It's hard when you have a young children at home and a full time job. The crock pot was worth gold to me when I was working full time. There are so many recipes online for crockpot dinners it should be no problem to find many your family will like. You need more then one crockpot. One for main course, one for vegetables. I can bake a pie in a crock pot, it's just like an oven. Now the crock pot liners make it NO clean up at all. Use paper plates, cups and plastic utensils. No kitchen clean up. I detest the clean up after a meal and found ways to not have it. That is a big time save during the week.