JessiePadGirl

Wow, such amazing responses here! I have been busy reading the Book of Mormon and getting to know the Ward, and the missionaries, so sorry for the late reply. My crock pot made it through the storm, the beasties are as taken care of as they can be, and May 1, I will be rebuilding my kitchen, and my pantry. Thanks to everyone who chimed in!

Everyone, thanks for your help! I have discussed it with my husband, and it turns out that we needed to talk about this. Without getting into personal things, let's just say while he was against going back to cooking, once we figured out other things that needed to be changed we agreed to make a smart move back to cooking. Thanks again to everyone that helped me out in this thread. I'm excited to build up a food stockpile again :-)

Thanks for chiming in. And, not quite...We've been doing this for under a month as a way to cope, but it isn't the worst plan for us (it has helped us spend much more time together without breaking the bank) but I'm not sure if I am supposed to have a food stockpile/pantry, if it is part of being LDS or just something smart for most people.

I am definitely taking care of that problem...that's why things are in such a stasis. We're doing everything we can to get rid of these pests. We've been told that they are pretty much unavoidable in our complex, even though I think where we live in Hawaii is pretty nice. Thanks for your advice!

It wasn't so much that dishes couldn't be washed but that everything was dirty, disgusting and there was no room to do anything. Otherwise, I regularly would wash daily dishes. Re: why I couldn't wash all the dishes, between my own work, and the fact that I spent all most all of my time breastfeeding, I couldn't seem to find enough time to make any progress. Also, we always set down together as a family and while I'm not always cooking I do prepare meals quite often (just things like wraps, burritos, salads that don't need to be cooked). I appreciate your advice, and suppose I should have been more clear in these things. I definitely worry that I'll be teaching bad things to my toddler. I'm a bit of a health nut, so I've always emphasized healthy eating choices. I meant to mention that we always keep TONS of fresh produce on hand (not just salad ingredients). I think that I may need to rebuild the kitchen, yes. I just don't think that things are currently manageable that way...my husband's work situation might be changing in about three months, and then we would be moving. I think that would be a viable time to start over if I haven't already found a good way to do so. Thanks again for your advice!

My daughter is just 18 months now, but I always have known I would homeschool. My husband was to slow to agree, but once I explained what homeschooling is really like, he agrees it would be best. Of course, as I was never homeschooled, I don't know firsthand, but I'm always researching. Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for all the valuable advice!

Hi LDS.net members! I have kind of an odd question for you, but I am hoping for your advice to guide me as I venture forth...I'm an investigator, but I want to be baptized as soon as possible. I am trying to purge my life of ungodly things (already been deleting all of my erotica off my Kindle and removing immodest clothes from my wardrobe). Now, I am self-employed, and my husband works extremely difficult shifts leading to an odd schedule...add in that we have a toddler, and basically our house is an utter wreck (working so hard to get it clean before missionaries get here). Because our dishwasher broke in the middle of an intensive 7 day, 17 hour workweek for my husband, many dishes got disgustingly rotten, we threw them out, and we had little left. We got rid of those, too, and I did some creative budgeting and discovered we could eat healthier and spend about the same, maybe a little less or more, if we ate out and never cooked (we eat salads, wraps, burritos and used canned goods like tuna and beans). This eliminated a huge, burden of a chore in cleaning and a time-suck of cooking, enabling our family to spend more time together. I used to be a huge proponent of our food stockpile pantry. After no matter what I tried I couldn't afford the right things to keep rats and roaches out of our pantry, whatever we hadn't used was mostly ruined. So now, I'm wondering, do I need to reacquire dishes and go back to cooking? Am I required to have a food stockpile? Am I doing something wrong? Sorry if this sounds silly! Thanks for reading my rambling post! Please offer me some advice on this, I'm so confused...I don't want to be doing something wrong according to how God wants us to live.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this! Every one of these scripture marking threads has shown me something valuable, but I've had the hardest time finding out something I could use that I could buy without shopping online. I'll be purchasing some Crayola Twisty Pencils soon :-) While I won't really know until I get going, I think I won't be color-coding so much as organizing specific topics, and doing general highlights of things that call to me. I intend to graduate to new scriptures whenever I feel is right, and archive all of my notes and highlights in my master digital scriptures. But, again, as I haven't marked any scriptures yet (I have someone else's Book of Mormon and no Bible), I can't be sure yet... Thanks again everyone for sharing :-)

Really helpful suggestions in this thread. As an investigator itching to be ready for baptism, I have been devouring The Book of Mormon. I felt like I needed to read it all once over and then delve even further into it. Thus far, my greatest progress is made when I listen along with the mp3 available on lds.org.