Wendy's two cookbooks, Love in the House Vol. 1 and 2, are available in our bookstore.

I (Wendy) wish we had industrial size everything, but we don’t. We have a standard stove and a modest sized kitchen. We do have extra large novelty items like a 20-qt. soup kettle, an electric roaster that can easily fit a 20-lb turkey, a Kitchen Aid, two refrigerators and a 15-cubic foot chest freezer.

Chris and I used to do Once a Month Cooking. We did it for 7 years straight, but lost interest when we moved to Colorado (no particular reason why; we still highly recommend it). Even so, we frequently cook several servings at once and freeze the extra. This cuts down on the need to cook afresh everyday. It also disciplines me and helps keep my shopping costs down.

I have three meals that I almost always cook during the week: tacos, soup and sandwiches. This knocks out nearly half the week, they are inexpensive meals, and I can always count on them. The other four days I (or more often my oldest daughter at home, Cynthia) can be a little more creative. Nevertheless, whatever we eat, cost efficiency is always our top goal.

My first cookbook goes into detail on money-saving tips for any family, no matter how large or small. People think families like mine eat beans and rice only, but we eat like kings. Really, there is nothing that should get in the way of providing for your family.

We keep all the toys in large bins. We don’t have shelves or a play room. When the kids get too many toys to manage, we start throwing the broken ones out or consider getting rid of the old, less interesting toys altogether. We go through toys fast; our kids wear them out.

Truth be known, we don’t have as many toys as people think we do. We gear our lives to group games and toys that can be shared. The kids don’t have many toys that are only theirs.

Clean house? To be honest, having a dozen or so kids in the house makes messes very quick. However, we believe that a dozen kids can clean the house just as fast. Here’s what we do to utilize the man power at the Jeub home.

“Two-minute clean ups” are quite popular around here. The parent will set the timer for two minutes and start it with a “go!” Kids will run everywhere trying to find things to put away. The parent simply monitors how fast and efficient everyone is. When the two minutes are up, the kids line up and wait for the parent to call off who the “fastest” kid was. They get to sit out for the next two minutes. This naturally motivates everyone to move fast, and cleaning a disaster of a house can take less than 10 minutes sometimes.

Our chore system changes often, but there is always a consistent, daily expectation for what chores need to get done. Typically after every meal, we break for chores. We don’t pay our children for chores, as many families do, because we believe these are necessary things that they should be expected to do throughout life. Our children make money for their contributions to the family businesses, contributions that typically bring financial reward that should be compensated.

We have graduated to larger and larger vehicles over the years. Our family is so big, even a 15-passenger van seems crowded. This is what we drive: a 15-passenger van. (Chris has a smaller Ford Explorer for work.) We like to have the back seat out for storage, allowing us the ability to haul all of us around. We place the farthest seat in the back, sacrificing the storage, to get us all in the van. With 13 children at home, we fill up the entire 15-pass van.

This makes a bus most comfortable. In 2009, we retired our favorite travel vehicle, our 1984 GMC 65-passenger school bus. We converted it in 2004 into a registered and totally legit RV. Traveling around in this beast has been a lot of fun, but the bus does get only 5 or 6 miles to the gallon. We sold it to a family from Alabama, but we still keep the webpages up for “schoolie” enthusiasts.

You can buy one of each of these books at a significant discount in our bookstore.

I (Wendy) have gathered perhaps a couple hundred frugal tips over the years. I cover a lot of these in several of our books. Love in the House has an entire chapter on living frugally, and Love in the Kitchen Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, my cookbooks, have opening chapters on how to save hundreds of dollars every month on your grocery bill. Chris and I also have a CD presentation called Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen that really digs in deep into the ideas behind frugal living. We like to call our financial live “frugal and fruitful.”

This is one of the most common questions we get. Parents wrestle with finances when they bring children into the home. We, however, push back on the idea that finances are a barrier to having and loving children. Anything is possible with the love of God, and raising a family on a budget is hardly persecution. You can do it!

Here are some ideas that you could apply immediately to keep your budget down:

• Bring a calculator when you shop to pound out weight/cost conversions.
• If there is a generic substitute, get it. We rarely buy brand names.
• Buying bulk usually brings the price down, but do the math to make sure.
• Shop according to price per weight, not lowest overall price.
• Before buying a prepared meal ask, “Could this be cheaper if I make it myself?”
• Buy concentrated soaps and cleaning supplies, and make them stretch.
• Pour a couple more cups of water into your concentrated juice.
• Give up your organic diet. (Oh boy I’ll get some emails on that, I suppose. Sorry, but organic foods are extremely expensive.)
• Search out the day-old food. Produce and bakery are typically marked down considerably when there is excess.
• Search out sales on meat. Buy large quantities and freeze for future use.
• When you shop, prepare a shopping list ahead of time — then stick to it.
• Don’t go shopping hungry.
• Marry a guy who hunts.

Take a moment to imagine what a mother of 11 births looks like. Imagine this mother’s sanity, her weight, and her looks. If you are truthful, you will likely have a picture of someone like the title of this web log suggests: barefoot, fat and ugly.

This is a perspective most people have of mothers of large families. Now, I know many large families (we hang out with each other). I can think of a mother of 16, 12 and 9 right off the top of my head. Each of these women are beautiful women. In fact, I cannot think of one mother of more than, say, 6 kids who actually fit the stereotypical obese image that most people have of mothers of large families.

In fact, here’s a photo that’ll knock you over:

This is my wife, Wendy, a mother of 13 children. This was taken right before she got pregnant with the twins. So much for barefoot, fat and ugly, eh?

The lesson here is simple and so incredibly true: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2a). The world has an negative view of what becomes a woman when she is blessed with children. The exact opposite is true, and I have seen this manifest in many families. This is the renewed vision for mothers of many children: they are beautiful, confident, and fulfilled when they allow God to bless them with the wonderful gift of children. Overcoming the negative stereotype of motherhood is a healthy step to understanding the choice of large families.

Here’s a news item for you:

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1975 about one in eleven women was childless by the age of 44. By 1993, that number had risen to approximately one in six. 34.9 million American families were childless and only 33.3 million families had a child under the age of 18.

Before you assume I got this from some pro-lotsa-kids website, think again. This bit of information was broadcast proudly as evidence of a trend we should embrace. This came from ChildfreeByChoice.com, a website devoted to those interested in the childfree lifestyle. Their website has things you would find on websites promoting any lifestyle…

• Weblog of young couples complaining about families in restaurants
• List of films that have no children in them
• List of famous people who had no children
• Humorous quotation poking fun at rednecks, large families and kids in general

I admit, I enjoyed paging through this site. The Childfree by Choice (often referred to as “Childless”) crowd is the exact opposite of the crowd we associate with. These people hold up many reasons for choosing no children: more time with their partner, practice simplicity, busy lifestyles, and environmental reasons.

Are these people for real? I think to myself. Is life all about spending time with your partner (the site is quick to point out that this includes straight, bisexual and gay partners)? Is simple living disrupted by children? Is busyness a virtue to be sought after? Environmental reasons must include “overpopulation,” a modern perception that is incredibly false. There are few choices more permanent than “choosing” to live life without a heritage, and my heart goes out to these people who think they’re onto something here.

So many truths of life come out when you have children. You discover that life with your spouse is strengthened, that the fruitful things in life are the simple ones, and that life spent on trivial pursuits are just that: trivial. I can’t think of the Childless by Choice crowd as anything other than knotted up, angry, shallow, self-centered people whose choices have centered on the only thing in life they understand—themselves.

“Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.” (God to Noah, Genesis 8:15-17)

Best known as the lead rapper in the successful multi-platinum group DC Talk, Toby McKeehan, nicknamed “tobyMac,” is also a songwriter, producer and businessman. On stage or behind the scenes he’s president of Gotee records, too—it seems everything tobyMac touches turns to gold. Commercial success aside, 37-year-old McKeehan shines brightest when he talks about his 3-and-a-half-year-old son, Truett. In fact, his first and only solo album, Momentum, features a number of snippets of his son. McKeehan spoke with Family.org about the joy his “True Blue” has brought to his life. Read the rest of this entry »