The first rule of Freecycle is never talk about Freecycle.

If you're a parent, you have too much stuff. It just goes with the territory. Toy passions come and go, but your apartment stays the same size. Time to purge. Face it, you're never going to make bread in that breadmaker; Tamagachis are so last year; and those horrible tapered jeans from the 80s--oh no, wait, those are back in.

Cultcha:Opera for Kids

The way I see, it there's basically two types of people: people who like opera and people who don't. One of those groups happens to be much, much, much, much, much larger than the other, but that's still how I like to break it down.

 

It's Sunday night: do you know what's for dinner for the rest of your life?

I don't care how cool and urban and hip a parent you are, facing the plain reality that you need to put dinner on the table for your family, one way or another, every night of the week until your kids go off to college could turn anyone into a slack-jawed, casserole-loving, Prairie Home Companion-listening, ketchup on the broccoli-allowing, Rachel Ray wanna-bee.

It's the conversation we hear the most around the proverbial water cooler, in the literal school yard, and it comes up everyday on the other-worldly message boards. It's unavoidable, inescapable, it's the dark secret we all harbor as we're out with our Bugaboos and Jimmy Choos looking above-it-all...at some point we have to go home and feed our children.

Anybody can cook a meal and we've all succumbed to take-out occasionally, but, every night for the rest of our kids' childhoods is a lot of tacos! So what's the answer? Well, sometimes being really cool and above it all means you are able to do something dorky and take it in stride. That's where I think menu planners fall. Menu planners are website services which will email you a week's worth of meals with grocery lists so that you can spend less time fretting over decisions like mac and cheese or beef stroganoff and more time, well, doing something better than that.

About Mommy Poppins

MommyPoppins.com is the New York guide that treats living in NYC with kids as an incredible adventure; digging up all the incredible things NYC has to offer for babies, toddlers, children and families, uncovering activities, resources, services, schools, parks, places, and culture. Mommy Poppins covers everything parents need to know to get the most out of NYC with kids, with an emphasis on keeping it all affordable.

Welcome to Mommy Poppins

Living in New York is a great adventure. Living here with kids is like going to Great Adventure--it could be lots of fun or it could be endless hassles and getting puked on. We're going to be talking about the whole roller coaster of life in the city with kids. From the big questions like schools to the little questions like what to do this weekend. Think of Mommy Poppins as a spoonful of sugar to help the Paxil go down.

Pages