Get your kitchen organized so you can cook your Valentine a romantic dinner!

Ready to cook your Valentine a romantic dinner?

Here are 5 tips on how to make your kitchen more organized.

1. Adjust the height of upper kitchen cabinet shelves.  Store the least used items at the top (and by the way, isn't it time to get rid of that fondue pot that never gets used?). Clearing out unused and expired items allows for more room for storage. 
2. Alphabetize your spices.  I know, I know.  That sounds like way too much work, but if you do this, you will find it is much easier to find them when you need them.  Buy a spice rack, or spice shelf for either the drawer or cabinet. According to Still Tasty, whole spices will stay fresh for about 4 years, ground spices for about 2 to 3 years and dried herbs for 1 to 3 years, so toss old ones and treat your taste buds to a new jar.
3. Organize your fridge. Use a Lazy Susan to corral jars.  Use plastic baskets and bins from the dollar store to organize items. Lay plastic magazine file boxes sideways in the freezer to store bags of fruit and veggies. If you have sticky shelves, wipe them down and put Press 'N Seal wrap or plastic place mats down for easy cleanup.
4. In the pantry. Use 12-pack soft drink boxes to store cans of soup or veggies. Use clear plastic containers for pasta, flour, granola bars, cereal, and fruit chews. You can tack your sandwich bag right to the pantry if you don't tear the top flap all the way off. Because my pantry shelves go all the way to the ceiling (9 ft.) and I want to utilize all that space, I keep a small collapsible step stool, grabber tool and yard stick hung up inside.
5. Utensil and junk drawers.  Because how can you light romantic candles if you can't find your matches? Invest in plastic baskets, bins, and silverware trays from the dollar store to keep utensils neat.  Start saving your cardboard and plastic food containers (like cereal boxes, butter tubs, and pasta boxes).  Cut them to just below the height of your junk drawer and arrange them to fill the drawer. You can organize and store all your odds and ends in there and be able to see everything at a glance.  An old muffin tin also works well for small items.

Holiday stress? As Frozen's Elsa says, "Let it go!"

It is 2 days before Christmas!  Where did the time go?  Are you berating yourself because the Christmas letter didn't get written up?  The cards haven't been mailed yet?  You wanted to give homemade cookies to your kids' favorite teachers and awesome neighbors, but school is out for break, and you just didn't have time to get the cookies made?

Are you feeling frazzled, unorganized, and more like Scrooge than you ever have before?

Well, you know what?  It's okay to not be perfect, to not have everything you hoped to accomplish done.  It really is.

Does that surprise you coming from a Professional Organizer?  Well, it shouldn't.  Let me be the first to tell you we are not perfect, either.

Yes, we all have those ideal goals of what our Christmas "should" look like, but it is okay if we don't get everything done on our lists.  Give yourself, and your family, permission to not get everything done. You will feel a great weight lifted off your shoulders.

Christmas is a time of being joyful, thankful, and expressing our love and gratefulness to those we hold most dear.  So, it's okay to slow down, pick and choose what you can realistically do, and truly enjoy the season.

As for me?  My husband and I both come from very large families, spread all over the U.S.  Every year for the last 20 years we have created a Christmas letter that we send out the 2nd week of December (so if we have an incorrect address and a letter gets returned, we can send a new, updated one before Christmas).  It has just been an extra busy few months for us, sending over 100 letter is very expensive and time-consuming, and I just wasn't in the Christmas spirit, so I decided not to send a letter this year. Now, most years, we don't get cards back from everyone, so I felt even more justified.  And then a few cards arrived.  As I said, we don't receive as many as we send, but I still felt guilty.  So, one day I wrote a nice short letter, added a few pictures of my kids, and boom, it was done.  I had received 7 cards, so I printed out 7 letters on my home printer and mailed them out.  Yes, I kind of feel Scrooge-like doing it this way, and perhaps next year we will crank out our usual list, but this is what worked for me this year, and I am okay with that.  And those who took the time to write to us will get a reply.

And maybe the neighbors and teachers will get some baked-with-love New Year's cookies (since all of their Christmas cookies will be gone by then) or a heart-felt note of how much they mean to us written on my nice stationary I don't normally take the time to use.

So, I have given myself some slack this year.  Please, know it is okay for you to do the same.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Pam

Clean Out Your Fridge in 5 Steps! (November is Clean Out Your Fridge Month)

Does your fridge look like this? 

Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away and you'll soon be buying lots of supplies for your Thanksgiving feast.  Now is the time to get that fridge cleaned out & ready to hold more goodies! It really doesn't take long if you take it one step at a time.  Here's how:

STEP 1: Take everything out of your fridge.   Have a garbage can and container of Chlorox wipes handy. If the item is expired or spoiled, throw it away. Rinse out the leftovers containers and pop them into the dishwasher. Stack everything else on the counter. If the bottom or sides of the containers (like condiment bottles) are sticky, use a Chlorox wipe to remove any residue.

STEP 2: Take out all of the shelves and drawers and soak them in the sink full of hot soapy water. The hotter the water, the faster the gunk will melt off. 

STEP 3:  Wipe down the inside walls and bottom shelf of the fridge with Chlorox wipes.

STEP 4:  Wash, rinse, and dry the shelves and bins. Use a bit of paper towel wrapped around a table knife to clean the gunk out of the crevices of the shelves. If the bins still smell bad even after a thorough cleaning, you can put an open box of baking soda in the bin for a few days to absorb those lingering odors.

STEP 5:  Replace all of the remaining food.  Using a Lazy Susan (like this one from Amazon) on your top shelf will help corral those small bottles of olives and such, and small bins from the dollar store help keep packages of cheese, hot dogs, and other weirdly shaped items neatly contained. 

There you go! Your fridge is neat, clean, extra roomy and ready to hold all those extra Thanksgiving items, not to mention leftovers.  Please remember to thaw your turkey in the fridge in a container that has sides tall enough to catch any of its juices. You don't want all of that work to go to waste now, do you?

October 24th is Take Back Your Time Day! Here are 5 tips to do just that.

October 24th is Take Back Your Time Day, and this year it is on Saturday. Even better!  This day was created by a group of folks who believe we no longer value leisure time.  The mission statement on their website, www.takebackyourtime.org  explains it best:



Take Back Your Time seeks to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine in the United States and Canada that threatens our health, our relationships, our communities, and our environment. We seek a renewed understanding of the value of leisure time and the costs of time stress in our lives and workplaces.

How we use our time, and measure the quality of our lives, affects people across class, gender, race, and ideological lines. What brings our diverse group together is a belief that we can shape customs, values and policies in the workplace and in our family lives that improve our quality of life and influence better outcomes for all of us. Together we can explore ideas and create plans for action while inspiring others.

 It is so easy to use lack of time or "busyness" as an excuse to not accomplish all we need to do in a day. As a professional organizer, I teach people better time management skills to help them accomplish all of things they need to do each day.  It can be a challenge for us because we live in a society with so many distractions, but I would like to share 5 tips that will help you gain control over your day again.



1. Take a few moments at the end of the day to plan out the next day.  What do you HAVE to get done tomorrow?  Do you have late morning meeting, so you won't have time to go out for lunch and will have to bring a lunch from home? Does your child have a playdate or sports practice after dinner?  Is there a new episode of your favorite show on that you don't want to miss? Make sure those items are on your schedule and write them down. You will more apt to stick with it if you see it written down.

2. Many people feel guilty scheduling time for leisure activities, but we all need them to feel rested and rejuvenated. Schedule a half hour to read a chapter of your current book or new magazine issue. Knit a few more rows on that scarf you haven't touched in weeks. Schedule time for exercise - even if it is only a 15-minute walk around the block with Fido instead of a 45-minute spin class.

3. Plan for a social media break.  Yes, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest can suck hours out of your life, but instead of telling yourself you're not going to pick up your phone at all, allow yourself some time (30 minutes?  An hour?) to watch those adorable cat videos and catch up with friends. Stay connected, but give yourself a limit and stick with it, so you don't feel guilty about it. I have a friend who only logs in to Facebook when she is walking on her treadmill for 30 minutes - so she gets 2 things done at once!

4. Be with those you love. Look at your schedule. Is there any way that you can plan to sit down with your favorite people for dinner tomorrow?  Has it been a really long time since your whole family sat down to dinner together?  It really is beneficial to kids and parents alike. Plan it and then make sure everyone has a chance to talk about their day.  Turn off the TV, radio, and phones and really enjoy each other's company.

5. Do it again tomorrow! Make scheduling your days a habit.  It really does help you mentally, physically, and emotionally to have down time each day, so make it a priority to schedule some in each day.  It will make doing all those things you have to do seem easier.



So remember, you can control what you do with your time.  Sometimes it just needs some planning!



Let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from H. Jackson Brown's Life's Little Instruction Book:

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

Today is Moldy Cheese Day!

                               

So today, October 9th, is National Moldy Cheese Day, which celebrates those extra-strong cheeses like Bleu and Gorgonzola!  Yay!

It is also the day we celebrate Leif Erikson landing in North America in the year 1,000. There is your fun fact for the day - you're welcome!

As a Professional Organizer, I suggest you take 10 minutes of this auspicious day to venture into the depths of your fridge and throw out anything in there that might have been alive when Erikson landed.  Just take your garbage can over to the fridge, and depending on the length of time since you last did this, don heavy, gunk-proof gloves, and throw away EVERYTHING that is past its expiration date.   If things have congealed onto the shelves, pour a bit of warm water on it to loosen it up, wipe it off and then wipe it down with 409 or kitchen wipes and you're done!  Quick and painless, and a good first step to make it much easier to do a thorough cleaning next time.

There you go - a fridge that now has safe, healthy food in it, so you can grab a snack while watching that documentary about Leif Erikson!


Find out more great tips on my website: www.economicalorganizer.com

Welcome to the blog for The Economical Organizer!

In this blog I will be sharing proven inexpensive and relatively painless ways to help you get more organized.

Let me tell you a bit about myself first. My lifelong career has been working in libraries, first as a paraprofessional, then I went back to school for my Master's degree in Library and Information Science and for the past 15 years have been a reference and children's librarian in both public and college libraries. I have spent my days helping people get the information they need and making sure that all the books were in their proper places so they can be quickly found! (Thank you Melville Dewey and The Library of Congress for those awesome cataloguing systems) As you can imagine, I love being organized - oh, and reading. :)

I decided last year that since family and friends have been asking me for organization help over the years, that I could put my organizing talents to use helping even more people. So, I joined NAPO - National Association of Professional Organizers and started my own organizing business.

I want to hear from you! Let me know in the comments what areas in your home you wish were better organized and I will address them in my upcoming posts.

Thanks!

Pam
The Economical Organizer
www.economicalorganizer.com