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Check out Lea
Schneider's helpful home and kitchen columns below:
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.
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?
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?
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.
Clues for the Coupon Clipper
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Organize My
Leftovers – Please!
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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? If you missed
out on how to detect if you’ve got some really old spices, check out
last month’s column
You
Couldn’t Possibly Be Outdated. Could You?
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.
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.
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