Hello again! Are you ready for Part II of our Let's Get Organized For October blog series? Let's go! So when talking about organization for your home, or at least my home, there always so many things that need to be organized, especially if you are not a planner or organized person by nature. The thought of trying to organize everything in every one of the rooms in your house can seem like a daunting task, sometimes unachievable!
I find it best to first have a check-in chat with yourself. Do I have too much stuff? Do I need to organize? Do I need to declutter? Does every item have a home? Do I need this? Which area of my home is the biggest struggle for me to keep organized?
For me personally, my kitchen was the area that was the most overwhelming to me. Don't get me wrong, my whole house needs/needed help, but I spend so much time in the kitchen as does the rest of my family that it seemed natural to start there. I started by making a weekly list of tasks I wanted to complete. It isn't realistic to organize my whole kitchen in one day so I broke up that goal into smaller, attainable goals. When you feel like you are accomplishing tasks you are more motivated to continue to be productive. First I started by investing in glass containers for all of my dried goods such as flour, rice, pancake mix, sugar, etc. The glass containers were essential to keep the food fresh and airtight and not have these mounds of partially opened packaging.
Once I got all of that organized I decided to go through all of my cupboards. I split up the cupboards that I needed to organize into groups and worked on a group an hour or so a day. If I hadn't used an item since we moved here I assessed if I really wanted to keep it.
Once that was all done I took a look around and decided where I still needed to improve. My cast iron pans kind of just sit around, I use them all the time, but they don't have a home. Also, my pot/pan lids always fall of out the cupboard when I get anything out of there. I decided to get a couple of bars to attach to the side of my cupboards to hold the lids and the cast irons. I also hated having my paper towels on the counter so we got a rod that attached to the bottom of the cupboards.
I also decided to go through my pantry and check for expired food. When I found expired food I set it aside and then my husband and I would look online for possible extended guidelines for expiration dates. If we thought they were still good then I put them in a bin in the pantry to prioritize using those items first. When I can't think of what to make for dinner then I go to that bin and see what I can pull together.
After all of this the last place to tackle was the fridge...there is a reason that I saved this for last. I conduct a basic clean out of my fridge on a weekly basis, however the freezer and the condiments are a different story. So I decided to hit the fridge with my best shot! I looked at every item and tried to organize. Having your fridge organized makes it so much easier to try to not waste any food. Once I was done I wrote down the items that were going to go bad soon so I could prioritize those as well. We also suffer from short-term meal memory loss. We have a hard time remembering which day we ate what. Even when I create a meal plan there sometimes are changes to the meal schedule. So I decided to use My Memories Suite to create a reusable calendar to help me keep track.
Similar to my daughter's checklist from last week, this calendar is laminated so that you can write on it with a dry-erase marker. I used collections from Aimee Harrison, Farmer's Market Mini and Farmer's Bounty, to create the calendar. The final product looked like this:
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