Super Summer Summit - the start of a plan

When I start blogging again after a long time off I always feel the need to explain why and offer excuses, so this time I won't. Life happened, I got busy and had nothing to talk about, so there it is.

Anyway, to get to the real purpose of this post. I am really excited about getting ready for this summer. Summer Vacation ahhhhh it has such an amazing sound to it, especially now that I am teaching again. I think that having some time off to recharge and prepare is good for everyone, students and teachers. However, I also know that kids forget, a lot, I mean massive amounts of things over the summer, so being the over achieving mother that I am I will be making lesson plans for my children over the summer. I know, I know, that's not the point, but I promise I'm not going overboard, it will be fun! And not too much of that boring learning type stuff.

To start this project off I am making an outline, I love outlines, they are almost as awesome as checklists, and I really love checklists. But, I digress, back on subject, outlines. Did I want to just have a lot of ideas and go where the summer sends me or do I want to keep a little structure in the day. To answer this question the girlies and I had a summer summit. Well actually we sat down on the couch and after a lot of tickling and giggling I asked them some really deep questions.

Me - "So Girls, do you want to do learning stuff this summer?"
AJ - "Yeah!"
P-nut - "Yeah!, jinx, you owe me a soda sister!"
Me - "Ok, sounds good, what kinds of things do you want to do?"
P-nut - "Art"
AJ - "Cooking"
P-nut - "Science"
Me - "Sounds good." (about to start walking away, thnking the summit was over)
AJ - "Mama, wait, we need a schedule!"
Me - "A schedule?!?"
P-nut - "Yeah like Art on Mondays and always do art on the Mondays, but we can sometimes do art on other days but we would know on Mondays was super fun art days."

And so the outline was born. Here is as far as I am now, but never fear, summer is still weeks away, I've got plenty of time to get this all together, plenty!

Living a Clutter Free Life. Part 1

I am not a clutter bug, well not really. I am not as clean as DH, but I am most definitely cleaner than your average bear. I'm not saying this because I want a big fat pat on the back, I'm saying this because I have a lot of people who ask how I do it. What are my methods for decluttering if there is clutter and for keeping the clutter down in the first place. I've written on this before, a few years ago, but I figure it never hurts to revisit something useful. So here it is. The start of my short series called Living a Clutter Free life.

Today I am going to start with a basic, something that is so basic that sometimes people forget to do it. Figure out how much space you have! It sounds simple, but so many people forget to do this. No matter how organized you want to be, you cannot organize into a place that you have too much stuff for. It's the problem of too much stuff in too little space that causes the piles of overflowing things in the wrong rooms.

So before you start to buy your fun little organization totes, or print off all of the nifty labels you see on pinterest you need to see how much room you are working with. Say you are organizing your pantry. Look at the number of shelves you have, How tall are they? How Deep? What will you be storing in there? Once you have an idea of what you are working with you will have an idea of what is a realistic goal.

As you can see, this pantry is a place for food, toiletries, appliances and other cooking supplies, as well as some random toiletries. They have long, fixed shelves that are not very deep. They have too many things for the space that they have, or they have the things stored incorrectly.

So the first step is to step back and look at the space that you have to store things in. It's fixed, so that is what you have to work with.

C - Is for Challenge

I think I may have over committed myself in the last few weeks to this. I love the whole process of blogging and sharing, but when I sat down yesterday and actually looked at my blogging schedule, Holy Cow. I am currently doing the April A-Z challenge which will require a new post a day for the entire month. I have joined in with the Hodgepodge Wednesday which is so much fun to answer and to read all of the answers that the other participants give. I also started a challenge to myself with the Diva Days of the Week, which gives me a task for every day.

So now I wonder where I am supposed to find time to blog about what it is that I started this blog to talk about. I don't want to lose site of the goals that I started this whole blogging experience with. I started this to share some of what I am as a housewife, military spouse and mother. Participating in the challenges will help me to become a better and more consistent blogger, but I need to find a way to do it that doesn't depart from my purpose.

So starting tomorrow with Take a Picture Tuesday, and letter D I will find a way to incorporate all of my challenges not only together with each other but also in a way that stays within the frame work of talking about what makes me who I am, and shares how I succeed and how I fail on a daily basis. Also how these things help me to grow and become a better person.

~DD

ThATh ~ Meal Planning

I love meal planning for a lot of reasons. The first and foremost being that once the planning is done my life is so much easier. I don't have to spend hours agonizing over what I need to make for dinner that night. I avoid getting myself into food ruts where I have Italian food 4 nights in a row. Also, it saves me money. When I grocery shop with an exact list of what I need I don't buy things that I don't need, and so my grocery bill goes down. I also save money because we rarely ever say "I didn't have time to get to dinner so we need to eat out."

My meal plan that I just finished will cover our family for the first half of the month, with a small trip for fresh fruit and veggies part way through the month. That is also an excellent thing since I tend to shop with children in tow. The less trips to the store the better. Starting to meal plan can be frustrating and confusing so I thought I would offer a few hints and tips that have helped me a lot.

1) Start a Meal Bank - a place where you keep your families favorite meals all in a list. Also a place where you keep a list of meals that you want to try. If you keep everything in one place it will be easier when you sit down to plan. You can organize this bank however makes the most sense to you, my personal choice is to organize them by who in the family likes them. So I have family favorites, DH's favorites, the girls favorites, and my favorites. That way I can make sure that in the course of a week we all get at least one meal that is something we love. You could also order them by the time it takes to prepare, the main protein (chicken, fish, beef), or by when you last served it.

2) Set Time Aside - Make sure that you have a dedicated time to plan your meals set aside. If weekly works better for you set that time aside once a week, if you like monthly plans then by all means do that, but make sure that you give yourself a block of time.

3) Be Prepared - Before you start planning your meals make sure that you take inventory of your pantry, fridge and freezer to see what you have and what you need to use. If you use coupons also get all of those together and ready. Ask your family for any special requests. Is your spouse craving Mexican food, do your kids want more chicken. Look at your calender, what is your schedule looking like, you don't want to plan a bunch of new or difficult recipes if you have a week where you don't have time to make them.

4) Don't Forget the Sides - A meal is more than a main dish, don't forget to add the vegetables and starches that you want to serve with your main dish. Make sure that when you keep meals in your meal bank you also list appropriate and or favorite sides with the meal.

5) More than Dinner - Don't forget to plan options for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. They don't have to be as complete as your dinner plans, in fact you can just list sandwiches, leftovers, mac and cheese, cereal, bagels, etc. and go from there. This way you won't forget anything when you transfer it to your grocery list.

Here is an example of my meal plans for April 1-15, 2011.

Sour Cream Enchiladas
Salad

Chili Lime Meatballs
Rice
Stir-Fry Veggies

Pork Chops, Grilled
Grilled Asparagus
Peas
Baked Sweet Potato Coins

Stuffed Shells
Garlic Bread
Salad

Chicken
Rice
Green Beans

Chicken Supreme
Broccoli and Cauliflower with Bread Crumbs
Crescent Rolls

Sloppy Joes
Raw Veggies

Tacos

Sliders
Corn
Carrots

I hope that this has helped give you some ideas and direction for how to plan meals for your family. Sometime later I will talk about how to take those meal plans and translate them into a great grocery list.

~DD

Cleaning.

I frequently have friends who tell me that they feel like they can never get on top of the cleaning in their house and that they are constantly overwhelmed by all of the cleaning that needs to be done. They are constantly asking me how I manage to keep the house clean. I have two secrets.

1) Help! I am a housewife, but I am not the only person who lives in this house, the girls each have chores, yes, the three year old does chores. If they make the mess they will help clean it up. Also I am blessed to have a husband who likes to clean, in fact he deals with stress by cleaning. I don't think that it is right for any family to expect one person to clean up after the entire group. I do the majority of the cleaning because it is a part of my job as a housewife and Mom but help isn't too much to ask for. We all have days when work and life just get to be too much.

2) Lists! Until I discovered the beauty of lists I was lost with my cleaning. I have a horrible memory, so knowing how long it has been since I did something and when I need to do it again is a huge blessing. That way I know no matter how bad my memory is at the moment when I last cleaned something and when I need to do it again. My lists are in a three ring binder slipped into plastic sheet covers, that way I can check things off with a dry erase marker and then re-start at the end of the day, week or month.

Here are the lists that I work from, feel free to steal them, share them, and change them all that you want to.

Daily

Make Beds
Empty Dishwasher
Breakfast
Clean kitchen
Quick clean bathrooms
Gather and Sort Laundry
One load laundry washed, dried, folded and put away
Check phone and e-mail messages. Return when needed.

Prep Dinner

School time with P-nut
Lunch
Clean Kitchen
Exercise
Quick de-clutter house
Vacuum
Spot Mop
Water Garden, and Grass
Make Dinner
Clean Kitchen
Exercise
Refill Water Purifiers
Bath time, Story, Bed for kids
Last pick up of cups and dishes

Start dishwasher
Bed!

Weekly

Wash Windows
Dust Furniture
Scrub Floors
Wash Towels
Wash Sheets
Clean out Fridge
Re-Organize/sort girls toys, they clean daily I just check for lost or broken things once a week.

Check Home business to make sure it's on track.

Meal Plans (usually bi-weekly)
Grocery List (also bi-weekly)
Clean out a closed area (closet, drawer, pantry)
Clean Appliances (wipe front of fridge, washer and dryer, etc)
Mow, weed.
File mail and paperwork

Monthly

Scrub Bathrooms (since I do a quick clean daily I only need to break out the strong stuff once a month)
Sweep Front and Back Porches
Re-evaluate Lists
Prep cards for birthdays/holidays
Re-do Family Wall calender
Find 3 new meals to try

Make a special dessert.

Lamp shades and light fixtures dusted

High shelves and surfaces dusted

Filing Cabinet/fire safe clean if needed

Clean inside Fridge (wash)

Replace house and water filters as needed.

I hope that this helps you just a little. I'll go into the rest of the things that I keep in my three ring binder later. Let me tell you it's a life saver.

~DD

Because I'm Brilliant like that....

Sometimes I feel like I am my own worst enemy. I get these brilliant plans and act on them and then when I am past the point of no return I realize I have messed something up. I did that tonight. It isn't the hugest problem that I created, it is just going to be something that bothers my CDO (OCD alphabetized) brain. So the story.

I have a home-based business. I do home parties for a well known company. Tonight I decided that it would be a wonderful idea to get my whole year mapped out. I would look up all of the monthly specials for hosts and guests for the rest of the year. I would write them in my calender in the appropriate month so that when I am booking shows I would be able to tell people what the specials were in the coming months. I would cross check the specials with the wish lists from my former hosts and set up an e-mail schedule so that I can tell them how to earn what they wanted. I worked diligently for over 2 hours, wrote everything in my most beautiful handwriting so that it was attractive to look into my calender, it was amazing. Then in the last moment I noticed something, something important, something I should have looked at hours ago, something it should have occurred to me to check when I started. What was that you ask? The year. I did all of this work and I used the specials calender from 2010 not 2011.

So now what do I have? A calender full of writing that is useless and 2 hours of wasted time, well now probably closer to 3 since I have been beating myself up over it for almost an hour. Yippie! Happy Sunday night to this Diva. I think it's bedtime, yup, definitely bedtime.

~DD

That stuff we rarely use, but can't get rid of.

Ahhh my favorite storage section, category number two seasonal stuff. This category is actually bigger than you might think, but can also vary greatly based on where you live and how you decorate. Seasonal stuff can include everything from holiday decorations, to clothing. If you happen to have the room and the money it can also include bedding, dishes, and all sorts of things. I know people who essentially re-decorate their entire house for each season. I don't but that is because I don't have the storage to do it. If I did, trust me I would.

Seasonal storage is different that everyday storage, most people put it outside, either in the garage or a storage shed, or even in a attic or basement. Because of this there are different things that are important.

The first thing is still that you can't keep more than you have room for. I think that this is the universal rule of organizing. If you don't have the room for it you simply cannot keep it.

The second thing to think of is appropriate storage for your location. Most seasonal storage needs to me water and air tight. You shouldn't store your winter clothes in paper bags, or plastic grocery sacks. The bugs, and water, and dirt will get into them and ruin them, and then what was the point in taking up the room storing them? So look at your storage area, what is size appropriate and location appropriate. For a particularly damp location you might even need to double wrap things, putting them into a plastic cover like a Space Bag and then put those into a Plastic Bin. If you are in a drier location then you should be fine with just the plastic bin. And honestly if you are like me the Space Bag won't work for you, they always end up expanding again on me and not staying vacuumed tight, so I look at them as a big Ziploc instead of as a space saver.

The third step, one that most people forget is to label your boxes well. If you can't find what you have stored and end up giving up looking for it and buy new stuff then you shouldn't have bothered storing it in the first place. If you are using the box for things that are permanent in that box like Christmas decorations you can write on the box with a permanent marker, but if you will be changing what is in the box then make sure that you can change the label. I also put a packing list right inside the top of the box, or you can put it in a plastic page protector on the outside. So you can find specific things.

Organizing your seasonal stuff is a lot of work, but when you are done you will thank yourself. Being able to walk to your storage anytime and pull out exactly what you need without going through piles of stuff and dozens of boxes will make things so much easier, and less expensive in the long run.

Now that I've sorted it.

Well the first step is done, you have sorted you stuff and pared it down to what you really love and use on a regular basis. For most of you just making it this far is a huge step. If you really were honest with yourself in the first step you have seen how many things you are holding on to that you didn't need in the first place. If you weren't honest with yourself, well, you really are still stuck trying to organize clutter but that doesn't mean that you are a hopeless case, it just means that you need to work on step one a few more times over the next few months, trying to be more honest with yourself each time. Remember that this is a process, there is no magic wand that you can wave to go from a disorganized clutter-bug to an organized person.

Useful Everyday

This should be the easiest to get put away and organized. There are a few things that you need to answer and then away they should go. Most of these things are probably best right near where you found them. Think about where and how you use the items every day and then find an away place for them to be near that location. The further you have to walk to put something away the less likely you are to do it.

Question 1: What is the best way for ME to organize?

Organization is not a one size fits all activity. Not only does everyone live in a different house, but everyone also uses things in a different way. But, most importantly, what you think is a logical way to do things isn't always what I think is logical, so you need to organize for yourself. I just got through reading a great article in Real Simple that talked about how you shouldn't try to fit your organization into someone elses mold. If you are right-brained you shouldn't try and use the regimented color coded, same sized stacked boxes, and if you are left-brained you are probably most comfortable with this method. Find what works for you and your family.

Question 2: How much space do I have to put this away in?

Let's face it, there are very few of us who live in places where storage isn't at a premium. No matter how much we have it seems like we always need more. When you are planning a place to put things away, and look at your space realistically. If you only have one shelf on one closet for sheets, then that is all that you have. Taking more space than you have for one item usually means that you will have less room for another. Eventually if you keep borrowing storage from one thing to house another you will end up back where you started with no organization at all.

Question 3: Can I really fit what I want into the space that I have?

Look at your box of things that you use, look at the space that you have, will it all fit? If your self will hold six sets of sheets and you have four then you are doing great. If your shelf will fit four and you have six, not so great. If you have to answer no to this question it is time to go back. Do you really need all that you kept? Or are you saving the sheets from your childhood bed even though your kids will never use them. If after you re-assess what you have kept and you still don't have enough space, then it is time to re-assess where it is stored. Maybe you don't need something else that is in the linen closet stored there. Maybe you can move the kids crafts out so that you have more room for the sheets. Maybe you need to store the sheets in the room they belong in, either in an under the bed box, in the closet, or in the dresser. Be creative in your options just make sure you aren't taking storage that you actually need for something else.

Remember that there isn't any cut and dried correct way to do this. You need to store things in a way that is appealing to your senses wheather they be artistic and eclectic or regimented and color coded. You need to store the things that you use every day in a way that makes them accessable, both to use and to put away again when you are done. And last, you need to be honest and creative with where you put things away so that they are stored in the best possible manner.

That not-so dirty word.....

Yup, I'm talking about organization, not only organization but de-cluttering. Wait, don't panic, I promise I will have some ideas for everyone no matter how organized you think you are. This will not all happen in one post, I know that it's a lot to go over so I will be breaking it up into more manageable pieces.

I am often asked to help friends and family organize things, which comes as a huge surprise to me. I was the teenager who stuffed all of her stuff under the bed and into the closet to "clean" her room. The "a place for everything, and everything in it's place" mantra was lost on me. I saw de-cluttering, cleaning, and organizing as a huge waste of time. I can't quite put my finger on when the change came, there was no magical "ah-ha" moment when I went from being a slob to a neat-freak. It just happened. I think that my biggest push towards organization and cleanliness came my senior year of college when I shared a room with Nao. She was (and still is) the cleanest and most organized person that I have ever met. I felt guilty if my half of the room didn't at least sort of match hers, which was a huge feat since her half was pristine.

You can't organize clutter

It's been said a million times. You just can't organize clutter. You can move it around, you can hide it in nifty looking boxes and organizational tools, but when it all comes down to the nitty-gritty, it just won't help. Clutter is clutter no matter how many labels and pretty things you try and hide it with. So our first step in this process will be to de-clutter. In order for this to work, you must be honest and ruthless. It is hard, but it is worth it. The first step is to make your categories for things to keep, my suggestions is these three, but if you find something that works better for you then use that.
1) Useful every day
2) Useful seasonally
3) Sentimental
Designate a place for each of these categories and start sorting. Do you use it daily (or weekly)? Then it goes in the first box, do you use it every Christmas, or every winter? Then it goes in the second. Does it have some special meaning? Then it goes in the third. If it doesn't fit any of those categories? Then it goes in the trash or gets donated to charity. I don't suggest making a yard sale pile, because be honest, you won't ever get around to having one.

You don't have to do this to your whole house at once, or even a whole room, take the amount of time that you have and make a realistic goal. Do you have 15 minutes? Then go through you clutter pile from when you walk in the door. Do you have 45 try your closet. Remember that something that doesn't fit you isn't a keeper no matter how determined you are to be that size again some day.

Hopefully this is a small start for some of you, I'll be back with more tips on what to do with the things in each bin in a few days.

~ DD