Modified Freezer Cooking Day...

In my exploration of many blogs I have heard great things about a freezer cooking day.  Only problem is that I do not have an entire day to devote to cooking... no matter how much I can fill my freezer with entrees.  So while I am love with the idea of having home cooked meals with out the hassle on a weeknight, I had not figured out how to do it until recently.

So I can up with my modified freezer day, it goes like this:

• I have a list of recipes I would like to cook to freeze.  
• Each weekend while I am working on school work, laundry, or watching the Georgia game, I make a triple batch of 1-2 of the recipes.
• Then I repeat each weekend that we are home.

After three weekends of trying this.  I LOVE it.  I already have five different options in the freezer, as well as lunches made for the week... and I don't even feel like I lost any time! (Helps that I have an amazing husband to do the dishes).  

It is something to try!  And if you do... let me know how it goes.  Currently it is saving us time and money!

Organizing spaces... our "pantry"

Our pantry is really more than our pantry since it is all we have for storage.  It is our linen closet, coat closet, cleaning storage, stockpile and more.  In light of this it was at the top of my list to get organized... we were at the point you could barley get in the closet... eeek!

First thing I did was clear out each shelf, one at a time, and organize into three categories: keep, throw away, and move to another location (see STUFF post).

Then I wiped down each shelf.

After that I cleaned the floors.

Last I relabeled the shelves.  They had been labeled before, but after some reorganizing they needed a little tweeking.

The whole process took me about an hour... but it was well worth it.  The "pantry" is far more functional for our needs and I can find things quickly.

Next... I will be reorganizing the fridge and freezer... what will you be organizing???

Organizing spaces… Series!

Whether you live in 500 square feet (like usJ), or not, space is almost always at a premium.  You always need more space.  Exactly a year and three months ago we moved here, and we got our place really organized!  But over time life happens… and things slowly start to disorganize.

One of my problems when I clean is that I have trouble cleaning just one thing or one area, or just straightening something up… I try to do a deep cleaning every time of everywhere. Even in a place as small as ours that does not work!  For example I start to put laundry away and all of a sudden I am cleaning out our entire closet, then reorganizing all the drawers, where the towels are stored...  It is good to have a perfectly reorganized closet, but when there are other priorities being overlooked while I am cleaning my closet… that is where the problem comes in.

In light of this I have decided to do an organizing spaces series.  Each week I will clean and reorganize ONE area a week and write about how I do it.  Here are the spaces that you can expect to see:

·      Fridge/freezer

·     “Pantry”

·      bathroom storage

·      Bookshelves

·      “home office”

·      Under TV storage

·      Under coffee table storage

·      Kitchen cabinets

·      storing clothing

·      under bed

·      my car

·      Andrew’s car

·      My car

 

I was surprised how many places I came up with… if I do this once a week this will take us into the New Year!