Do you ever find yourself in a huge mess- say moving, for example- and you vow (in the midst of that unorganized disaster) that you will never allow that same scenario to sneak up on you again? Well, here I am and here it is again. BLAH…
There is so much to be said about staying on top of tasks, especially with 3 small children and a crippled husband.
My recipes are a mess. Some of them are on cards, some are in magazines, some are in cookbooks, and some are just clipped off the chocolate chip bag.
I really want to get them all organized into the same type of system. What do you guys think works best? Do you put all of your recipes that you love on cards? Or do you leave some in magazines? Obviously I am not gonna throw out my cookbooks so do you just mark the ones in your cookbook you love or do you put them on index cards as well?
Help, please=)
When I was growing up and, as a teenager, began sleeping til noon on the weekends, I would rise to always find my dad say “The day’s half over.”
I never knew what he meant until I had children. Personally, I feel like the day flows better if I rise before my children. However, I have been struggling to do so. I am fine to get up at 6 to go exercise, but 5 a.m. has been my goal for quite some time. And today, I did it!
And now…at 7:30a.m., I have read my Bible passage, done my study, prayed, memorized a Bible verse (1 Pet. 5:10- I already knew verses 8-9 but wanted to add that last verse onto it!), done a load of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, and been to the gym! Hooray for productivity!
I feel like I also must add that when David told me last night “If you set your alarm for 5 a.m. and wake me up, then you are getting up too! No more snooze button!” That kinda helped to motivate me=)
The kitchen is looking better by the minute. I am so into it now that I am having to remind myself to eat and drink. I feel like I am nesting and I am not even pregnant. I wanted to share some insight on how I did what I did.
First I started out by emptying everything! EVERYTHING! Everything has it’s place and everything in my kitchen needed to find its place. Once I took everything out of the cabinets, I separated them into categories. For example:
Appliances:
Bakeware:
Entertaining:
After that, I needed to begin to find a place for it all. I remembered what Mrs. Walker said in Redeeming The Time to not necessarily put all the cups together and all the bakeware together, etc…coffee cups don’t necessarily have to go next to the glasses and coffee doesn’t necessarily have to go next to tea. Instead put your coffee filters, coffee, and coffee cups in one cabinet. This saves time when you want to make a cup of “joe”. Also, I put baby bottles with baby formula, baby food, a bottle warmer, jarred baby food, and cereal. I love it that way!
A note on spices. My spices were in dire needs of help. Everything was flung everywhere and nothing was stored in a tidy fashion. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself:
Now…I shall confess. When I am not losing my mind with unorganization, I am pretty anal about my spices. I have a system that works for me. Wanna see?
First I separate by color:
Then I make sure that all the labels are facing out so that I don’t have to search when I need them:
The end result:
A before and after:
Pots and Pans before:
And after (I even switched cabinets here cause it just wasn’t working):
I have a before and after of the medicine cabinet as well but you can’t really tell the difference over the computer.
In conclusion, one day of hard work has helped me to make things easier for myself and my family from now on. Given we keep it that way…
P.S. The response of my children following this day-long charade:
Forget cleaning, Mom! Let’s hit the beach!
Do ya reckon they need haircuts?
And so begins another week. I love the start of a new day… as well as a new week. As a believer I cling so tightly to the truth of new mercies every day. And today is a new day. Every day that I spent unwisely last week is thankfully forgotten by God’s grace.
This week I am going to try to do some spring cleaning. I am going to focus on a different room each day. It isn’t easy since our home is somewhere betwen 3000 and 4000 square feet. I am really doing a good job accepting the fact that as long as I have infants and toddlers life is going to be messy. With that said, God has helped to surrender that control issue I have with cleanliness or the desire to have a perfect home. I say desire because it is never something that I have accomplished=) Finally, I am confortable with the fact that windex and clorox wipes will be my best friends for the next many years, as I once heard Carolyn Mahaney say LOL.
Well, wish me luck. I don’t know how much is going to get accomplished as I am always needed by someone. But I guess it’s the thought that counts, right?
