Grab-N-Go Snack Bin

In our cupboard I keep a little bin labeled “GRAB-N-GO SNACKS.” I am not big on giving kids snacks as they usually will not eat their more nutritious meals if given snacks but there are occasions when a snack on the go is necessary. For instance, the post office visit this Monday. I KNEW it was the post office’s most busy day of the year and that’s just hard on a one year old. I grabbed a snack and off we went. It kept him busy, that and the playing with the flap on the trash can (YUCK!) while waiting in line.

Grab-N-Go Snack Bins can be stored with trail mix, granola bars, mixes of cheerios/raisins/nuts/mini marshmallows/pretzels and I keep some lollipops in mine for the really tough trips. This bin has been very handy for me this season while doing my most dreaded task . . . shopping with a one year old!

Extraordinary Uses for Binders

Binders can organize so many things. If you have some shelf real estate to plop them on they are so accessible and have so much potential. Of course there are obvious uses for binders. I use several for recipes. I have one binder labeled “Culinary Experiments” (recipes I have not yet tried but intend to), another “Culinary Collections” (the tried and true recipes), and one for “Desserts and Breads.” I don’t get bogged down with details like cutting and pasting recipes. I just slide cardstock in clear protector sheets and put the cut out recipes on top so they are easier to read. I don’t paste or anything, that way if my Culinary Experiment recipe is a success I can easily slide it out and move it to the Culinary Collections binder.

I used to enjoy browsing through home magazines (who has time for that now with three kids?) and I would always tear out a picture of something that I really liked. I have a “Home Ideas” binder that includes several categories of my magazine tear outs. The tabs include “Architecture,” “Gardening,” “Decorating Projects,” and “Gift Ideas.” The binder came in very handy when we moved into our untouched 1970s house that was in terrible need of a new kitchen. I had collected pictures of kitchens that I liked for years and even though I didn’t know exactly why I liked the pictures, it gave the cabinet makers a place to start when trying to figure out what we wanted.

The best housewarming gift ever given to us was a binder labeled Menus. Several years ago we moved from the east coast to the Midwest when I was 8 months pregnant. A friend of ours drove around our new town before we arrived and gathered take out menus. Not only did she put the menus in clear protector sheets in a binder that was cleverly decorated in old photos but she even categorized the menus by food type: Italian, Chinese, Sandwich Places, etc. This binder is a permanent fixture in our house.

My most recent binder creation of a couple years ago is labeled “Greeting Cards.” In the front I have a sheet that lists everyone’s birthdays by month and I included greeting card holidays like mother’s day and father’s day by month. Behind that sheet I have 17 clear protector pocket sheets. Each clear pocket is labeled with my handy dandy label maker at the top right hand corner. The first twelve are labeled the months of the year, then there are clear pockets for blank cards, generic birthday cards (those that aren’t for anyone specific), get well cars, sympathy cards and thank you cards. So, you know how sometimes you will be looking for a birthday card for Amy and as you are reading them you come across the perfect card for Jim? Well now I can get the perfect card that I found for Jim even though his birthday isn’t for another 10 months because I have somewhere to put it that I know I will find it again. I’ll put it in my October pocket. For some reason card shopping is one of the most challenging things to shop for with my kids. They have no patience for me to pick out the perfect card and if they aren’t restrained in a shopping cart they love to run down the card isle and pull them out and destroy any card organization the store has in place.

I use binders when we go home to the east coast to visit family. I print out the phone numbers to our friends and family out east as well as favorite restaurants that we want to visit and phone numbers of our neighbors in case we would need to check up on something back home. I include maps, activities for kids and the hours of the various establishments we hope to visit and I keep our receipts in one of the clear protector sheets with a tally sheet so we can stay within our vacation budget.

I know there are many more ways to use a simple binder with clear protector sheets to organize various things. I have several empty binders waiting to be filled.

Simple Method of Organizing Sheet Sets

One of the many reasons I get happy when I open my linen closet that I shared in a previous post, is the super simple way that I store our bed sheet sets. It looks somewhat neat and keeps the linens under control. I got the idea from a Martha magazine years ago but I can't say that I do it "Martha," I don't have time for that. I fold the fitted sheet, flat sheet and one pillow case in a pile and then I stuff them into the second pillow case. It's not quite "Martha" because the picture in her magazine showed a perfectly boxed folded stuffed pillow case whereas mine are not so picturesque. It must have taken the photo set person a couple hours to get Martha's to look like that. Who has that kind of time? Mine is just stuffed in there and thrown on the shelf and it might not be pretty, but it works.

Daily Lunch Salad for Mom

I have been on this salad kick for about 8 months. Never before has a salad habit lasted so long for me. In the past whenever I switched to salad eating it was always in an effort to loose a few pounds so I limited what went into my salad making it as fat free and low calorie as possible. Well clearly that was my salad success downfall. Last Spring I had lunch at my friend Karen's and she grilled a chicken breast and served a simple salad with Good Seasonings Italian dressing. I fell in love. All that oil and the warm meat with cold crunchy fresh greens . . .yum! So I established my salad habit. On Mondays or Tuesdays, depending on when I do my produce run, I make a big salad that will last me about 5 days. It's rather simple really, I put whatever fancies me at the moment into it and whatever I have on hand. Generally it consists of:

Romaine lettuce, chopped
Spring Mix or Baby Spinach
Green, Red, Yellow, Orange Peppers
Scallions or red onion minced
Carrots
Cucumber (de-seeded or seedless since I am told that the seeds wilt your salad faster)
Cherry tomatoes when in season
Apple, diced and tossed with lemon juice to prevent browning


Then I diced up a block of sharp cheddar and keep that in a separate container otherwise it gets slimy or mushy if it is put in with the greens. When I go to have my lunch salad I just toss in the

Diced cheese or feta if I have it
Walnuts or pecans
Craisins
Chopped turkey deli meat or a grilled chicken breast

My New Year's resolution is to take the time to figure out how to make the Good Seasons salad dressing from scratch. I'm sure there is a formula out there somewhere to be found.

I am no photographer, but I try:

I like that my daughter sees me eat a salad every day at lunch. I always offer salad to her but she declines. She often tells her playmates at lunch time, "my mom ALWAYS has a salad . . . EVERY DAY!" as if I'm a freak or something. It's funny but I hope it sticks with her as a good example. I don't push it for lunch but for dinner it is a must. The big salad prepared in the fridge makes it easy to dish out a little salad for everyone with every dinner meal.

Invention Box – Perhaps A Lesson in Minimalist Frugality?

I would think that most of us would like to teach our kids to think creatively so that they can overcome obstacles in life and make the most out of things and I would also guess that we all want them to be able to do this with little or no resources. Planting some seeds for this skill is my goal with our “Invention Box.” I don’t recall where I originally came across the idea, maybe my mother-in-law or maybe the Tightwad Gazette, but it has been a hit with my 6 year old for quite some time and I am working on developing this skill with my 4 year old. My kids love making stuff. They don’t need a whole lot. A box, some construction paper, scissors and tape are favorite “making stuff” materials. I keep trash for our invention box. Plastics, cardboard, yogurt containers, cottage cheese containers, you name it. If my son sees me putting something in the recycle bin that has an interesting shape he say, “no mom, put it in the invention box!” So we have a huge pile of trash, I mean Invention Box materials for making “stuff.” We even get neighbors and grandparents to saving stuff for our invention box. Once we solicited everyone we knew for frozen juice lids to make a knights armor. We had neighbors that drank orange juice from frozen concentrate every day. We had it together in no time.


Here is a picture of my son’s latest space ship creation with “stuff.” On this one he even got his school Principal to agree to let him take home an empty milk carton. I'm not sure it is supposed to be on the front but I do know that the paper towel rolls are the "blasters" in the back. The black things are pipe cleaners. He can stick his head through the bottom hole that he had me cut and fly it around while he looks out the clear container that our Sam's Club spinach came in.





Here he is flying his straw jet plane.






For Halloween we made this spooky graveyard out of a box, tissue paper, construction paper, Q-tips and some Halloween stickers someone gave us. This is the only project that I helped invent. Usually he does it all one his own.
He also made a cool monster using a clear V8 container, filling it with green tissue paper and taping green construction paper arms. I did not get a picture of it before my 1 year old tore the arms off though. My daughter made a haunted house out of a box but she lost interest before finishing it. Why we buy toys I will never understand.

Homework Task Schedule - Keeping Order in the House

One of the many reasons I like “To Do Lists” is because I get great satisfaction crossing things off the list. Having a list of chores for myself allows me to cross stuff off and it keeps me on task. I have not stuck with a household task schedule since having my one year old so I am looking forward to using a schedule again. For each child I have, my task list gets more scaled down so that it is doable. I do not like having a list that never gets checked off.

So if you are feeling that your house is out of control and want to get some order BUT you want to do it while feeling that you are spending very little time and effort keeping order try using a task schedule. Sounds tricky, doesn’t it? It really isn’t. I tape this list on the inside of one of my command central cupboard doors. I cross the boxes off throughout the week as they get done. At the end of each week I can either print a new list or I can use the same list and cross the items off in a different way. I have a pencil taped with a string to the cupboard by the list. It isn’t strict or time consuming to stick to because I try to keep each days’ tasks simple. If I don’t get to everything or if I don’t even get to an entire day or two I know that my house won’t be spiraling out of control because I will get to it next week. Of course bathrooms with a household of five need to be tended to at least weekly but other things can certainly slide now and then.

If you can not read the above list you can double click on this one to enlarge:

Frugal Snobbery

I had a few miniscule drops of energy left after putting the kids to bed this evening so I thought I’d search the blogging world for frugal tips (yes, I know, totally nerdy Friday night behavior, go ahead point and laugh). I found some fantastic new blogs that I can’t wait to spend more time with and I found a ridiculous one as well. I came across a blog all about a person’s “frugal life” and I had to laugh. Then I realized that I am a frugal snob. The author of the “frugal life” I will call it had a Christmas list that involved her 15 year old daughter getting some $300 ipod thing and her husband wanted some matching animal skin belt and boots that together cost well over $700! I can’t find the darned blog now so I can’t quote the exact price on the man clothes but I had to laugh. Then she snapped a photo of a great shopping trip where she utilized sales and coupons and got a whole load of crap for only $42.50. Her shopping spree included several packages of cookies, boxes of cereal, dozens of oozy type lip gloss and many other “stuffs” that would never even be purchased in my home regardless of price. Soon after reading that blog I stumbled upon these posts and I just KNOW the author this blog would also be laughing at that lady right along with me because he despises stuff I think even more than I do. Oh us frugal snobs could have great party making fun of those frugal-wanna-bes. For my imaginary frugal snob party there would have to be carpooling involved to save on gas and what would we serve? Certainly all of us would all drink water. Oh man, what I have become?

Here are some goodies I found:
http://poorerthanyou.com/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/ (mostly b/c anyone that LOVES Amy Dacyczyn’s book the Tightwad Gazette like I do ought to come to my frugal snob party)
http://livingthecheaplife.net/

Peace

I suppose all of us would name different things that bring us peace on earth. Inner peace for me starts with earthly things, or actually the lack thereof. I get easily bogged down when I am preoccupied with stuff. So I strive to defocus my life on stuff or to have the necessary stuff in my life organized in a way that I need not occupy my thoughts with it. This is why home organization is of interest to me. I know people who are not very organized that aren’t bothered by such things and I think that is a quality to be commended. Since that is not one of my qualities, I will continue my organizing ways and hopefully help a few people living less than organized lives that are not feeling inner peace as a result.

Having inner peace allows me to be closer to God and to find time in my day to pray or read scripture with my kids or to just spend the time I have in a day towards something that matters. So I find that spending a little time to organize the necessary stuff of life eliminates barriers to the things that matter.

My Love Affair with my Label Maker

Generally I believe that you do not have to spend money to be domestically organized. Occasionally there are circumstances where a few plastic bins or a set of shelves are absolutely necessary but beyond that there is no need to spend kazoodles of dollars on organizational tools. If you want to hire California Closets consultant and spend a thousand or so on a new pretty closet go ahead, but spending a lot of money is not necessary to enjoy an organized home. I love to organize people’s closets, kitchen cupboards, basements, etc. but I can not promise that it will look like a California Closets magazine ad. I can promise you that I will make it work for you. I am driven by functionality alone.

With all that said, I do own a money sucking organizational tool that I am in-love with. I LOVE my completely unnecessary label maker. You can get a Brother label maker on sale at Office Max for $20 or less. It is one of those items that goes on sale around every 6 weeks so do not pay full price. The refill cartridges are around $10 and that is what makes it a money sucker, however, once you have everything labeled in your house then you don’t use it all that much and the cartridges can last quite a long time.

I label anything and everything that makes sense and then even the things that don’t make sense. My friend Amy watched as I labeled my soup shelf “Soup” and said, “because you can’t tell which shelf the soup is on?” Good point. But I still love the label. It’s like jewelry to an organized cupboard to me. Whenever I label something unnecessary and my husband is around to witness it, when I put my beloved label maker back in the kitchen drawer he opens the drawer, takes out the label maker, and turns it upside down searching for the label that says, “label maker." (I actually had a label on one at work once. The label said, "Jenn's Label Maker.") He has made the mistake of saying “why don’t you label it then” a few times when I complain that he doesn’t put things back where he got them like the jam from the fridge. There is now a shelf in our fridge labeled “Jam.” It doesn’t help his bad habits though. I suppose it’s a good thing he is lackadaisical about such things. I can not imagine two A type labeling freaks sharing a home harmoniously.

This is a picture of my upstairs hall closet. I have medicines and such up high since I have little ones in the house. I am sure they could climb the shelves in they really wanted to but it hasn’t happened yet. This closet is one of my prettier closets. It makes me happy when I open the doors. Can you see the sparkling jewels on each bin?

Frugal Beauty Products and Christmas Gifts Ideas

I am totally plugging my friend’s little Avon business with this post but honestly that is not my motivation. You can not beat the price and quality of a lot of Avon products. The fact that you can be helping a fellow mom earn some bucks is just a plus. Another friend of mine got me hooked on some of Avon’s Mark products a couple years ago and then she stopped selling it so I was thrilled when my friend Stacy told me that she started selling Avon. I just placed an order for powder (buy one get one ½ off), Mark foundation and a few stocking stuffer: princess lip gloss and some body bath paints (got one for each kid, 3 for $5). You just can’t beat it for price or convenience. Stacy emails her customers when they have free shipping specials, which is ALL the time including right now for orders over $30, or you can have her deliver it for free. She is cute as a button and sports some Avon fashions which I didn’t even know they had.