Wow!

I can actually walk into my walk-in closet! Yay!

Organizing

I spent many hours today, trying to organize my stupid, stupid coupons. Okay I have a love/hate relationship with my coupons. I love to save money, I hate to have to use coupons to do it. It is incredibly difficult, time consuming, and stressful for me to try to organize anything, including coupons. I just was born without the Organization Gene. I have come to terms with that, finally, but it doesn't make it any easier.

I know I will never, ever be organized. It just isn't possible. I am going to, however, continue to take baby steps towards being as organized as I can be.

My attempts at organization

I've really been working on getting the house more organized so it will be easier for me to find things. That way, I won't buy stuff I already have and it will make menu making and meal planning much easier and quicker. I am finding that I am spending a huge amount of time on those things and I have to find an easier way.

So far, I have started organizing binders for my most-used recipes, grocery receipts, grocery lists, and price lists. I am making price lists of all the things that we buy on a regular basis, so I will know when a sale is a good one and when a coupon on the name brand will save us money over the generic. Today, it took me much less time to get my weekly grocery list together than it normally does. I also had prices for almost everything, so it was easy to see how much money we needed. This is still a work in progress, but I'm going to keep chipping away. My next goal is to make a coupon organizing system that works for me. So far, I haven't had much luck with using envelopes or a coupon organizer. I'm going to see if I can come up with something using a binder and page protectors, since Mike had a bunch left over from classes at work.

I have also decided to take all the cans out of the can cabinet and relocate them to the pantry. The problem with the can cabinet is that it is a lower cabinet. I have a hard time getting down there to see what is in it (especially with my hamstring problems) and cans are always falling to the back and sitting there for years. Alex, Hannah and Shauna got all the cans out for me and I checked all the expiration dates. While most were still current, I found some from as far back as 2004! I also found out that we have plenty of tuna to fall back on, for busy days. I might even try a tuna casserole, which we have never had before.

The pantry is also still a work in progress, but it is looking much better. My old system was just put everything in there, where ever it fit. As you can imagine, that didn't work well. Stuff kept getting behind other stuff and I would buy it over and over. Plus everything would fall off the shelves and end up getting stepped on and crushed. I still have a long way to go, but I am happy with the progress made so far.

Back to School Charts

I just spent about an hour and a half, preparing daily checklists for the four youngest kids. I'm hoping that this will make things easier in the mornings, since all of them have ADHD and tend to forget everything. I finally found some charts that you can edit online, rather than having to print them and write everything in. This way it was easy to customize them to each child without having to write the same information in over and over.

I even made one for Luke, who is going into junior year. He probably won't be happy with it and might not use it, but at least he has the option.

Now I just have to figure out where to hang them for easy access. I'm thinking the front door would be best, I'm just not sure how to attach them. I don't want them falling off every time someone slams the door, which is every time they close it. I'll have to think about that a little and "problem solve" like I always tell the kids!