Organize Right Now
By Lea Schneider, Professional Organizer

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Lea Schneider is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Association of Food Journalists.

Lee provides hands-on organizing and organizational consulting through her company, Organize Right Now, at www.organizerightnow.com, and her favorite project is the kitchen.


Just Released!

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

Lea Schneider's advice, as seen here on What’s Cooking America, in Woman’s Day Magazine, and in Better Homes and Garden’s Kids’ Rooms will help you get started. This E-Book will help you map out a plan, and learn how to stay organized with everything from bedrooms to closets to homework time.

Order now on her website at www.organizerightnow.com.
 


Contact Information:
Lea Schneider
Organize Right Now LLC
Member National Association of Professional Organizers
Pensacola, Florida
www.organizerightnow.com
850-477-2582

 


 


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.