next year.

amother

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 1:13 pm

I have 2 that really helped me this year

1. I prepared myself and said purim is in hashem's hand and hashem wants it to be a balagan and I just have to let it be and not expect things to be in order

2. I cleaned up every 2 hours - not every minute and only sponja's at the end of the day

this helped me as I hate the mess and balagan

Scrabble123

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 1:58 pm

imasinger wrote:

Schedules. Preparing all mm at least two weeks beforehand, food a week before (serve sweet & sour fish for this reason). Then just schedule your day (do you want to go around delivery mm or pay a car service to do so, send kids by foot, etc.). What is really great is if you can hear the megilla at home before the men go to shul (s/t between 6&7). That way you can go back to sleep if at all possible. Purim is pretty exhausting, especially a motsi Shabbos purim!

mha3484

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 2:00 pm

1) I made over night oatmeal so everyone ate a healthy breakfast.

2) I made a big batch of soup for lunch also in the crockpot.

3) I went to vasikin which gave me a huge boost to keep going.

4) we did pot luck for the seudah so it was manageable for all of us.

sky

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 2:11 pm

We give our kids mishloach manos. We gave a fun breakfast, not necessarily healthy, but at least they ate something solid. per-packaged cereal, choc milk, choc protein bar (they love).

Both DH and I went to a early megilla reading so the day could start early.

Before Purim we made a list of all deliveries. And then grouped them by neighborhoods. this way DH started deliveries by car early and he got the busiest parts of town down fast and quick just going through the list. this way we didn't have to sit through the crazy traffic in this town. I save the list from year to year and just make changes as necessary.

It also allowed that during the afternoon was more relaxed and we were able to enjoy getting together with others during the day or visiting elderly for longer then we normally are able.

I gave English teachers on taanis esther. I was lucky they had hours. It got a few stops off my list. I like to take my sons to their rebbeim on Purim as it is a nice experience for them so I"m not ready to take that off my list.

I'd love to cut down my list and take the day even more slowly, but I'm not sure that I can.
I wish our neighborhood would just have a group m'm. I gave at least 16 just to neighbors and didn't even give all that left by my door. I feel there would be so much less waste if we could get it together, but I really don't have the time to do it (I don't think anyone else does either).

Liba

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 2:12 pm

We really only eat the soup (with vegetables and kreplach, soup made weeks in advance and kreplach made and frozen as well), liver and chicken. All can be made in advance.

Mishloach manos we all worked together. It took 30 minutes for us to package up 50 mishloach manos - and my best helper wasn't helping since she was sick.

The kids mishloach manos were totally non perishable so they were done well in advance.

Megilla we had in our house which makes things run much much more smoothly IME.

Since the food was simple and done in advance I put it up to heat/cook and then brought my teenager in the car. She ran in and out of the houses to drop off mishloach manos. I sat in the car and davened and said tehillim while waiting. I got my quiet davening time that way, which I wouldn't have at home. It was only 3-5 minutes at a time, but B"H it really added up.

esther malka

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 4:33 pm

No matter how organized I think Purim is exhausting for all women like you sai. But, there are things we can do to make it less stressful. Here are a few that help me, but I find I learn new things every year.
This year, I didn't bake, which saved me time and energy. I packaged my mishloach manos a week before Purim. And some didn't get finished till Thursday night, normally I would feel all unorganized, but I decided to do what I can and that attitude helped me a lot.

Also, I prepare a delivery list working off last years which helps. It looks something like this:
Main Street
Cohen 3001
Levi 3105

I do this by neighborhood, so whichever if us goes delivering can do it efficiently.
Also, this year my husband took the boys delivering while I heard Megillah, they went to the furthest neighborhood and worked their back. The plus is, most people are not out delivering so not so much traffic.
I also decided that whoever we get to great and if we can't get to everyone, there's only so much we can do.
I also let the mishloach manos pile up and divide it up at night when the little kids are in bed and I can finally clean up.
And like someone mentioned before, English teachers get before Purim, I send them to school, when I remember....
Hope that helps!

SplitPea

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 4:55 pm

We went to bed right after megilla at night and out kids to bed before we even went.

Dh went to early reading I went right after

We filled the kids up on their fav foods (pizza for one chicken nuggets for the other) as much as they wanted before we left the house so they were not hungry and ate less sugar.

We only did our immediate neighborhood and my husbands parents one neighborhood over.

When we realized the kids were getting koko we decided to drop everything and let them go home to calm down and sleep while Dh and I had a suda alone. Better that than nuts
Kids and parents who can't deal with them.

In other words we don't commit to anything. We are flexible and we remember the day is not about stress and if we are getting stressed we need to stop and figure out how to fix the situation.

We all were in bed exausted by 8:45 at night. Dh and I watched a movie and were asleep before 10z

cbg

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 10:17 pm

1. Make your mm as simple as possible, and ahead of time.
2. Simple costumes for the kids, that don't bother them sitting in the car. Costume should be comfy.
3. Make sure kids eat REAL food, before they eat junk.
4. Seuda. If you are having guest have each guest bring a dish or dessert. If this is not possible, pick easy foods to make.

Don't forget that this year was harder because Purim came out on Motzae Shabbat.

MommytoB

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 10:40 pm

Have the seudah at someone else's house!

We made 50+ mm. Non-perishable. So we decided since the mitzvah is for one, not 50, to deliver some the night before. Once kids were in bed, dh went out with about 20 while I finished putting together the rest. On Purim day we did two delivery shifts.

boysrus

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 10:44 pm

Tip: As we now have two cars, dh and I were able to split up with two kids in each car, it was so much less pressured delivering MM to two kids friends and teachers than to four kids friends and teachers! So much faster, teh day seeemed to have so many more hours in it. If you have two cars, split up!

MMCH

Mon, Mar 17 2014, 10:48 pm

this was my first insane purim.
I 'only' have two kids and I can ONLY imagine what Kih the average Jewish family and mother goes through on purim.

so from this experience I learned
1)you cannot make mishloach manos AND cook for a seuda all on motzie shabbos and sunday
2)if you dh went to work (like mine did, he's a doctor) have some sort of baby sitting help while you are doing all those crazy things.
3)and lastly GET CLEANING HELP for shushan purim. my house was destroyed last night. I had honest tears in my eyes after my kids went to bed last night and had to tackle the chaos.