As Tia mentioned yesterday, our theme on the Front Porch this week is Saving Time. (Inspired by daylight saving time!) I trust your clocks are all changed, and your beginning to acclimate! I’ll give a few of my favorite time saving tips at the end of this post, but first, I’d like to evaluate why we save time.

Today’s culture is rushed and hurried, and sometimes we just assume we must save time, but we don’t stop to define what we are saving it toward. Just as with saving money, working toward a concrete goal increases our motivation to save! Perhaps financially you are saving for a new curriculum, freedom from debt, or for a family vacation. Knowing that financial goal helps keep you on target! Time, likewise can be budgeted to invest in your dreams.

What will you do with the time that you save? Ponder it through the day to come up with some solid answers, then strive to keep those goals at the forefront of your mind as you seek to streamline your work. Efficiency is excellent, but it shouldn’t be an end unto itself.

Time and money are tools and gifts. If my husband is given a power saw, he wouldn’t put it in a glass display case, only getting it out to oil the parts on occasion. No, he would put it to use! It won’t stay as nice and shiny on his cluttered, greasy workbench as if he "saved" it away, but a tool is made to be used.

I’m reminded of the biblical parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-28). The lazy servant who simply buried the talent entrusted to him was chastised, while the two who invested and earned interest were rewarded. Saving time without investing that "savings" is like burying it in the ground.

When time is saved without a purposeful plan for investing those savings, it can lead to both sloth and detachment. There is something rich and fulfilling about doing things in a way that is thorough. When we take short cuts, we can miss out on a depth of experience–often the trade-off is worthwhile, but we should take time to consider the cost. Saving time without a worthy goal can rob us of riches instead of increasing our wealth.

I’m not discouraging time-saving; quite the contrary! The key is living intentionally: Knowing our priorities and investing time accordingly–saving time in certain areas to afford more in those of greater importance, and ensuring that the time saved is invested in something of greater worth than the activity from which we cut "expenses".

Necessity is, they say, the mother of invention. By defining a goal, you are creating a "necessity", and if it is an important enough goal, you’ll find ways to fulfill it. A nebulous desire to simply "save time" won’t really inspire you to come up with creative solutions. If, however, you typically spend a full Friday cleaning, but would like to make Friday afternoon be "park day", you’ll have concrete motivation to find ways to speed up your cleaning routines.

Perhaps you’d like time to read aloud to the children, but dinner preparation takes too long in the late afternoon and early evenings. The desire to spend time snuggling on the couch together with a book can help motivate you as you find ways to cook ahead, prepare crock pots in the morning, or freezer meals in larger batches.

Speaking of making things in larger batches brings me to a few of my own favorite time saving tips (I’ll use meal preparation ideas in the examples, but the principles can be applied to a variety of tasks):

• Do things assembly line style: Instead of browning 1 pound of ground beef, brown 5 or 10 at once. You’ll save time by only cleaning the grease off the stove-top once.  Freeze the extra in meal size bags in the freezer to use out as needed.
• Invest time when you have it: Just as we experience economic changes, our time "budget" can fluctuate. My health is unpredictable, so I’ve learned to cook ahead, shop ahead and plan ahead in the times of plenty to help out in the times when time (or energy) are lean.
• Evaluate your routines. Often we do extra steps simply because we were taught "that’s how it is done." Do you need to brown the roast before cooking? I do think it gives a richer flavor, but it isn’t essential. This is an example of weighing priorities. Sometimes quality trumps efficiency, but sometimes we just need to get food into hungry mouths amid a busy day. Try skipping the browning step and see if you find the extra time worthwhile. Be bold and try skipping the optional. You might like it better with the skipped steps. (My family prefers their mashed potatoes with the skins mashed in right along with the potato! It saves me peeling time, and is more nutritious as well.)

Since I brought up the subject of time-saving and potatoes, here’s a you-tube video that gives another way to save time when peeling those ‘taters! (If you bother to peel them at all.) 

Domestic Chaos Tamer and Homeschool Mom of Five, Dell writes about home, heart and hearth.

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