Is cooking dinner at your house like juggling eggs?
By Lea Schneider, Professional Organizer

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Lea Schneider

©2009 Professional Organizer - Lea Schneider is the author of Growing-Up Organized: A Mom to Mom Guide available at Amazon.com.

Lea provides one-on-one organizing advice via phone and email through Organize Online division at her company website, Organize Right Now.

Her advice is featured here at What's Cooking America in a monthly column. You may have read her expert organizing ideas in Woman’s Day, Natural Health, College News, and Better Homes and Gardens Kids’ Rooms magazines and newspapers. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists.


Growing-Up Organized:
A Mom to Mom Guide

by Lea Schneider



Crazed by clutter? Frustrated because the kids can’t find things? Getting out the door in the morning drives you mad? You need:
Growing-Up Organized: A Mom to Mom Guide

Growing Up Organized will help you get started, map out a plan, and learn how to stay organized with everything from bedrooms to closets to homework time.

Purchase your book and learn more at Organize Right Now!  

 

Contact Information:
Lea Schneider
Organize Right Now LLC
Member National Association of Professional Organizers
Pensacola, Florida

Website: Organize Right Now

Tele:  1-850-477-2582


 

 


Check out all of Lea Schneider's helpful home and kitchen columns at Organizing Kitchens, Pantries, Menus and Meals.
 


Is cooking dinner at your house like juggling eggs?
Sometimes, trying to cook in your kitchen is exactly like juggling.


You juggle the junk from the counter to the center island. Then you need the island space to roll out dough or pound some chicken breasts and you move the junk again…to the kitchen table.

As you prepare to wash vegetables, you again need to juggle. The sink is full of breakfast dishes, but the dishwasher is full of clean dishes. Again, you juggle.

When it is time to eat dinner, the stuff on the kitchen table gets juggled right back to the island or kitchen counter, and today’s mail and school papers get added to the stack. The cycle, just like juggling eggs, goes around and around and around.

It’s no wonder that cooking, something that can be fun and fulfilling, is sometimes just plain frustrating.

To get out of that perpetual cycle, take a new look at how your kitchen organization functions.  Sometimes, when we move into a kitchen, we are not sure how that new room works for us. We place things in one spot and for years continue to leave them in that spot even if it is not efficient.


Eight Signs You Have Order in the Kitchen!

Here is a quick quiz to help you think about where you store your kitchen items. Follow the tips in the quiz and it will soon be easier to unload that dishwasher, clear that sink and keep the kitchen ready to use.

My everyday dishes are located near the dishwasher for ease in unloading.

My knives and cutting boards are near the sink where I rinse veggies and meat.

Drinking glasses are near either the sink, or fridge, but also close to the dishwasher.

It might be a rare occasion, but when I bake I can find everything because all my baking items are stored together.

I would not need to panic if a guest pulled out a dish from the back of the fridge and started to eat it. Neither the food nor the leftovers are out of date.

The items on my counter are either used EVERY day or they are really there for home décor. (No, the week’s mail does not count as either item.)

I have all my food items in one area and they are sorted by like kind.

I have a fire extinguisher, it is up-to-date and I know how to use it.