©2009 Professional Organizer Lea Schneider is the author of Growing Up Organized, A Mom-to-Mom Guide available at amazon.com. She provides one-on-one organizing advice via phone and email through Organize Online division at her company website, www.organizerightnow.com.

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 from across the country. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists.
 

Getting Organized Leads to Saving Money

Sure getting organized is all about living simpler, making do with less and sticking cute labels on things. Every magazine on the rack has headlines which shout at you to reduce clutter, clear the mess and get organized. What they don’t tell you is that getting organized is all about saving money.

As a professional organizer, I know that is true. As a mother of three, I’ve put into practice organizing as a cost-saving measure. Because the food budget is usually the largest household expenditure, often more than the mortgage payment, this is certainly an area where you can find some savings.

My kitchen organizing columns tell you how-to get organized and save money in the process. I’ve rounded up those that will bring savings into your home and featured them here so you can save $$$$$$$$$$ Now!

Check out Lea Schneider's helpful home and kitchen columns below:

Food Storage Ideas:

Avoiding Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard
There is a little Mother Hubbard in all of us, reaching into the cupboard for something we just knew was there – and coming up empty-handed. I used to conveniently be able to blame it on the children or the teenagers. What’s one to do when they get grown?

Getting ahead with your lettuce - Using fresh bags, produce preservation bags, and green bags
I’d heard some chatter about fresh bags for produce but hadn’t given them a shot. About two months ago, I was shopping for a gift and saw a display and decided to do my own experimenting. The result of bagging my lettuce, bananas and cauliflower is a weekend off from shopping. Having produce make it a full two weeks is most assuredly worth the price of the bags.

Going green can sometimes mean going crazy
Home recycling usually starts in the kitchen and it can make you crazy! Recycling usually also starts a clutter chain reaction. While you’re feeling good about doing your part to keep America green, you’re also feeling bad about looking at those heaps of plastic bottles, cans, and newspapers. Having all that stuff sitting around often leads to all kinds of other stuff stacking on counters and floors.

Ideas for organizing snacks - Stop wasting dollars on stale snacks
If you’ve a houseful of children, or even a houseful of adult company, you probably feel like the snack cabinet should have a revolving door. Check out my Tips to Maximize your Snack Dollars.

New Year’s resolutions should start in the pantry
Open your pantry and you’ll be opening the key to keeping some of your New Year’s resolutions. Are you planning to get fit? Are you hoping to lose weight? Do want your family to be healthier? If you answered yes, then join the crowd. Those are some of the top ten New Year’s Resolutions. To keep those, you need to add one more. Another of the top ten promises is to get organized.

Organize my leftovers – How to make use of food you already spent your money on
It’s the one organizing request that makes me laugh! Leaning into the fridge, packed with tiny plastic containers, plastic wrapped mystery items and aluminum foil bundles, and my friend turned to me and said “Can you organize my refrigerator?”

Where’s the Beef? Managing you most expensive grocery items
The beef, and your other meats, have their very own organizing issues. Since organizing has to do with how and where we store things, then organizing meat is indeed a great kitchen topic. Saving money in the kitchen is important in nearly every household and meat is near the top of cost at the store. Buying and handling meat on sale and making good use of it is more important than ever.
 

Herb and Spices Organization:

Some spicy ideas
Last month found me out-of-sorts over being out-of-date. I’m still laughing and showing my friends my 15-year old spices. When organizing anything, the first step is to clear out the clutter. In the spice cabinet, that means getting rid of those out-of-date, old, yucky spices. You wouldn’t eat 10-year old food so why would you add 10-year old spices to your pot?

You couldn’t possibly be outdated. Could you?
McCormick, the famous spice company, caught me in the act of being outdated!. In ads they have been running in magazines, they ask “Do you know the signs of aging?” Featuring familiar looking containers, the ads ask if you have any out-of-date spices in your cabinet. Being the Queen of Purge, I assured myself that I couldn’t possibly have out-of-date spices. Boy, did I have out-of-date spices. I even had dreadfully-old-you-should-be-ashamed spices.
 

Kitchen Organization: Cabinets, Drawers and More:

Avoiding Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard - Get your pantry organized so you can find and use what you have
There is a little Mother Hubbard in all of us, reaching into the cupboard for something we just knew was there – and coming up empty-handed. I used to conveniently be able to blame it on the children or the teenagers. What’s one to do when they get grown?

Change your kitchen along with your hair color
Over the course of the years, I’ve changed my hair color. I’ve changed my fashions. I’ve changed states, houses, cars, and I have even switched from cats to dogs. I’ll just bet that you have made a lot of those changes too. Have you thought about how the way you use your kitchen has changed?

Out of room? Get ideas for maximizing your space - Making the Best of Hard-to-Use Lower Cabinets
Economic conditions are driving more of us to cook more often. The more you are in your kitchen, the more you probably wish for more space. The more you watch the news, the further away a new house and larger kitchen looks. Take advantage of every square inch and that means adapting those lower cabinets to function. The typical lower cabinet has a lot of wasted space. You can’t see what is back there and use it so it isn’t often the first choice for food storage. It most often contains kitchen clutter.

For dinner tonight - A plan!
Your lids may march in a row in a lid rack and your silverware may nestle in drawer liners but if there isn’t dinner on the stove then you’ve missed the boat, as the saying goes. Getting organized in the kitchen means having ingredients to prepare meals. It means having the time to prepare meals. What it doesn’t mean is hours and hours of work.

Is your kitchen really too small?
True, I haven’t seen your kitchen but I bet I have seen a lot of kitchens like your kitchen. They are the busy hub of the family and reflect your hectic schedule. Even so, if you muttered one of the three excuses above, you need to know that those excuses don’t often hold up.

Ten "Next To" great kitchen organizing tips
Some organizing rules takes "next to" no effort, like this one - Put items you most commonly use next to where you commonly use them.  I call this the next-to rule. Sounds easy - and is easy – yet it is hard to explain why we spend an awful lot of time hunting and looking for things. To remedy that, I’ve rounded up the top ten “next-to’s” for your kitchen.

The junk drawer holds everything but junk
Looking in the dictionary, I find that junk is a traditional Chinese seagoing vessel. That is true but I don’t think that is what I meant. However, I have seen some junk drawers, perhaps just like yours, which could hold everything, including a Chinese ship. Junk, according to the dictionary, is any old discarded material or anything that is worthless, meaningless or contemptible. No wonder my junk drawer is insulted. Any junk drawer worth its weight is stuffed with valuables.

Whisk those gadgets into shape
When I whisk into the kitchen to organize, those darn whisks, spatulas and scrapers can sometimes leave me scratching my head. They are the hardest things for which to find a kitchen home. The long and the short of it is just that. There are long handled tools, short stubby tools, fat swirls of tools and tiny skinny things. From the soup ladle to the cake tester, these different size items make it ever so hard to organize.

Kitchen Time Management:

For dinner tonight - A plan!
Your lids may march in a row in a lid rack and your silverware may nestle in drawer liners but if there isn’t dinner on the stove then you’ve missed the boat, as the saying goes. Getting organized in the kitchen means having ingredients to prepare meals. It means having the time to prepare meals. What it doesn’t mean is hours and hours of work.

Got a minute? Ten minutes, one hour and more kitchen organizing ideas
As fall looms, we begin to close the outdoor season and the kitchen again assumes its full role as household command center. From packing school lunches to family dinners to holiday entertaining, it remains busy and packed through the year end. No matter how much or how little time you have, you can get started on organizing your kitchen today.

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.

It’s not just what you eat but where you eat it
The average person spends a good deal of time each day looking for things that they have but they don’t know where they have them. Much of that time is related to the kitchen, hunting through drawers, pantries and recipe books or digging through stacks on the kitchen counter.

Keeping your resolution to get organized
If you spent part of December thinking something has got to change, either in your kitchen or your eating habits, then you are in good company. Getting organized usually makes the top ten New Year’s resolutions and January is Get Organized Month, sponsored by the National Association of Professional Organizers.

Keeping your resolution to get organized II
If you are like me, and have an older kitchen, then you have probably experienced frustration with lower cabinets. When trying to find something, it means getting on your hands and knees, banging your head and rattling around in a dark hole. By the time you have found it, you have muttered a few choice words! There are some wonderful inexpensive kitchen solutions that you can install in lower cabinets. When I say “you,” I really mean you. If I can do it by myself, you can do it too. The installation usually only involves three screws.

Paper or plastic for holiday organization?
By the time you have made a menu to cover Thanksgiving or holiday parties or baking, you will find you have a lengthy shopping list. Coming home from the store, even if you have cleared out pantry space, storing away all those items takes time.

Organizing for Entertaining:

Christmas kitchen secrets of the organized
Entertaining, on top of working, holiday shopping and company, is never easy but it can be made simpler. Here are a couple suggestions to help you make it look so easy.

Organizing your buffet supper - Planning ahead creates a great gathering
Standing in line, holding a plate, seems to be a welcome holiday ritual. From Thanksgiving to the company potluck and from the family Christmas Eve to the New Year’s Eve gathering, buffets are a timeless tradition. As a host or hostess, giving some thought to how-to organize your buffet makes all the difference in the world. A good flow, to and from the food and drinks, makes the gathering more pleasant for everyone.

Paper or plastic for holiday organization?
By the time you have made a menu to cover Thanksgiving or holiday parties or baking, you will find you have a lengthy shopping list. Coming home from the store, even if you have cleared out pantry space, storing away all those items takes time.

Perfectly planned picnics
The hard part of all this outdoor dining, besides the no-see-ums, is all that organizing. Every time you turn around you’re trying to figure out what to pack, what to bring, what you might need. It seems nearly every weekend; I’m turning in a circle in the middle of the kitchen trying to figure out what I forgot to pack. To make picnicking and outdoor dining easier, I created a checklist which I keep in my picnic basket. I keep adding to it. I’ve added it here to make your summer more organized.

Quick! Make your kitchen welcoming
Your Holiday wish-list might be for everyone to stay out of your kitchen. Get real. It simply isn’t going to happen. Everyone, from Santa to your picky Grandmother to the husband’s boss’ wife will venture in to gaze and graze. The smells and warmth of the kitchen is a magnet not to be denied by anyone. Stop stressing. Stop fussing. You can quickly make your kitchen welcoming.

Thanksgiving organizer
Minimize entertaining stress with this checklist. Don’t be running about like a turkey! Many Thanksgiving chores can be paced out so that you can really enjoy the time without being stressed. Here’s an organizing to-do list for hosting the big day.

Organizing Grocery Shopping:

A Strategy for Battling Your Grocery Budget
My food bill continues to rise. How about yours? The food budget in our household is the largest of our variable expenses. There are so many other kinds of bills that I have no control over. This makes me want to work even harder to save at the grocery. With rising grocery prices, your resolve to save is probably not enough. You need a plan.
 

Clues for the coupon clipper
Learn how to organize those coupons you always meant to use. They’re lurking everyone! You’ll find them in the junk drawer, tucked in the pantry and wadded up in the bottom of your handbag. It’s those coupons you meant to use!

Organize my hunger pain
Last month, I had a back scene tour of a local food pantry. The tour led me to imagine having to ask for a bag of food and living off that bag for 5 days. It would certainly challenge your organizing skills. Use this month to organize your pantry and grocery shopping and feed the hungry. Join in the big national food drive on May 10. The National Association of Letter Carriers will be collecting donated food from mailboxes all over the country.

Pondering aerobic grocery shopping
Some people walk outdoors. Others walk on treadmills. Still others go to the mall and do laps inside. I get my exercise at the grocery store. Do you think that counts?
 

Organizing Recipes and Menus:

A bride’s recipe for disorganization
Wearing a veil made from her gift bows and ribbons, the bride continues opening gifts at her shower. Tearing the paper off the gift, she reveals a recipe card box, complete with a stack of 3 x 5 cards decorated with a border of vegetables.

Conquering menu madness
Do the innocently asked words “What’s for dinner,” drive you mad? You are certainly not the only one! Every night, it is like we are caught on the track with the dinnertime train headed right for us. It is almost like it’s a surprise that it is dinnertime….yet again. If you feel like you are constantly reinventing the wheel, then its time for you to start taking advantage and organizing your own creativity.

Cooking for two - A baker’s dozen of tips
In reality, there are a lot more folks cooking for one or two than you might think. There are of course those seniors and empty nesters. But there are also the newlyweds, the college kids, the single parent and child, and others, like my daughter and her roommate and all those other young professionals. It does take a bit of organization to make cooking for two a pleasurable experience. With some organization, you won’t find yourself eating goulash leftovers for an entire week.

Nine more months of lunch packing
One child is yelling about missing PE clothes and another shouting that their life is over because their hair is standing up. In between those issues, breakfast and the normal chaos, dealing with packing lunches can be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Getting organized to deal with the next nine months worth of lunches is certainly worth the small amount of time involved.

Organizing for savings
If you are also finding it hard to make ends meet, putting your organizational skills to work can help. Organizing isn’t just closets and cabinets. It is also encompasses planning and time. It takes some of that time and planning to stretch those grocery shopping dollars.

Paperwork’s anything but a laughing matter
Looking in the dictionary, I find that junk is a traditional Chinese seagoing vessel. That is true but I don’t think that is what I meant. However, I have seen some junk drawers, perhaps just like yours, which could hold everything, including a Chinese ship.