Life Organization Series- Meal Planning

 For the month of January I will be running a life organization series that will give you simple ideas to keep your life running smoothly.  I know that even with a pandemic happening, life goes on and sometimes things can feel out of control or disorganized.  I am hoping that this series will help with that.  I want to share some of the things that work well for me to keep my household running smoothly.

The first thing I am going to talk about is meal planning.  Meal planning has been an extremely impactful part of my life.  In general, I don't feel particularly energetic at the end of my day.  During the week I don't have to spend time or energy choosing what we are going to eat for dinner.  I have already done that work and it really makes my evenings run smoothly.  Planning is easy and only takes me 15-20 minutes a week.

Step 1:

I take a look at what I have on hand.  It is important to me to use up anything that may be expiring soon or going off.  I like to reduce food waste.  At this point, however, I don't usually have much left in the fridge.  I have learned what we use and I pretty good at purchasing only what we need.  

Step 2:  

I make my grocery list.  I try to only purchase things when they are on sale, with the odd exception.  I look at the grocery flyer and find out what is on sale.  I write out my grocery list by category.  I used to write my list by aisle, but they have recently changed things up on me!

Step 3:

I decide on meals according to the ingredients that I will have on hand.  It can help if you have a master list of the meals that your family enjoys.  I do try new meals, but for the most part I pick from our family's master list.

Step 4:

Decide which days to put the meals on.  I always look at our calendar in case we have something going on that will make it difficult to do meal prep that is more involved.  For example, I host a Zoom book club on Monday evenings.  This means that I need to get my kids to be early.  On Mondays, I choose quick and easy meals so that I can serve dinner early.

Meal planning is so simple and it really takes the pressure off of me during the week.  It is a 15 minute investment of time that can really change how you feel about feeding yourself and your family.  There are a few simple things that you can do to help make this process even easier:

• Make a master meal list.  Write down meals that your family enjoys.  Ask your family what their favourite meals are.  Use the list to help you plan when you are feeling stuck.
• Plan a theme night.  On Fridays we always have chicken fingers and fries for supper.  It isn't a culinary masterpiece, but by Friday I am so sick of cooking.  It gives me a break and my kids love it.  Saturday mornings are for cereal which is something I don't serve during the week.
• Feel free to swap your meals around if you need to.  If you forgot to take out meat for supper, swap it with another meal on your list.  There are no hard and fast rules to meal planning.  It is simply framework for you to work with.

Happy meal planning, friends!

 

June Home Goals

It is a new month and we are nearly halfway through 2020.  It has been a challenging year with a lot of things going on globally.  I am trying to focus on a few goals this month that will make my home more organized. I have been struggling lately to feel motivated and I think that having some clear goals might encourage me to be more productive with my time.  My home goals this month are:

• organize the gardening shelves in the garage
• go through and organize the dog's items in the garage
• go through Miss. Em's clothes and remove items that aren't being used
• complete our 2017 family photo book

I plan to achieve my goals by using my 20 minute resolution.  Taking 20 minutes, 3 times a week will certainly help me find the time to work on these projects.

Happy Monday!

My New Housework Schedule

My housework schedule is ever-evolving and changing.  The new social distancing measures have changed things up once again.  I had basically been doing the bulk of my cleaning on one day every week.  I usually chose the day when my oldest was in school to do my cleaning.  I am now home with both kids all day, every day.  My routine has changed along with the rest of my life.  I have worked out a new routine that allows me to keep the house up, but also allows me to mostly focus on my kids.

EVERY DAY:

• Make beds
• Do dishes
• Run at least one load of laundry
• Tidy house

MONDAY:  Strip the beds and wash all bedding.

TUESDAY:  Clean the bathroom.

WEDNESDAY:  Dust house and water houseplants.

THURSDAY:  Vacuum house and wash floors.

FRIDAY:  Grocery shopping and meal planning.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY:  We work in the yard and prep for the coming week.

 

Home Reset 2020- The Deep Freezer

Our house came with a huge (and old) deep freezer.  It has been great for storing our extra food and we use it all the time.  I went through the freezer to take a bit of an inventory and to get rid of anything that was no longer good.

Before:

After:

I sorted the contents of our freezer by type of food.  Frozen meals are together, meat is all in one place and so is frozen fruits/veggies.  It makes it much easier when I am trying to find something. I try to keep it this way, but I do tend to just throw items in when I am in a hurry.  I try to reset the freezer every quarter to keep it from getting too bad.

Checklist:

• Take every item out.
• Check dates and get rid of anything that is out of date or badly frostbitten.
• Replace items and group like items together.  You can use cardboard boxes to help organize the bottom of the freezer.

Our New Routine With Social Distancing

Wow.  This week has been long.  I am sure everyone is now feeling the full effect of social distancing and the closure of schools/workplaces.  These times are certainly different.  As a health care worker, I fully support the push for social distancing, but that doesn't mean that it isn't challenging.  So first things first:  You are allowed to grieve.  You are allowed to grieve the loss of what you thought this month would look like.  You can feel sad, angry or stressed about this.  That is completely normal.  I have calmed down for the most part, but I am definitely still experiencing anxiety and stress because of the pandemic.

Since we are all stuck at home, I thought that I would share what we have been trying to do with our routine.  This new routine has been working well for us.  I don't have a rigid schedule, because I would find that extremely stressful.  I am attaching times to this routine to give you a rough idea of what we are up to. 

8:00 a.m.  This is the time that my kids naturally wake up.  I have not kept them to school day wake up times.  We could all use a little more sleep in our house so I am happy to start our day when they are ready.  We eat our breakfast immediately upon getting up.  My 2 year old always greets me with, "Hi Mommy!  I want yogurt."

8:30 a.m.  We brush teeth, do hair and get dressed.  Getting dressed in daytime clothes is something that works well for my kids.  They usually throw a princess dress on top of their outfit anyway.  We then make our beds.  Even the 2 year old tries to make her bed.

9:00 a.m.    We have been doing Cosmic Kids Yoga every morning and it has been wonderful.  They tell a story while moving through the poses.  My 2 year old only does part of it before she runs off to play something else, but my 5 year old loves it. 

9:30 a.m.  We try to do a craft or a learning activity during this time.  Today we drew pictures and yesterday we worked on my 5 year old's sight words.  This doesn't have to be hardcore.  It can just be dedicated time to creativity, counting or reading.  We plan to do play dough and bake muffins in the upcoming days.

10:30 a.m.  Snack time!  I have designated eating times so that we don't graze all day.  My kids eat better at meals when they haven't been snacking beforehand.

11:00 a.m.  After snack, my kids run off to do free play and I catch up on my housework, schoolwork or any other task that I need to focus on.

12:00 p.m.  Lunch time.  I make lunch while the kids play, we eat and then I do dishes.

1:00 p.m.  Quiet time.  This is for my own sanity.  My oldest NEVER naps and my youngest is hit and miss, at best.  During quiet time the kids look at books, work on a puzzle and sometimes watch the Cincinnati Zoo Home Safari.

2:00 p.m.  We try to tidy up, play a game, head outside or have a dance party.  Koo Koo Kangaroo has some great videos for kids to dance to if going outside isn't an option.

3:00 p.m.  We have another snack.

3:30 p.m.  If we haven't headed outside already, we go outside.  It is still winter weather where I am, but I try to get us out every single day.  It makes the kids wildly happy and it helps calm me down, too.

4:30 p.m.  We head inside and start making supper.  While supper cooks we play, practice our music

or read books.  We also clean up all the toys before supper is ready.

After supper we start our night time routine, which takes longer than I would like to admit.  After that the kids head to bed.

How are you dealing with the self-isolation day to day?  Any ideas you want to share with me?  I would love to hear what you are all up to!

Home Reset 2020- Cold Room

**** I just want to write a quick note before I hop into our latest post.  I know that everyone is going through a lot with this pandemic.  It is confusing, scary and downright disruptive.  Our family will be adhering to the guidelines set out by our Public Health system.  We will practice social distancing and good hand hygiene.  We will work hard to do our part in flattening the curve.  We will not panic.  This one is hard for me.  I have a child with 2 different health conditions that place her in the 'at risk' group.  I have had ongoing anxiety over her health ever since she was airlifted to the PICU 2 years ago. 

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the social measures that our government is asking us to take, please understand that it is for the protection of our most vulnerable.  Cancer patients, people with heart and lung diseases and seniors are at risk of fatality.  We need to do our part to keep them safe.

If you feel your anxiety is too much to handle, please reach out for help.  There are many options for mental health help that still follow the guidelines of social distancing.  A quick google search can show you what is available in your area. 

Reach out to friends and family with Skype, Facetime or even your phone (I still have a landline that I love to use!  Ha ha.)  Stay off social media if it is terrifying you.

We are in this together.  Take care out there.  And wash your hands!****

My cold room stores my greeting cards, gift bags, my holiday decor, lesser used kitchen items, luggage and our camping gear. 

Before:

After:

This room is so much more functional.  I basically just went through everything and most of it went back into the room.  I tried to arrange items in a way that made the most efficient use of our space.  I didn't go through our seasonal decor as it gets looked at yearly.  I use every holiday as an opportunity to evaluate what we have and what we want to get rid of.

Checklist:

• Take all of the items out
• Wipe shelves/vacuum floors
• Decide which items will get used and replace them in an orderly fashion.
• Donate items that are in good repair and trash anything that is broken/damaged.

Home Reset 2020- Downstairs Closet

Our downstairs closet holds our off season clothes and equipment, shoes/boots and my maternity clothes.  I wanted to store our baby clothes in this closet so I had to make room.  I transferred my off season clothes to the closet in my bedroom and went through all the items.  I got rid of anything that was stained, didn't fit or wasn't being used.

Before:

The closet extends past the doors.  I stacked boxes of baby clothes and my maternity clothes back there because I won't need easy access to it.  I had been keeping off season items in that white rolling drawer system, but I switched to labelled containers that my mother-in-law gave us at Christmas.  The rolling drawer system found a new home upstairs.  I put the girls' art supplies in there and it has really helped us keep things in order.

After:

This closet is so much easier to use now.  I can quickly access items for each family member and I don't have to dive to the back to locate something.

Happy cleaning, friends!

Home Reset 2020- Laundry Room

My laundry room is where all the odds and ends of my life end up.  The laundry room houses our donation boxes, clothes that our daughters have outgrown, our old baby equipment, tools, craft supplies, deep freezer, and extra bedding.  When I go through the house, the laundry room is the landing place for items that I need to deal with.   It can quickly become a disaster.

I was able to tackle my whole basement over the long weekend while my husband and children were sick.  We were confined at home and the kids were content to just hang out and play.  It was a lot of work but it only took a few hours to sort everything.

Before:

See?  I really meant that this room is my landing zone.  This room felt overwhelming, but it just took some dedicated time and it all came together rather quickly.  I think that this room could have been much less overwhelming if I had made an effort to donate as I went through rooms and if I sorted through the girls' clothes as they outgrew it.  We don't have a donation center where I live, so I often just pile it up until we make a trip into the city.  Sorting through my children's clothes is often easier when I have had a bit of time and space to evaluate what I really want to keep.  This room has only looked this terrible for the 8 weeks it has taken me to go through my entire house.  I can live with that.

After:

Ahhhh.... It is so much better.  You can still see our donations piled in the right side of the photo.  Those have since been taken to the city.  We came up with 8 boxes for donation.  I also had a full bag of garbage come out of this room.  

I sorted through my kids' clothes.  I kept clothes for my youngest daughter, though I limited the number of items that I kept.  The items are sorted into diaper boxes according to size.  I know that there are 'prettier' ways of storing this, but I like to use items that I already own.  I labelled each box with the size and stashed them on the top shelf.  Items in poor repair were made into rags or thrown away.  I donated anything that I didn't think we would use.

I went through our craft supplies, games and puzzles.  I only kept what we use.  I did the same with the baby items and clothes, as we are open to having another child.  I tried to keep anything we might need for another baby.  We still had much more than we needed so I donated some of the items.  I went through our actual laundry supplies.  I recycled a few empty containers and organized what was left.

This room seems so open and functional now.  I am so happy that I was able to have the time to tackle this project.

Checklist:

• Go through items.  Get rid of anything that is broken or in disrepair.  Removed items that don't belong in the room.  
• Wipe shelves.
• Put items that belong back into place
• Vacuum floors.
• Clean appliances.

2020 Home Reset- Kid's Closets

I have two daughters and they each have a bedroom.  They are young (2 and 5) and I often find myself just shoving things back into their closets in the hustle of our daily lives.  I tackled their closets  during my home reset and it went a lot faster than I anticipated.

Miss. Em's Closet (2 year old)

Before:

I pulled everything out and removed anything we no longer use or that she has outgrown.  I wiped down shelves and replaced the items.

After:

Miss. E's closet (5 year old)

Before:

Miss. E's closet took a little longer, as she is old enough to help and provide opinions.  We took everything out.  We removed items that Miss. E has outgrown or won't wear.  We went through her jewelry box and she donated a few things that she doesn't use.  We went through her shoes and "small things jar" (where she keeps her trinkets).  She donated a few things and threw away a few things.

After:

Ahhhhh... So much better, right?

Checklist:

• Remove every single thing from the closet.
• Get rid of anything in poor repair, that does not fit, that doesn't get used.
• Wipe the shelves, vacuum the floor.
• Replace items neatly.

2020 Home Reset- Kitchen

The kitchen is the most used room in our home.  I generally have to 'reset' it several times a year.  I tackled my pantry, cupboards and fridge.  Everything is much more organized.

Before:

After:

Checklist:

• Remove all food from pantry.  Check dates and remove anything that has expired.  Wipe shelves and put food back in pantry.  Group like items together.
• Go through cupboards one by one.  Remove every item from the cupboard.  Wipe the shelves.  Only replace items that you actually use.  (I got rid of a small box of dishes!)  Try to place your most used items where they are easily accessed.  Clear away clutter and anything that doesn't belong.
• Remove all items from the fridge.  Wipe shelves, drawers and door.  Remove items that have expired and replace your items.
• Clean your oven.  I like to make a paste with dish soap, baking soda and a little vinegar.  It helps messes wipe clean and it doesn't have a terrible odour.

2020 Home Reset- Hallway Closet

Our hallway closet is quite small.  It stores towels, toilet paper, tissues, pharmacy items and extra soap/toiletries.  I went through it to make sure we only had what we needed/would use.  I pitched a few items that were out of date and gave away a few products that we don't use. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Check List:

• Take everything out of the closet
• Check the dates on everything, especially medications
• Throw away any outdated items
• Donate/give away anything that you will not use
• Wipe shelves
• Replace the items that you use or will use

2020 Home Reset- Bathroom

Our family of four shares a bathroom.  It gets out of hand now and then.  Between hair product, hair accessories and all of the other products in the cabinet, the bathroom was definitely in need of a reset.  This is what I did:

• emptied the drawers and cupboards
• vacuumed out the drawers and wiped shelves down
• pitched any products that were out of date
• removed any items not being used
• put everything back neatly
• wiped baseboards
• washed walls

Before:

After:

It felt so good to clean out the cupboards and drawers.  Everything is much easier to find now that we only have the items that we use in the bathroom.  

2020 Home Reset- Utility Closet

We live in a smaller home that does not have great storage.  This has definitely encouraged us to embrace minimalism as much as we can.  It also means that we have to be creative with the storage that we do have.  My kitchen cupboard space is cramped and poorly planned.  This means that our kitchen appliances (like my beloved Instant Pot) have to find homes elsewhere.  Enter the utility closet.  This closet is near our front door entrance (which is rarely used) and just off of the living room.  It stores cleaning supplies, cookbooks, craft supplies, and kitchen appliances.  We put a wire shelf in the closet and my handy husband built a wood shelf for the closet.  This helps us maximize the space that we can use.

This space has to be flexible because our family's needs change all the time.  The closet wasn't super crazy but it was not living up to its potential.  I made a few changes and cleaned it out to help us get the most use out of this closet.

Before:

After:

I moved the basket of extension cords (which are only used twice a year) to the top shelf, along with cleaning supplies and recipe books.  The newfound space on the second shelf allowed me to stash the girls' board games, activities, craft sets and instruments.  

The bottom shelves of the closet remained mostly the same.  I vacuumed the closet and wiped the shelves.

This closet is being utilized better now and I am so happy with how it turned out!