A change in season means a rotation of the wardrobe, and unless your child has plenty of room in his or her dresser or closet, you will likely be storing the finished season’s garments and bringing out the new season’s clothing.  The trick is to do it in such a way that you don’t lose track of items for which you’ve paid good money.  Whether you misplace items or simply purchase too many of the same kind of item, it is a sad waste of precious family resources.  By spending an hour or two organizing and inventorying your child(ren)’s clothing, you will discover both what you have and what you still need for the upcoming season.

Here are some steps and suggestions to make the process as easy as possible.

1.  Make a plan and gather supplies.  All it takes is an adequate amount of storage in drawers or in a closet, a large tote (or two), and a convenient yet hidden place to store it (possibly in his/her closet, in the attic/basement, at the bottom of the linen closet).  We also keep a long, shallow tote under the bed for pre-season rotation (e.g. short sleeve shirts for when it starts to warm up).   Have some paper and  pencil ready for taking notes about your findings.  Keeping track is a lot easier when you write it down.

2.  Separate each child’s clothing. Keeping them separate will make the inventory process much easier.

3.  Sort all of one child’s clothing into piles (shirts, shorts, etc), by seasons (spring/summer, fall/winter), and by size.

4.  Make a list.  List different items of clothing in the left-hand column (long-sleeve shirts, short-sleeve shirts, pants, jeans, shorts, skirts, socks, etc). I make columns for 2 or 3 sizes because I buy ahead (see example). I also make a column that says “Need” so I know what I still need. (Members to ListPlanIt.com will find several types of Clothing Inventories in the Home Management section.)

5.  Count the items in each pile and record on your inventory. I once found that I had 16 pairs of shorts in a size 4 for my boy because I had bought them on sale but had not inventoried them.  You may realize that you only have 1 t-shirt that will fit your daughter for the upcoming season. If a child is low in a particular item of clothing, decide how many he/she needs to get by and write it in the “Need” column.

6.  Replace all of the clothing in neat, folded piles either in the drawers, in a transition place (like an under the bed box), or back into the tub. Label the tub with gender and size.

7.  Create a shopping list based on each child’s “needs” for the season. Keep it in your wallet or in a notebook that you store in your purse. That way when you visit a store, you can pull out your list and look for the best prices and the right articles.

Free Printables!

ListPlanIt has everything you need to inventory your child’s (and your own) clothing.  Enjoy our Clothing Storage Labels and Clothing Inventory today for free.   Simply click here to access your own printable page.  For the labels, print on adhesive backed paper or just simply tape a square on the tote.  Then either remove or place a new one over the top as the child grows.

Jennifer Tankersley is the founder of ListPlanIt.com, which has hundreds of lists and planning pages including to dos, schedules, inventories, worksheets, and calendars, all geared toward helping you live a more organized life.

Organizing & Inventorying Children’s Clothing + free printables! is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

After Christmas and the winter birthdays, I tend to do a toy purge. There are so many broken toys, various pieces of junk, etc, etc everywhere and it just about drives me bananas. While I’m tossing and donating toys, I keep the momentum going and start going through all of my dressers. …and I’m not talking clothes. You see, our house is full of dressers — a dresser for this, and a dresser for that and a dresser for just about anything you could think of. They are wonderful storage pieces, they are often found for free on the side of the road and they can be painted and accessorized to fit into the room in which they are placed.

Example #1 The Sidebar Dresser

This dresser was found for free on the road and given a thorough cleaning, a coat of white paint and some sanding and planing to keep the drawers from sticking (Thank you Alex!). This “sidebar” is placed under a mirror ($5 at a yard sale) and adjacent to our dining room table. Contrary to the traditional china and flatware, our sidebar is filled with food styling and accessorizing pieces, along with a bit of decor and candles. It holds things that I will use throughout the year, and anything that has NOT been used gets tossed or sent to the basement for long term storage. These drawers are high priced real estate in this house and I want them to be beautiful and organized inside.

Curious about how to create a vignette that makes your dresser read more sidebar than dresser?  You can check out my recipe for a  Sidebar Vignette right HERE!

Example #2  The Tools, Art and Games Dresser

A calendar, organizer pockets and bins and buckets make turn this dresser into a full organization station!!

This dresser was also a freebie on the side of the road and it is one of my favorites – check out that detailing!  The bottom 2 drawers hold board games that we actually play (if they don’t get played, they don’t maintain their spot in the dresser!)  The 3rd drawer up (2nd drawer down) is chock full of art supplies.  This drawer is an easy one to wheedle down after the holidays.  Simply pile a bunch of the supplies on the art table and let the kids go at it for a few hours!

Finally, the top drawer is perhaps the most opened drawer in the house.  It is a tool drawer, but not a junk drawer, full of batteries, hammers, nails, screwdrivers, hot glue gun and more!  Everything we use on a weekly basis goes in this drawer.  Anything superflous is given a new home quickly!

Example #3  The Sidebar Entertainment Center

This dresser is an actual sidebar, but we use it for storing vases and plastic bags (left) a cd player and cds (right), along with art supplies (more of them!) and tools (more of them too!).  The dresser was painted with a strie technique and when worked into a gallery wall, it completes a pretty pictures, don’t you think?

Example #4  The Shoe Dresser

Our house has too many shoes.  Period.  We can’t help it though.  We need three little pairs of school shoes, three little pairs of rain boots and three little muddy junk shoes, not to mention a variety of work and home shoes for Dad and a larger variety of muddy garden boots, cute equestrian wannabe boots and workable flats for Mama.  We just have a lot of shoes.  The solution?  A shoe dresser.  Another freebie from the side of the road, this dresser holds a plethora of shoes and even devotes one drawer to winter hats and gloves.  It makes getting out the door slightly easier!

A dresser for this and a dresser for that makes our life function a bit better, not to mention being a free organizational tool!  Next time you see a dresser in the trash, at an auction for 10 bucks or at half price night at the thrift store, consider how YOU might turn it into a tool to help Organize Your Life!

Amy Renea is a freelance design writer, blogger and commercial photographer based out of Hershey PA. When she isn’t chasing three little boys around the house, she is chasing three chickens around the yard. You can find her award winning blog at A Nest for All Seasons and her photography portfolio at ALLENAIM.com.

Dressers Make Excellent Storage Containers is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

A fundamental premise of Economics is that everything has an opportunity cost . If I buy a chocolate bar, I’m not buying a pop with that money. But while we’re used to opportunity cost when it comes to money, we don’t tend to think of it when it comes to time.  And yet the time crunch can be just as acute as the budget crunch. When you schedule your own lives, or your kids’ lives, with many activities, you’re simultaneously denying yourselves whatever else you could have done with that time.

So much for Economics. Now let’s turn to Math and calculate how much disposable time the average mom with school-aged kids has in the course of a week. Weekday mornings, before school, with the chaotic rush are a write off. Kids get home around 4, and most are in bed by 9, so that leaves five hours per weekday, assuming parents are home that whole time. On the weekends, let’s give you twelve hours a day. Over the course of the week, that adds up to forty-nine hours. For comparison’s sake, the kids spend about forty hours in school and with school peers. So it’s almost even.

But if you subtract an hour a day for chores and hygiene, an hour each weekday for homework, four hours a week for meetings or time with other adults, and the two hours a day minimum the average child spends in front of a screen, you’re down to about nineteen hours a week.  In those nineteen hours you have to teach them to become independent, to be responsible, to not give in to peer pressure, to handle money well, to be nice to their friends, and to get along with their siblings. That’s a heavy task.

That’s why I’m adamant about family time. It is more important than sports lessons, music lessons, or even extra academic work. And the more time your child spends away from your family, the more time he or she spends immersed in a culture which is often anti-family, consumer oriented, and shallow.

I was talking with some parents who have their daughters in competitive skating. They’re at the rink four nights a week, all over the dinner hour. I asked one mom, “How do you ever eat as a family?” She laughed and admitted, “Oh, we don’t. We just grab food on the run.”

Their daughters may be enjoying skating, but when they’re adults, what will matter most is not whether or not they could land a double axel but whether or not they were emotionally healthy and responsible. And that kind of character is forged in the family. Teachers and coaches can help, but kids need their parents.

Let’s stop tying our kids to a schedule which denies them so much family time. They may enjoy it, but in the long run, what is the most important goal for you as a parent?  Some families may be able to squeeze everything in, and more power to you if you succeed!  But I have seen families who have thought they were doing it well, only to find fifteen years later that their kids really struggled. It’s a big risk. It may be one you want to take, because your child is gifted at something. Just realize it’s a risk. Count the cost first, so that you can be sure that you are doing everything you can to preserve your family life in the time you have left. But I hope most of you may choose just to hang out at home and maybe, occasionally, throw a football around together. Personally, I think that’s more rewarding.

Sheila Wray Gregoire is the author of five books, including the upcoming The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex. A syndicated parenting columnist and popular speaker, she still spends most of her time homeschooling her two teenage daughters. You can find her at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, where she blogs everyday about marriage and parenting challenges!

Overscheduled Families is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

So many of us menu plan in one way or another. Either on a big board in the kitchen, using some sort of online tool, or good old fashioned pen and paper. We write down the meals we’d like to feed our families for the week, then create our shopping list to guide us through the store.

When you stop to think about it, you’ll realize that we’re often doing quite a bit of backwards thinking. What do I want to eat? And what ingredients do I need to create that meal?

Instead of thinking about our meals in a backwards fashion (working from the final product to the beginning) maybe we should work forward every once in a while. This method makes menu planning simpler by controlling how many ingredients are on your shopping list, and by keeping track of how many of those ingredients are on sale. This can also help to keep food costs quite low.

Here are the exact steps I take when forward-thinking my menu plan:

1. Determine the ingredients you want to include for the week

You can use as many or as few as you’d like. Look through the weekly store ads and see if anything enticing is on sale. Or consult your pantry and figure out the ingredients you already have on hand that need to be used up. Create a list of ingredients you want to use this week.

2. Get creative with the listed ingredients

Start thinking of ways you can use each ingredient as the star of a meal or consider ways you can use them in their simplest form, without a lot of added energy or effort on your part. Have some broccoli, eggs, beans, chicken, whole-wheat pasta, and parmesan cheese on your list? Make a soup out of the broccoli, the eggs into a frittata, and the beans can be the key ingredient in a stew. Do your best to keep to your original list and get creative with it.

3. Create your plan

Start filling in your menu plan with the meals you have just thought of. From this list of six ingredients, I can easily come up with a whole slew of meal ideas, a few of which are: broccoli & pasta frittata with parmesan cheese, bean & broccoli soup, baked chicken with broccoli & beans, and parmesan-crusted chicken over white bean mash or whole-wheat noodles.

By forcing ourselves to think in a forward way, we can challenge not only the way we approach menu planning, but also we can start to boost our creativity when it comes to thinking about ingredients and meals. There are so many meals that you can create from a minimal amount of ingredients once you start to reframe your mindset on how you approach menu planning. I hope that you’ll take this method and try it out for yourself to see just how simple it can be.

Note from Laura:  many of the recipe sites listed on my resources page have a recipe search feature where you can enter in the ingredients you have on hand and they will provide a list of matching recipe links.

Rachael is the blogger behind KitchenCourses.com and is the author of How to Cook For Yourself: A Complete Beginner’s Guide. She writes about her passion for food, eating well while saving money, and inspires people to get familiar with their kitchens and cook for themselves.

Flip Menu Planning On Its Head By Forward-Thinking Your Meals is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

The following is a post from Mandi of Jungle Deals & Steals.

image: rennes.i

Four years ago, my husband and I moved to the boonies in wild, wonderful West Virginia. A month later, we added our third daughter to our family. I’m not sure which of those really had a bigger impact, but as we got ready for Christmas that year, I realized our shopping strategies were going to have to change.

Gone were the days of running out for a couple of gifts at a time, and a marathon shopping trip didn’t seem exactly realistic anymore either.

It was at that time that I really began to discover the beauty of online shopping. Not just for a gift or two here or there, but for the bulk of my Christmas shopping.

And it worked! I can now snuggle under a warm blanket with a cup of chai tea to do my shopping in relative peace and quiet, saving time and money (and frustration!) in the process.

These days, I do most of my shopping at Amazon.com. They have a wide selection, great prices and free shipping, all winners in my book.

If you’re looking for an alternative to fighting the crowds this year, here are my strategies for saving time and money with Amazon.com:

1. Don’t buy everything today.

Now, only you know which is more important to you in this busy season. If you’re short on time but have plenty of money budgeted for Christmas gifts, then sitting down and buying everything on your list today may be the better choice. It would be nice to have all of that done even before Thanksgiving (or American Thanksgiving, at least)!

On the other hand, if your budget is tight this year — as it is for many of us — then it may be better to watch prices over the next couple of weeks to be sure you’re getting the best price possible. Expect to see great sales on all of the most popular gifts (except, perhaps, the Kindle Fire), and plenty of other items as well.

2. Use Amazon Prime.

The best way to maximize this wait-and-see strategy and avoid paying shipping fees is to sign up for Amazon Prime. If you’ve never had a trial, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial that will take you almost to Christmas Day. With Amazon Prime, you’re eligible for free two-day shipping on most products that are sold and shipped by Amazon.com, so you can pick things up when they’re at their lowest price without worrying about shipping fees. It also means you can pick up last minute gifts without paying exorbitant fees!

3. Focus on items shipped by Amazon.com.

I’ll be honest…99% of what I buy on Amazon is fulfilled by Amazon. There are plenty of other sellers to choose from, and for harder to find products, a third-party seller may be the way to go, but I hate paying for shipping, so I almost always stick with those items that qualify for Super Saver Shipping (when you spend more than $25) or are Prime eligible. I’ve also found Amazon’s delivery estimates to be more realistic than third-party sellers so that I know exactly when something will arrive.

4. Check the Gold Box & Lightning Deals.

There is a new Gold Box deal every day that promises to be significantly discounted. As Amazon counts down to Black Friday, they’re also running amazing Lightning Deals this week. There is a limited number of these available for purchase, and they last just a few hours, so you have to watch them pretty carefully, but if you check in just a couple times a day, you can see what deals are coming up so that you can set a timer to log back in when the deal goes live!

5. Use the Wishlists feature to make your shopping list.

Finally, Amazon has a pretty powerful wishlist feature that you can use to organize your shopping lists. Create multiple lists, mark them as private and even add items from other websites to keep track of what you need to buy and for whom.

Whether you’re looking to save time or money — or even both — Amazon.com is a great way to maximize your time and budget this busy holiday season!

Mandi Ehman is the chief deal finder behind Jungle Deals & Steals, where she and her mom find and share the best Amazon deals every day! She’s also the founder and publisher of Life…Your Way, a magazine-style blog inspiring readers to live intentional lives.

Five Secrets for Saving Time and Money with Amazon.com This Holiday Season is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Christmas is only 6 weeks away. Are you feeling overwhelmed already with everything that you’ve got to get done?

If so, there are plenty of detailed organizers and planners out there to help you break everything down into manageable chunks and to stay on track. Laura has referenced some of the best here, but this article is about an alternative strategy – one I’ve been enjoying for the past few years.

It works on the 80-20 Pareto principle: 80% of your family’s Christmas enjoyment probably comes from 20% of your efforts.

You might have heard of this rule before. I try to use it to focus on the ‘important stuff’ when I’m working but a few years ago I decided to try it when planning for Christmas too.

It was like a breath of fresh air. A weight was lifted.

In a nutshell you cross off 80% of the tasks on your Christmas checklist.

Whether your Christmas organization plan is written down somewhere or buzzing around in your head, it will probably comprise of tasks in the following areas: Cards & Gifts, Menu Planning & Baking and Home Décor & Cleaning.

Now it’s best to keep a few tasks in each category to ensure your Christmas is balanced, but basically for every 5 tasks or every 5 people within a task, choose the most important one and cross out the other 4.

Brutal isn’t it? But it can be done with the benefits of either slashing your $$$ spend and/or your time spend during this pre-Christmas season without losing any of the enjoyment. Here are some ideas of what I mean:

Cards

Cut down the number of cards you send by 80%. Just send cards to people who live far away. Explain your new strategy to friends and family you see regularly so that they don’t feel forgotten. They will probably follow your lead!

Cut down the number of personal notes and Christmas letters you send with cards by 80%. If your cards are pre-printed with your name, just leave it at that other than for special friends and family members that you don’t see very often.

Alternatively avoid the whole Christmas card sending thing altogether. Set up a free blog and post your Christmas wishes, news and family photos there. Then send an explanatory e-mail to your Christmas card list with the blog’s link.

Photo credit: WordRidden.

Gifts

Cross off all the adults from your gift list (or just leave those that really matter). Explain to friends and family that you would like to keep this Christmas as ‘gifts for kids only’. Most will be more than happy and who couldn’t do with spending a bit less this year?

If you can’t bear for the adults in your life to be gift-less, consider making them something as a token gesture rather than wasting money on something they don’t want and don’t need. Think baked goods, jams, pickles, chutneys, photo collages or my favorite, homemade vouchers. If you can get your kids involved, all the better. Then the task is not just another chore, but fun family time.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to bake or be crafty, consider charitable gifts that will change lives. Sites like GoodGifts.org allow you to buy a gift of things like a bike for a midwife in a developing country, a malaria net for a whole family or 50 bowls of rice for hungry children in Africa. You buy the gift in the name of your recipient and they receive a card telling them about the good deed. This is a quick and simple task to perform online.

Buy your remaining gifts online. You will save 80% of the time you would otherwise spend travelling to the shopping mall and standing in queues. You will probably buy less too.

Remember the fewer gifts you buy, the less you spend, the less time you spend shopping, the less time you spend wrapping and the less time you spend organizing storage for all the new ‘stuff’ after Christmas.

Photo credit: Mulad.

Menu Planning & Baking

Cross off 80% of those special meals you hosted last year. Inviting friends and family for drinks and nibbles is perfectly acceptable.

Say no to hosting big parties. Invite only 20% off the guests from last year and hold a more intimate affair.

Cross off 80% of the brunches, starters, side dishes and extras you had last Christmas. No-one will go hungry and you’ll have fewer leftovers to label and store.

Cut down your holiday baking to 20% of what you did last year. Ask your family what they can’t do without (perhaps one item per family member) and stop there. Or only cook what you enjoy – not those fiddly recipes that take hours and make a right mess.

Spend less time in the kitchen and more with your family.

Photo credit: jetalone.

Home Décor & Cleaning

Only decorate the main living room in your home this year. Forget about having decorations everywhere, especially outside. Get the tree and one box of decorations out and let the kids test out their creativity. Remember it has to be fun, not perfect.

Don’t buy decorations if yours are in need of replacement. Make them with your kids. There are plenty of ideas online and again you are turning a chore into quality time.

Avoid any home improvement type tasks at this time of year. Guests should be coming to see you, not your house. Share out the remaining mundane cleaning duties. YOU don’t have to do it all. Aim for 20% of what you did last year by assigning talks to other family members.

Photo credit: alancleaver_2000.

Enjoy A Stress Free Run Up To The Holidays

Christmas is not about becoming stressed out or going into debt to buy presents or decorations or to entertain friends and family. Get your red pen out and start crossing off those tasks. Even if you can’t make the 80% cut, try something. As the weight lifts the Christmas cheer will come rolling in!

Chloe Wilson shares simple steps that work when organizing your home on her blog Get Set Organize. She is searching for an easier way to make organizing tasks fit into a daily routine, otherwise filled with work and family life. If you have any ideas, she would love to hear them!

Cut Down On Christmas Organization By 80% is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

My boys LOVE to go to the library.  We are there once or twice a week.  And just this past week, they each got their own library cards.  They are so excited to be official.  But I knew this would mean we would have to be extra organized in our efforts.  So here are a few tips about keeping your trips to the library organized and fun!

1. Have a designated library bag or basket. This is the basket I have used for years.

It works pretty well, but is heavy to carry when its loaded down with books.  I have a friend who uses one of these collapsible rolling crates.

image credit: Staples

Now that my boys are older (5 and 6) and have their own cards, I have given them the responsibility of carrying their own library bag.  They each picked a backpack and know that they can get “as many books as you can carry.”

2. Let your kids know if there is a time limit.  I’ll admit – sometimes we have to make a quick library trip.  But its helpful to let the kids know this beforehand.  I’ll usually tell them, “Ok, we have some other errands to run, so we only have about 15 minutes to look for books today.”

3. When you can, allow time to browse.  The flip-side to setting a time limit on hurried days is, every now and then, allow plenty of time for your little readers to browse the shelves and discover new books.

It makes the days when you have to set a time limit not seem so bad, because you can remind them that they’ll have more time to look on another visit.

4. Utilize your library’s request/hold service.  As a homeschool mom, most weeks I have several specific books or books covering specific topics for which I am looking.  I try to go online to our library’s website several days before our library trip and request that these books be placed on-hold for me.  In our library, the held books are placed on a shelf right near the front check-out counter.  This ensures that the book you want won’t be checked out by someone else, but also saves lots of time.  This was especially handy for me when I had two rambunctious little boys, ages 1 and 2.  I knew I wouldn’t have time to look through the computer catalog or browse the shelves without causing total chaos as they pulled every book in a 20-foot radius off the shelves.

5. Have a designated place for library books in your home.  At our house, its simply a corner of our family room.  The boys keep their books in their bags or on the coffee table of the family room, unless they are reading them.  I keep my books in the basket.

I do allow them to take the books to bed with them at night, but they know that first thing in the morning they have to return the books to their bags.  In the evenings, when we straighten up the house, if we find any stray library books laying around, everyone, even my husband, knows right where to put them so they don’t get lost in the shuffle.

6. Lastly, hang your library receipt in a place where everyone can see it.  For us, it’s the fridge.  But you might also use a chalkboard or bulletin board – wherever you put important papers or maybe near your family calendar.  This keeps all the details about your library books (like how many you have checked out and when they are due) fresh on everyone’s minds.  It helps ward off the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome.

There you have it … six tips to help keep your library visits organized.  Happy Reading!

Becky blogs at Just a Mom… a place to talk about cleaning and feeding and nurturing and molding … all the good stuff that makes life so much more than “just a life.”

Organize Your Visits to the Library is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Hi, I am Amanda Kuzak from Kuzak’s Closet.  I am a professional organizer and blogger based out of the San Francisco Bay Area and today I wanted to inspire all of you to get your emergency kits ready in honor of Emergency Preparedness Month.

How to Put Together an Emergency Preparedness Kit is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

I’ve been called the “Counter Police” by my beloved husband many times. I just can’t stand it when the kitchen counters are cluttered with appliances, dirty dishes, cell phone chargers, and SCHOOL PAPERS! It drives me absolutely insane!

Then, enter the cute, crafty, child like handwriting papers, first math tests, spelling tests…and the list goes on and on. Not to mention the papers that need to be signed and returned to school, the book orders, Market Day…and yes, that list goes on and on, doesn’t it?!

When my children were 3, and had started preschool, they would come home several days a week with a backpack of treasures. Macaroni necklaces, finger painted turkeys, Christmas trees full of glitter were sprawled on the counters, or nicely stacked to be “put away later”. Then, reality hit me. If I kept every paper, craft, and project that the twins brought home from school, our life would be buried in papers. And, I wouldn’t be able to find what needed to be returned to school.

Enter tool Number One: The trash can.

I know, it’s heartless to throw away my child’s art work-that paper covered with stickers or pencil marks. But in reality, I know it’ll be ok. When I look at my “Keeping Box” now, I am so thankful that I kept the creations that have their handprints on them, an “About Me” paper, or their snowman display that was proudly hung in the hallway by their teachers. I throw away most of their graded homework, random drawings, and a lot of literature that comes home from school. Just as we can’t keep every paper that enters our house, we can’t commit to every outside activity. Sometimes, if the paper is plain white copy paper that is blank on the back, I’ll use it to print coupons.

Tool Number Two: The Keeping Box.

In the “Keeping Box”, I have many school papers and creations I have decided are worth keeping. It might be the “Student of the Week” display we made, pieces of writing that show good effort and hard work, their grade cards and midterm reports, or even some notes from their teachers. The Keeping Box lives in our upstairs closet, and is a medium size moving box. As the year progresses, I set papers or creations into the Keeping Box, and then reevaluate over the summer. Sometimes things are weeded out then, sometimes they get put nicely back in the box. I also go to this box when I want to scrapbook a writing sample or another creation from school.

Tool Number Three: A plastic paper tray.

I have a plastic paper tray in our home office. In this tray goes book orders, Market Day order forms, sports pictures forms, etc. Anything that needs to be returned to school or revisited later goes in the paper tray. I revisit it 2 or 3 times a week to see what needs to be returned or what can be thrown away.

Thankfully, on the last day of school, the art teacher sends home a portfolio of all their artwork through the year. This typically contains 10-12 pieces of art, and it is already in a nice folder that the boys have decorated themselves. It stands up against the wall behind the Keeping Box. I recently took some pieces out to frame for the laundry room.

Storing papers, and keeping those school memories, definitely requires a balancing act. I think it’s important to be reasonable and realistic, without being coldhearted and wishy washy at the same time. What is the long term goal? A display at a graduation party? Scrapbook pages? Show your grandchildren their parents’ artwork someday? Keeping these in mind might help have peace of mind with choosing what to keep and what’s ok to throw away.

Carrie is a pastor’s wife, teacher, and mommy to 8 year old twin boys and a 2 year old princess. I love organizing, cooking, thrifting, and sharing my ideas with others on my blog, My Favorite Finds.

3 Necessary Tools for Paper Organization is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Laura recently shared some of her favorite supper cheats in a Menu Plan Monday post. I love a good cooking cheat! So I asked Laura if I could share some of my favorites with you.

Before we get to the list, let me just say that cooking cheats are very personal. What one person considers a perfectly acceptable short cut, another considers a cooking sin. I was shocked when a someone told me they hate that “yucky” shredded cheese! That’s one of my most used time savers and I don’t think it’s yucky at all.

Do what works for you and your family! We all have different tastes, time and abilities. Take what works for you and leave the rest.

Kitchen Tools for Cheating

Slow Cooker – Everyone knows this is essential, but it’s also helpful to have the right size. If you’re cooking for a larger family, get a 6 quart slow cooker so you can fill it up!

Garlic Press – I used to use jarred garlic. Then I finally bought a decent garlic press. Mine is from Pampered Chef. No chopping, no peeling. It’s as easy as using the jarred kind, but adds so much good flavor.

Sharp Knife – One basic knife is enough. More are useful. If you’ve got a sharp knife, it takes less than a minute to chop an onion or other veggies.

Cooking Cheats

Cook food from frozen (even meat) – I don’t always bother to thaw things. Frozen chicken breasts and hamburgers can be put right on the grill. Frozen roasts, chicken, pork chops etc can be popped into the slow cooker. I know some folks don’t like to do this. Here’s a statement from the USDA on the topic. You’ll have to make your own decision.

Cooking Frozen Foods
Raw or cooked meat, poultry or casseroles can be cooked or reheated from the frozen state. However, it will take approximately one and a half times as long to cook. Remember to discard any wrapping or absorbent paper from meat or poultry.

When cooking whole frozen poultry, remove the giblet pack from the cavity as soon as you can loosen it. Cook the giblets separately. Read the label on USDA-inspected frozen meat and poultry products. Some, such as pre-stuffed whole birds, MUST be cooked from the frozen state to ensure a safely cooked product.

Prepared frozen foods – Frozen meatballs, popcorn chicken, and ravioli are some of my favorite cheats. There are endless possibilities. Combine with a few fresh veggies and a sauce of your choice for a super quick meal.

Bags of shredded cheese – Why shred, if you don’t have to?

Baker’s Joy Cooking Spray – They put the flour in the spray so a quick spray equals greasing and flouring pans.

Skip the measuring – For herbs and seasonings, you can just eyeball the ingredients. Don’t pull out the measuring spoons. Go by look and taste. Trust yourself!

If you really like to cheat (and have dinner taste like you didn’t) check out my eBook, Feast in 15, Speed Cooking Weeknight Dinners.

Use the coupon code OrgJunkie for a 20% discount, bringing the price to just $3.99!

Tiffany King helps families put dinner on the table by sharing recipes, menus with complete grocery lists and cooking tips on her blog Eat at Home. Her husband and 4 kid are her best taste-testers. She is also the author of Feast in 15.

Kitchen Cooking Cheats is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie