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My home on some not-so-good days-life happens doesn’t it ladies?
Not disorganized, just busy-messy!!
Tags: April Fool's Day, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing
Usually kid’s clothes hold up longer than our kids actually fit into them. Wouldn’t it be nice to get some money back from those clothes as easy as 1-2-3? How does this sound: Order a bag, stuff it full of kid’s clothes, mail it for free, make money! Yippeee! OK, that was actually as easy as 1-2-3-4.
Thanks to an awesome site called DIGITWIRL, I recently learned about another great site called: thredup which allows you to do just this, stuff a bag and get money for kid’s clothes! Here’s what the site says:
When your child has a growth spurt, we can help turn your pile of outgrown clutter into cash! We send you the bag, you fill it up and send it back.
“Turn clutter into cash,” I love it! Be sure to check out the site when you are ready to let outgrown children’s clothes go. And if you are in the middle of purging and clearing, here as some tips to help you organize kids’ rooms!
Tags: digitwirl, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kid's clothing, Make Money on Kid's Old Clothes!, threadup, tips to help you organize kids' rooms
Thank you, thank you to InGoodMeasure.net for the mention today as on of their 7 recommended organizing blogs!
Tags: DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, InGoodMeasure.net
By now, you probably know that making meals is not a task that I really enjoy, nope, not so much. The way I look at it, at least when you dust you don’t have to dust again for a while. But when it comes to cooking, the task keeps coming back all day just like an episode of “Groundhog Day.” But cook we must!
You can mix a little bit of planning with a dash of effort and you should be able to plan meals quickly! Here are 8 meal planning tips to help you lay the groundwork so you can get dinner on the table quickly!
Meal Planning Tip #1: Make a “Master Favorites List.” No, not your hubby’s favorites (ha ha), a master list of tried & true recipes that you know your family loves. Don’t reinvent the wheel every week, brainstorm your list and work off of that in the future. This may mean a serious sit down session with your cookbooks & magazines.
Meal Planning Tip #2: Make a meal plan. Decide how far out you want to make your plans for which meals you will be making. Some people want to plan for the whole month, while some moms want to go a week at a time. It’s all good! This is where you will pull from your master list and decide what you will be cooking.
***Mega Tip: Save these lists and re-use them to save even more time!
Meal Planning Tip #3: Peek at your calendar. When you make your meal plan, look ahead to activities such as dinner out on the town when you won’t have to cook. This means one less meal to plan and buy for-yeah!
Meal Planning Tip #4: Take stock. Look at your list for the week or month and then search the pantry, fridge and freezer to see what ingredients you have and what ingredients you need to purchase. This is where you create your grocery list.
Meal Planning Tip #5: Clip your coupons. Once you have your list, be sure to clip your coupons or scan the store ads to find the best deals. We have 3 major grocery stores within a couple of minutes of each other so sometimes I hit all 3 to help my budget.
Meal Planning Tip #5: Shop ’til you drop. Head out to the store and stock up on spices and non-perishable items as well as perishable items that you will be using up soon. If you plan meals a month out, chances are good you will have a “round two” to shop for more perishable items.
***Mega Tip: Keep your grocery list that goes with your meal plan for future shopping.
Meal Planning Tip #6: Put on your prep chef hat. Make a day out of cutting, chopping and slicing prior to making your meals. This can be one of the longest parts of the cooking process. Just think of how easy it looks on TV when all they do is toss in the ingredients that are already prepared.
***Mega Tip: Get your family in on the chopping action.
Meal Planning Tip #7: Double your pleasure. If you’re already cooking it, then double it and freeze half. It really doesn’t take that much longer to make 2 instead of one and you will have a home cooked meal waiting in the freezer for a crazy, busy day!
Meal Planning Tip #8: Keep a running list of ingredients you are low on for a future shopping trip. This make it that much easier when planning your next trip to the grocery store.
Allrecipes.com is a great website to help when you’re in a bind. The other day, I typed in chicken breasts and cream of chicken soup and got a tasty recipe in return. To help you prepare meals even faster, please read about my kitchen organizing tips too!
Tags: Attention Moms Who Want 8 Tips to Plan Meals Quickly!, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, Kitchen Organizing, kitchen organizing tips, plan meals quickly
Monday Mantra for Women: “I will make this an awesome week, stay positive, help someone else with a random act of kindness and give myself a treat at the end of the week.”
Tags: balance, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, Monday Mantra for Women
“Getting our houses in order and endowing our children (and ourselves) with a respect for and an appreciation of order is one of the most precious gifts we can give them and ourselves.” by Sarah Ban Breathnach
Love that quote, it’s so true! I like to think that teaching our children about organization is just as important as teaching them how to handle a budget and how to eat healthy. We sow the seeds and then our kids can take it to whatever level they are comfortable with as adults. Not everyone likes every surface “just so” and that’s OK. But hopefully our kids will learn how to have structure and how to avoid things getting out of control in their own homes.
Here are 10 tips to teach your kids how to be organized so you can give them building blocks for their future.
- Make sure kids understand where things go. Even toddlers can start to learn how to put things back with the help of parents.
- Help kids put everything away at the end of the day. Kids need help into elementary school. It’s not always fun for kids and they often like company while they work. Try 5-10 minutes of family clean-up each day.
- Kids may enjoy listening to music or listening to you read to them while they clean up.
- If you have toys that you want to keep but don’t have room for, box them up and rotate toys periodically so they seen new again to your kids.
- Toys can easily take over; you need to go through toys/belongings regularly with your kids to see what your family is ready to donate, sell or pass on.
- Consider letting your child earn money by selling their items in a garage sale or at a local consignment shop.
- Before your child’s birthday and before holidays is a great time to purge and make room for new items. Children may be more willing to part with things knowing they will be making room for something new!
- When you want to do a thorough cleaning with your child, it may help to take the room a section at a time and possibly spread the task over a few days so no one is overwhelmed.
- Be a good example for your child by being organized in your own home.
- Give kids lots of shelves, hooks and labeled bins so they can succeed by knowing where to put their things away.
If you are working on getting a handle on too many toys in your home, here are some great ideas for clutter-free gifts for kids! Your friends will appreciate clutter-free gifts for their kids too!
Tags: Attention Moms! 10 Tips to Teach Your Kids How to be Organized, clutter free gifts for kids, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kids organization, organization, organized, Sarah Ban Breathnach
How many different kinds of light bulbs do you have throughout your home? I can bet that you have a whole bunch because I know I do in my house. One type of bulb for the ceiling lights, one type for the bathroom lights, one type for the chandelier in the entry, one type for my office light, one type for each child’s bedside light, then there’s the living room table lamps, and on and on and on she goes. Fortunately, keeping them all straight and keeping then organized is as easy as 1, 2, 3!
#1: Gather all your light bulbs in one place and store them together in a basket, bin or shoebox. Whenever you need a bulb, you will know right where to go!
#2: Label your bin so everyone in your home knows it’s a “light bulb-only zone,” nothing else goes there.
#3: Here’s where my organizing secret comes in! Ready?? Label the outside of bulb packages (even if they are empty) with where the bulb goes. This makes it super, duper easy to replace a specialty bulb because you will have the package and know what bulb you need to purchase. Just take the package with you to the store and you won’t have to stand there in the bulb aisle staring for ages trying to match the old bulb to the new! Because you are super, duper organized!
For some reason, I kind of lump batteries and light bulbs together. So, if you’d like to read about my battery blunder, you can keep reading right here!
Tags: DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, My Light Bulb Organizing Secret, organizing
Spring, spring, spring is here, my FAVORITE time of year! After many dark, gray months in the Great Northwest, I welcome the cherry blossoms, the daffodils and the tulips-yipppppeeee! My daughter and I planted over 100 tulips and this will be the 2nd spring to reap the rewards of color and beauty in our front yard every time we come home.
Spring is a time for renewal and new growth and spring cleaning and organizing too!
As the sun start shining and casting a spotlight on dirty windows and dusty blinds, this is a good time to create a list of tasks that goes above and beyond the daily dishes and piles of laundry. Don’t miss these tasks this year, even if you just do one task per weekend:
- Dust (or scrub) the blinds
- Wash the curtains-oh my goodness, I had curtains that hadn’t been washed since they were hung up about 9 years ago. Yuck huh? They’re washed now-phew.
- Dust window sills & door frames
- Dust the tops of pictures
- Pull out appliances and clean behind them-fridge, oven, washer & dryer-it gets nasty back there
- Clean light fixtures and replace any burned out bulbs, there are bugs in there!
- Repaint nicks and scratches on walls & trim
- Wash windows (or hire someone, even better!)
- Declutter and make room for new items in your home (this may be a bigger project that can be broken down into smaller ones)
- Let go of excess paper in the form of: old newspapers, magazines (are you really going to read them?) and flyers that are plastered on the fridge
You probably have some of your own “to do’s” on your mind, so you can feel free to use as little or as much of my list as you please! For 20 easy things to toss for home organization right now, you can check out my other list! 
Tags: 20 easy things to toss for home organization, declutter, DIY organization, Happy Spring & A Little 10 Item "To Do" List!, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, spring cleaning
Paper can be a real party pooper! Paper comes into our homes non-stop and it’s main crime is being an overwhelming source for piles. If you’re already feeling the affects of suffering from paper pain, evaluate how bad it is with these 5 signs that your paper is out of control:
Sign #1: You have to dig through piles to find what you need. Now if you are one of those rare people who know right where it is in the pile, than maybe you’re doing OK. But if it’s causing stress, it’s time to fix it.
Sign #2: You can’t find what you need quickly. Time is money and time is valuable. If you’re wasting time looking for papers you need, then you are taking time away from another activity, whether it be work-related or time for relaxation.
Sign #3: Your paper is causing stress. When you can’t find papers that you need right away, it can sure bring on a big dose of stress. Especially if that paper is associated with a deadline, a due date, taxes or has monetary stakes.
Sign #4: You aren’t paying your bills on time. If you can’t find your bills to pay them on time, the bummer is, this is gonna cost you in late fees and could affect your credit as well. Might as well throw on a dose of stress too thinking about bill collectors calling.
Sign #5: You clear your flat surfaces of paper by dumping them into a box or bag. The table or counter is covered with paper, company is on the way over, so you sweep all your paper into a box or bag to “deal with later.” Only, the papers sit there untouched, causing stress because you know you should be going through the boxes, but now you’re just trying to deal tread water with the new paper that’s coming in.
If you see yourself in any, or all, of these warning signs, then I encourage you to read my previous post on 5 smart ways to organize paper piles.
Tags: 5 smart ways to organize paper piles, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, paper organizing, paper piles, Warning: 5 Signs that Your Paper is Out of Control
“Organization is a process, not an event.” If you know a professional organizer then, chances are, you’ve heard some version of this saying. And that’s because it’s true! If I were working with you in your home for 2-3 hours on an organizing project, we would go through a process. And, after I left, I would hope that you would continue with the process by implementing maintenance techniques.
- First, we would decide where to start on your project.
- Next, we would take things off of shelves or out of boxes or off of cluttered counter tops. This is where you make decisions on what to keep and what to let go.
- Finally, we would place items that you are keeping in logical places, in organizing bins or files if called for and we would use labeling wherever we could.
It looks awesome, it looks amazing, we are jumping up and down, fist pump! Now we’re done right? Not so fast! We’re not done because this is a process. First you make decisions, you establish homes and order and then you have to maintain it. Just like weight comes back if you stop eating healthy and exercising, so does clutter.
The good news is, once you have systems in place, it’s much easier to restore order because you know where things go which is 90% of the battle! When you don’t know where anything goes and you have too much, then the piles just continue to grow.
The other good news is, restoring order shouldn’t take you long! Just make sure you take a few minutes to put things away where they belong and continue to get rid of things that you don’t need on a regular basis to avoid having to do a major overhaul again!
And here are 20 easy things to toss to get you started with the decluttering process!
Tags: decluttering process, DIY organization, home, Home Organization Blog, home organization is a process not an event, organizing project
