Day 23: Food Preservation

When I used to hear about people getting food vacuuming machines, I always thought that was something I would never do. Something about it seemed kinda "granola" or something. But when my father-in-law brought about 20 huge steaks for my hubby's birthday, Zac decided that we should get a food saver so we could save the steaks without freezer burn. Ever since, I've been hooked. I am using up so much more food and in turn it's saving us money!

Here's the kind we got. We got it at Sam's Club. I have used it for so many different foods, I've done cooked ground beef, grilled chicken, onions and bell peppers that I blanch beforehand (I've really loved doing the onion and bell pepper mixture because it makes mealtime prep so fast!), and other veggies. After watching Suburgatory the other night (does anyone else remember this part?), I suggested that I vacuum up the boys' blessing outfits so they will stay white for when they have boys, hubby thought I was borderline psycho for suggesting that. I still think it's a good idea, though!

Obviously, Food Saver has not paid me to endorse them, but I would totally recommend it to anyone!!

Day 22: Cleaning Supplies

I'm lucky in my house that we have tons of little closets and I have a cleaning supply closet which is nice for keeping the supplies out of kid's reach. Apparently I'm a cleaning supply hoarder. I love trying out new cleaning supplies, and I had lots of half-used bottles of concoctions promising that I'd never have to scrub again. Womp, womp. They were wrong. Cleaning out the cleaning supplies was awesome, and I no longer have to search around for the soft scrub.

source

I also got myself one of these caddies that is so handy for when I'm cleaning bathrooms. They seriously sell them everywhere. So, go on and clean out your cleaning supplies people. Oh, and I'm not one of those all-natural cleaning people, but I do have to share with you this idea I found on pinterest. For all of you with glass-top ranges, it's really annoying to clean all the time, so for a great time saver, go to this blog.

See you tomorrow. I'd better go figure out something else to organize! 31 days is a lot!

Day 21: Meal Planning

When I think of organization, I definitely think of meal planning since buying for, preparing, and eating meals is a big part of my life as SAHM. Lately the 3 year old has not been a big fan of grocery shopping. Any shopping. You should've seen the stares I was getting at Walmart yesterday with him screaming. So fun. So I try to avoid grocery shopping as much as possible.

Here's how I do it: meal planning. I try to do an entire month's worth of meals because I really don't want to go to the store. We also get bountiful baskets every week, so that takes care of a lot of the produce we need. Obviously we do have to go to the store a little bit for milk, bread, and chocolate so I have patience to handle said 3 year old. So, I just draw up a little grid of my basic plan. Sometimes I change up what we're having when, but it's mostly just a list to help me see what food I have to make what meal. I just cross each item off as I go.

After I make my grid of meals, I just write out my grocery list based on what ingredients I already have at home. And that's it! Shopping for a month at a time has simplified my life a ton and I don't usually have to run to the store at 5 o'clock because I'm out of ingredients:) Tomorrow I'll show you what has "saved" me so much time and money in my freezer!

Day 20- Guest room

My guest room is being used tonight! Our guest room is conveniently the room that we shove things into when we hear the doorbell ring. It's also most often used when we have 10 min before company's arriving and we don't quite know what to do with random toys & mail. I'm furiously trying to tackle the clutter as I prepare for my parents to come. While grocery shopping today, I realized that the only thing a guest really cares about is clean sheets & a clean bathroom. The room isn't the prettiest. The bed is nice, the comforter is cute but the night stands are plastic bins. Hmmm, not much to see there. So since I couldn't give the room a makeover in 2 hours and buy new nightstands, a dresser and some drapes, I went for the next best thing........... Chocolate and flowers.

image found here

image found here

So go grab some fresh flowers, put them in a vase, fluff those pillows and make your guests feel welcome. They may even overlook the plastic bins as nightstands and the massive food storage buckets in the closet!

Mandy is taking over for the next week as I vacation in California with my hubby and no children! Can you tell I'm extactic?!!!!! So don't stop organizing while I'm gone or if you're already done, because you're an insane over achiever, then go buy some chocolate and flowers for yourself. You deserve it!

Day 19: Storage Bench

Through all this organizational bliss we've been going through, I've really been throwing out tons of stuff and realizing the best locations for things. Why have I been keeping hats and gloves in the upstairs coat closet when we need those things downstairs? So, I'm working on a little revamping of my storage bench and opened it up to find this:

No words people. Maybe hubby has a valid point when he can never find things:) So, I took everything out and in the process moved my hats and mittens down here. The entire process took just a few minutes.
I think it was a brilliant idea on my part (love to give myself credit!) to put the basket inside the bench, this way I can always know to keep the gloves in this area. Hopefully when we're looking for our cold weather gear this year, we'll actually be able to find it all in one spot!

Day 18- Attacking the Car

If any of my friends were to look in my car at any given time, I would assure them that my car had been hijacked and this crazy mess of fast food wrappers, socks, misc shoes, water bottles, missing homework, lost library books, 11 matchbox cars and 7 missig hair bows, is a new version of carjackers gone wild. Because my 3 adorable munchkins couldn't possibly do this much damage in 5 days! And yes, it's only been 5 days since the last time I vacuumed and washed the car. Could you imagine how bad it would be had I gone a week? Oh! The horror! And because I don't want you to have nightmares tonight of critters nibbling at your feet while you're driving, I'm nixing a photo of my car/garbage truck. With all the goldfish, raisins (man I hope they're raisins!) and half full water bottles, I could quite possibly survive 11 days of being stranded in a ditch. At this point being stranded, without children, seems like it would be more of a vacation than a 6pm news story. :)

So today I attack the car mess and find solutions to my messy children that don't include leaving the children on the side of the road and making them walk for the next 7 years. It's quite tempting though......




This is a much cuter version of my grocery bag (found here) that I hang on the passenger armrest. It's just an inexpesive purse! A garbage bag in the car at all times is KEY to avoiding a nest of mice from making your car their home. It's quite scary how many times I've heard of mice doing this in people's cars...... ewww



This is a clever solution to just shoving everything in the big pocket of the chair, never to be seen again. It would be prettier in a canvas shoe organizer but the clear one makes it convenient to locate items. Source found here


Now if in case of an emergency stranding here are some good solutions.
Because every good car emergency kit should have UNO cards, peanut butter and clorox wipes! Source found here:

And this is a great solution to holding your emergency kit or groceries so they don't roll all over the place! Source found here. So I'm off to clean out my car, since half my waking time is spent in it! And I'm one day closer to this folks......

Day 17- Cleaning Lists

So by now your house is looking pretty nice eh? The hard part is keeping it organized. I tried to convince my children that they wanted to live in the backyard but they didn't think the water hose sounded like a fun way to shower & I was worried the neighbor's would call CPS. So then I tried to convince them to donate ALL of their possessions but they weren't keen on that idea either. Darn! So now I'm on to plan B. Enlisting them to help! I got some great ideas this summer when I took some parenting/ organizing classes, you can find my cliff notes here. Then I found these great printable checklists on these sites:

This laminated room by room checklist is perfect for children (and maybe husbands) you can find it here at http://www.organicfamilies.blogspot.com/ She has the kids use dry erase markers to check items off as they go. My girls love checklists so maybe they would actually clean if they had one. One can dream, right? This is a simple daily plan but it's so pretty to look at and has a great color scheme. Maybe if I had a pretty list to go by everyday I'd clean too! You can print this out from this site found here at http://www.bloominghomestead.blogspot.com/

Here's another daily cleaning schedule but she takes both Saturday and Sunday off. I'm all for that! You can print your own schedule here at http://www.amygregson.blogspot.com/

So no more excuses for me- I should be an organized junkie from here on out! Tomorrow I'm tackling my second home. No it's not a beach house or a vacation home. It's a minivan......