A reader asked this question after reading about the pumpkin I did yesterday:

So on a day like this.....is your house a disaster or did you do your chores before you started on the pumkins? What does a typical day look like housework wise for you?

Good questions! :) When I spend a good part of the day canning (or doing any other sort of major cooking projects!), I don't have a lot of time for "everything else".

The children "help" me with the work (they're 1 and 3 years old right now), but they also spend time playing together or by themselves. Since our house isn't extremely big, they're always in close proximity to where I'm working.

And, we limit the number of toys we own, as well as the amount of toys that they can have out at one time. (About 2/3 of their toys are in storage, and they have 1/3 of them out at any time. I rotate toys weekly or every couple weeks.) So, what this really means, is that even when I am busy and they get out all of their toys, it's still a reasonable amount to clean up afterwards. :)

On days when I have some large project (like canning, cooking in bulk, going away, etc.) I spend very little time cooking our actual meals for the day. I end up stopping for many interruptions (children needing things, diaper changes, discipline, etc.) and there just isn't time for a fancy lunch and dinner when we're in the middle of canning tomatoes or something! :)

The same goes for cleaning. I do try to have things somewhat "caught up" before an extra-busy day, but I also realize that the floor is going to get dirty, and cleaning the house gets put on hold for a bit. When I'm in the middle of canning, the kitchen is usually FULL of dirty dishes and mess!! It all eventually gets cleaned up, but my "day" doesn't end early. I'm generally washing the last of the dishes long after the children have gone to bed, and the next day things need tidied.

Anyway, for a typical "canning" day, I can try to remember how our day went yesterday, when I was canning pumpkin. Pumpkin is a lot less work than, say, making pizza sauce or something, but this might give you an idea. :)

Morning -- Eat breakfast, wash dishes, start a load of diapers, read to Yehoshua, pay bills, etc... just odds and ends like that :) Our day always starts by 7:30 am, though often the children wake up a little sooner than that. :)

10:00 am -- Start cooking pumpkin, wash canning jars and lids

10:45 am -- Hang out diapers outside, eat lunch with the children (cold leftovers)

11:30 am -- Start scraping cooked pumpkin out of the skins

1:00 pm -- Start filling jars with pumpkin

1:45 pm -- Put a chicken in the oven to start baking for our dinner

2:00 pm -- Change Eliyahu and put him down for a nap

2:15 pm -- Put jars in canner, add water, and start canning

2:30 pm -- Dump garbage on the compost pile, take out the trash, put away clean dishes and wash more dishes (Yehoshua helps me with all of this)

3:15 pm -- Read a story to Yehoshua and then we both lay down for a short nap

4:00 pm -- Eliyahu gets up, work on more kitchen clean-up, start making yellow rice for dinner, warm up green beans for dinner

5:00 pm -- We all eat dinner together

5:45 pm -- I quickly take down the diapers from the clothesline, and get the children ready to go to the grocery store. I'm always "too busy" to go to the store, so finally we were out of too many things, and Joshua said he'd go along with me. :)

6:00 pm -- leave for the store and get groceries, including filling 14 gallons of drinking water! We needed two carts, and I was so glad Joshua came along! :)

7:00 pm -- Bring in groceries, put everything away; Joshua started making a pumpkin pie at this time, also!

7:20 pm -- Help the children pick up their toys/tidy the house, get their teeth brushed, and get them both ready for bed

8:10 pm -- Eliyahu goes to bed, I read a story to Yehoshua, and then he goes to bed as well

8:45 pm -- Start packing Joshua's lunch for the next day

9:15 pm -- Spend some time talking with Joshua, finish making the pumpkin pie that Joshua started (all I did was roll out the crust and bake the pie), wash more dishes

10:30 pm -- Take jars of pumpkin out of canner, eat a snack of leftover Italian pasta salad, and take a quick shower

11:15 pm -- Head upstairs to the computer to blog about doing pumpkin! :D

So, that is how a day might look when I'm busy with a "project" of some sort. Today (the day after) was catch-up day... and the jars of pumpkin still aren't put away (though they are washed, and the canning supplies are put away!). :)