|
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.
|