Pampering your Pantry

SPRING into an organized summer!  Let's begin this first week of summer with a fully stocked pantry for all those hungry mouths to feed, and an organized pantry too. Whether you are living in a cozy cottage with limited pantry space or have a huge walk-in pantry with enough room to dance around in, you still need a "system" that will help maximize and/or minimize your space so that it is easy to see what you have and what you are lacking.

 

Most pantries I have organized have the following problems:

1. Shelves are too deep to see the stuff in the way back.

2. There is not a designated area for "like" things. Everything is stuffed together.

3. The space is so big we don't know what we have.

4. The space is so small we can't see what we have.

5. Lots of product has expired because there is no system in place.

6. My family doesn't put anything back where it belongs.

7. I don't have a place for my Costco/Sam's bulk purchases, so I stuff it in the pantry.

8. I rarely purge or inventory the pantry space, so everything just piles up.

 

If any of these problems sound like you and your pantry, then it's time for a little pampering in the pantry department. Your pantry should be a closet in your home that is tidy, easy to see what you have and easy to inventory when it's time to restock. 

 

Here are some suggestions for making your pantry space "sing" and help you find some freedom in this very important area for you and your family.

 

CONTAIN IT

One thing I have found that helps organize messy spaces and helps me create space for more things, is by containing most things. If you are a family who loves "on the go snacks" you can regain much space by using baskets or bins to store all snacks together.  Purge boxes because they are bulky and dump all snacks into a bin. Boxes take up a lot of space in a pantry and when you have an open container like a basket or bin you can SEE what you have left and you will know when to replenish.

Also, containing pasta's and cereals and baking supplies in similar containers that stack well will help maximize your space and keep small things from getting lost in the way back.

 

ORGANIZE BY SHELF

Designate each shelf to a different category. This helps you know where to look when you are making pasta for the family dinner, or baking cookies for your Bible study.  Give everything in your pantry a "home" so that you know where it lives and where to put it back. Labeling your shelves is another way to remember where things live.

 

INVENTORY OFTEN

Your pantry (and your frig) are truly the "action central" of your kitchen.  These two areas should be stocked and ready for daily living, for last minute dinners and parties and for all those hungry mouths in your family.  When you have an organized pantry, and you inventory often, you know when and how much you need to replenish so that you are shop "ready" when it's time to visit your local grocery store. Also, when you inventory regularly, you save money and time. You won't be buying duplicates of items or find yourself running back to the grocery for that box you forgot. KNOW what you have and be prepared.

 

Pampering your pantry takes a little time and effort, but it's worth it to invest in some tools, some purging and some practice. ORGANIZE U (www.organizeuco.com) loves helping clients pamper their pantries. Give us a call today and together we will SPRING into summer with a well stocked and organized pantry.

 

Happy Organizing!
Kim B.

 

 

 

Organize U is here for YOU this Fall



Back To School Tips!

It's hard to believe it's that time of year again! The aisles at Target and numerous office supply stores are bursting with supplies for the upcoming school year. A new season of fashion is drawing in the eyes of your kiddo's who are asking for that new dress and those new shoes and a cool new backpack. I remember those days so well. I can still smell my new box of crayons like it was yesterday! It's all very exciting and it can be somewhat overwhelming too if you don't have an organized plan in place. The first day of school will be here before we know it, so let's focus on some tips that will help you and your family be prepared for another outstanding new school year.

1. After a summer of staying up late and spending long hot days in the sun, our kids sleeping patterns get a bit off track. A week or so before school starts, get back on track with your school year bedtime routine.

2. BEFORE you go shopping for those new tops and pants and shoes, block a morning to do a whole family closet purge. Purge/donate clothes that do not fit, clothes that are torn or soiled, and the few that were never worn. Go through drawers, hanging clothes and all shoes to make room for your new things. Make a list of what the essential needs are and try to stick to that list. Go ahead now and schedule a clothes maintenance day quarterly throughout the year. This will make your next year an easier transition.

3. Many teachers provide School Supply Lists for their students. If this is the case, stick to that list. This can save you time and money. Some things on the list will need replenishing throughout the year, like paper, pencils and notepads. Go ahead and buy some of those items in bulk so that you save yourself a trip later. Make sure you have an organized place to store your supplies.

4. Save time on busy school mornings by making lunches the night before. Have a drawer in your kitchen that is the lunchbox drawer for snacks and lunch bag/box supplies. This way you will know when you are low on your supplies (because you have one place to look as opposed to a cluttered pantry) and your kids will know where to go to make their lunches.

5. Putting clothes together for the week is another time saver for those morning outfit decisions. Fold together pants, tops, underwear and socks in a drawer or a closet organizer. This will save you time and fashion stress on those busy school mornings.

Be sure to include your kids in the Back To School organizing process and use these opportunities to teach them the importance of planning and being prepared.  Getting back into the school rhythm is such a hectic time of year. A little preparation and teamwork will help you and your family have a successful start of the 2012-2013 School Year! 

Cheers to a wonderful school year kickoff!

Yours truly,

Kim B.

I think everyone should paste this up somewhere for the entire family to See and Do!  Don't YOU? Thank you Simple Organized Living.  Simple...easy...reminder.

Some Resources to Organize YOU!



This is YOUR YEAR!



Below is a super list of websites for organizing resources to help your 2012 get off to an organized start!

GENERAL SUPPLIES

Ikea: http://www.ikea.com/
Target stores: http://www.target.com/

GENERAL OFFICE SUPPLIES

Avery: http://www.avery.com/

MomAgenda: http://www.momagenda.com/

Neat Co.: www.neat.com/products

Office Depot: http://www.officedepot.com/

Office Max: http://www.officemax.com/

Quill: http://www.quill.com/

Staples: http://www.staples.com/

UNIQUE AND BEAUTIFUL OFFICE SUPPLIES

Levenger: http://www.levenger.com/

russell + hazel: http://www.russellandhazel.com/

See Jane Work: http://www.seejanework.com/


HOME IMPROVEMENT/CLOSETS

Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/

Lowe's: http://www.lowes.com/


ORGANIZING PRODUCTS

Bed, Bath & Beyond: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/

The Container Store: http://www.containerstore.com/

Crate & Barrel: http://www.crateandbarrel.com/

Current Catalog: http://www.currentcatalog.com/


Hold Everything: http://www.holdeverything.com/

Lillian Vernon: http://www.lillianvernon.com/

Linens-n-Things: http://www.lnt.com/


OnlineOrganizing: http://www.onlineorganizing.com/

Organize.com: http://www.organize.com/

Organized A to Z: http://www.organizedatoz.com/

Pottery Barn: http://www.potterybarn.com/

Rubbermaid: http://www.rubbermaid.com/

Stack and Stacks: http://www.stacksandstacks.com/

Storables: http://www.storables.com/

SCRAPBOOKING

Creative Memories: http://www.creativememories.com/

Cheers to a New Year!  Will a little less clutter and a lot more peace!

Simply Yours,
Kim B.

Notebooks

Are you a note taker? 
I am a BIG TIME note taker.  I take notes in church, from the radio, while watching TV, or whenever I need to write something down so that I don't forget it later.  We have so much information coming at us all the time, and it's really hard some days to keep up!  AMEN?  So ya know what I do?  I keep little notebooks in my purse, book bags, car console and on my nightstand.  Small enough to keep my purse from overflowing and big enough to take down a substantial amount of information when needed.

Notebooks are great to have on hand when someone needs to give you directions, a phone number or a date for your calendar.  When you're on the go, sometimes it's much easier to have pen and paper ready.  IPhones and Blackberry's are good for jotting down quick information too, but we don't always have time to pull up the app, and type. The good old fashion pen and pad has proven to be the best solution for me. Below is a photo of the notebooks I like best.  The brands I use are called Hot Chocolate and/or
Studio C.  Both can be purchased at your local Target or CVS stores.  I simply love their whimsical and colorful presentation. And two other fabulous features are their stretch straps that keep the pages protected and closed as well as an inside pocket for extra notes or business cards. 

Cute! Useful! Economical! And they pack a purposeful punch. 

What are you waiting for? Go shopping and get your thoughts and note taking covered!

You don't want to miss another incredible piece of information do you?

This little tool could be the beginning of the rest of your organized life (and thoughts!).

 

Don't forget to buy one in every color!!



5,000 Digital Photo's?

 

I bet you have a million pictures just sitting on your computer at home?  Am I right? If you are like me, and you love taking pictures, you've probably accumulated enough to fill 1000's of albums.  I'll bet if you layed those albums side by side, fillled up with all your memories, they could  probably reach from here to Texas!  That's A LOT of pictures.

If you're like me, you probably have some of those photo's in folders on your computer, some labeled with titles, some with dates and some with a series of numbers that give you no clue as to what is what. Day after day you say to yourself.." THIS WEEK, I'm gonna organize all my photo's on my computer!"  And then another year goes by and you've accumulated another 1000 photo's.  Sound familiar?

Wherever you may be in the process of gaining some control of all your precious memories (or not), let's look at some things we can do today to make the process easy and once and for all, give those pictures a real home.

• First of all, choose a software program that can help you organize your photo's.  There are a number of programs to choose from, but for starters, here are a few that I think are good.  Picasa is a good free option, and iPhoto is great too.  These programs help you do some basic editting and organizing.
• Next, decide how you would like to organize your photo's.  You can group them into chronological order (by date), or alphabetically (by category), giving each folder a title (ex: Kids/Kentucky Vacation 2011/Scenary, etc.).  Or both.
• Label your photo's with a description.   Give each photo a name and date.  For instance the lable for this photo below would look like this....20110401-Miles.  That way, when the computer sorts your photo's alphabetically, they will also come up in chronological order.

• The most important tip for organizing your photo's on your computer is USE YOUR DELETE BUTTON! You may think that every picture you took has value, and perhaps they do.  But it's so much easier to manage a reasonable amount of EXCELLENT pictures, as opposed to 1000's of just O.K. shots.  Use your delete button and wipe out all those out of focus shots, duplicates and bad shots.  This will help you cut down on your snap happy clutter and you will value the ones that you keep so much more! 
• Back up your pictures!  You should have an external hardrive for your computer to backup ALL photo's (and documents).  You can save pictures to a disk, external hardrive or an online site (ex; Snapfish, Shutterfly, etc.). I actually prefer both.  My pictures are stored on my computer hardrive, backed up to my external unit, and over time, I've saved many to an online website.  Online websites also make it easy to share mulitiple photo's with your friends and family and to create fun albums and gifts for people you love.

Getting organized is a matter of time, and your memories are worth it!  Set a goal to have all your digital pictures purged, sorted, dated and named by a certain time period.  Then break down the project by weeks.  In no time, you will have created an online photo storage that is ready for the albums you want to create or the family reunions you will attend. 

Keep taking pictures!  But don't forget to take some time to manage your memories too.

Got Avery Labels?

What do I do with ALL these Photo's??

Memories...we love them. 

We want to frame every single one we possibly can. We get snap happy at every birthday party, every graduation, every trip around the world, and every "first everything"! And before we know it, we are knee deep in pictures, copies of pictures, doubles, triples, and boxes spilling out with all of those wonderful MEMORIES!

If I hear it once a week with a client, I hear it 10 times...."What do I do with ALL these photo's?"  Stop taking pictures?  No...  That's not possible. We love to capture life too much.  Photography is one of my favorite hobbies and I know the value in the 150 you take to get that ONE perfect shot! Thankfully today, we live in the world of Digital.  This is much more manageable than the old world of film and negatives and really really bad shots that we have to pay for. Life is improving in the department of photo memorabilia, but there are still all those pictures you took prior to the era of digital.

As I was perusing my own spilling over stash of old and new pics, I thought I'd share with y'all some of the ways I keep my photo memories organized, stored and pared down to a workable amount. 

1. Find a large space (dining room table, card table, utility room counter tops, etc.) where you can spread all those memories out before you to begin your project.

2. Go through each box and purge out ALL bad out of focus shots, old negatives (when was the last time you searched for an old pic on a negative?) and duplicates.

3. Once you have shaved off a layer of photos that are not necessary, begin sorting by category.  You can sort by year if you have labeled them well enough to know what year it is, or if you have a general idea of the time frame. Or,you can sort by groups (Travel, Family, Kids, Grand kids, Holidays, Archives, etc.).

4. Buy photo boxes or clear large shoe box size containers to store your photo's by category.

5. Label your boxes so that when you need that one specific photo for a project or to frame, you will know exactly where to find it.

6. Designate a closet in your house that is just for photo memorabilia. This will help keep those pictures in ONE PLACE and not stuffed here there and everywhere!

7. Set some goals for your pictures for the new year.  What do you want to do with all those memories?  Put them in an album?  Begin Creative Memories cropping parties? Organize them into cool photo boxes and use to decorate bookshelves? Frame and decorate a "Wall of Fame" of pictures old and new? Or simply have them all together, sorted and organized for the occasional project, family reunion, etc.? 

Something I like to do with my pictures is have a basket or a barrel or an old antique suitcase that sits in the family room full of random photos for family and friends to look through for fun. We have all these memories, but how often to we sit down and look back and have a laugh or two? 

The skies the limit on what you can do with all those pictures. But the hardest part is just to BEGIN.  Now that you have some direction, get out your calendar and set a date to stroll down memory lane! 

Let's make 2011 the year that we don't make "Making Memories" just another way to clutter up our lives.  Your pictures need a home too : )

Happy Organizing!

  

Make Room for the Car!

GOT CARS?

Does this picture look familiar?  If so, you are not alone. Nine out of every ten houses that have a garage, rarely let the car live in it's very own room. Why?  Because it has become for most of us, a dumping ground for everything that we do not know what to do with!  There are thousands of cars around the world crying out for their very own room! But as consumers, we keep packing in more stuff in their very space. Unless you are saving yourselves a lot of money in monthly storage fees by using your garage for your own YOU-STORE-IT space, then it's time to let out the junk and make room for the CAR!

I know, it can be a bit overwhelming and you don't know where to begin. Never fear...today is a new day!  Today we're gonna gain some victory in your most valuable space for "overflow storage" and show your hot wheels some respect.
This weekend is Labor Day, and if you plan to have a "stay cation" with the family, then it could be the perfect time to get things in order at home as the new school year kicks off. Multiply the work of your hands with all the other hands that live with you. Working together gives the entire family responsibility, and it cuts your work time in half. Let's make this a "Take Back the Garage weekend"!

First things first....load up on some ice cold drinks, gather enough rags for each family member, and pull out the garbage bags, garbage cans and the broom.  Once you have all the supplies you'll need then open the garage door and let's begin. 
I always begin every job that involves organization and rearrangement by PURGING. The best way to see your space in full, is to pull everything out in the light of day (weather pending) and begin the process of elimination.  I will bet that almost
40 % of your stuff will find a new home in the garbage or Goodwill.  Wanna bet?

After you've eliminated everything that is definitely rubbish, is not useful, or has outgrown your family, then begin by categorizing what's left.  Stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, or Walmart carry a variety of shelving systems that will help you go UP with your storage to make more room for the CAR!  Before you begin your work day, do some research online or at your store of choice to see what systems work best with your budget and your space.  Next we will begin by sorting into different categories.

Categories for most garages will include:
Gardening (pots, soil, bug sprays, etc.)
Sports (balls, mitts, tennis rackets)
Toys (outdoor toys, small riding vehicles, etc.)
Biking Equipment (helmets, water bottles, etc.)
Boating/Fishing (if you have a boat)
Lawn (mower, weeder, rakes, edgers, etc.)
Tools
These are basic categories most families will have, but you may also need a section for decorations, Sam's/Costco supplies, or laundry (if your laundry room is in the garage).  Containers for each section can also be found at the stores mentioned above.  You may need a variety containers to fit your various items. Label containers with a label maker so you know where to return your things. Assign each family member to a category or two, and have them organize that particular space as efficiently as possible.  Remember, we're making room...FOR THE CAR!

Once you are purged, sorted by category, and contained, give the garage a good sweep and clean up of excess debris.  Any items like decorations or memorabilia that do not fit inside your home, may also be contained up high on shelves in tubs or containers. Now that wasn't so bad, was it?  Give yourself a pat on the back, grab the keys, and move the car into it's desired space. I'll bet you still have time for a cookout and a ballgame on T.V.!

And most importantly, your shiny automobile is...SMILING : )