Recap Week 8 – Meal Planning

Like I said, I’ve been working on planning my meals ahead of time. I really don’t enjoy coming home from work and having no idea what to make for supper. But, it needs to become a habit, so it’s something I’ll have to continue to work on. But I did come up with this to make it a little easier:

I’ve designed this to-do list for Monday through Sunday with spaces for morning tasks and afternoon/evening tasks because that’s how I like to break up my day. In the Sunday spot, I wrote in a reminder to take a day to spend with your family, not rushing around trying to get anything else done. You could also use the Sunday spot to write in a verse you’d like to meditate on for the week. And, I’ve included a line for meal planning!

Sunday evening (or sometimes Monday morning) I try to take a few minutes to write down the things I would like/need to accomplish for that week. This also is the time for me to plan my meals, check the freezer and add any missing ingredients to my store list.

Rather than printing out a page for each week (which you could do if you wanted to plan a few weeks at a time) I printed out one page and put it in a cheap (less than $5, found near the poster frames) 11×14 floating frame from Walmart. Now, I can write on it with dry-erase markers and change it each week. Because the frame is larger than the design, there is also room to write notes or doodle, and you could even add a page of scrapbook paper behind to pretty-up the frame.

Before filling the frame, I wrote in a few of the things that I do on a weekly basis. For example, “every” Wednesday and Saturday mornings I “plan to” do laundry, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I vacuum the downstairs, etc. I wrote that on the paper under the glass, so I don’t have to write it in every week.

To download your own, click an image below:

You can find this week’s challenge for organizing contact info at Home Storage Solutions 101.

Filed under: 52 Weeks, downloads, food, organization, Printables by Rachel
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I actually started working on this a couple weeks ago, but I think it might be helpful for those participating in 52 Weeks to an Organized Home. Now, I’m not saying that in order to organize your kitchen, you have to go out and buy some pretty glass containers. If you want to, great, but look around at what you have first. Do you have some cardboard boxes still laying around after Christmas? If they’re plain, just trim them down to size. If they have writing on them, cover them with scrapbook paper/wrapping paper/whatever you have. Do you have extra canning jars? Or maybe you’re already using plastic storage but need to label.

Here’s a tip if you are planning on buying containers: If you need quite a few and know that a store regularly stocks the item, buy them 1 or a few at a time, whenever you can rather than dump a ton of money on them at once. I did this for my tea jars. I have lots of tea, but didn’t want to buy a cart full of jars when I was also getting groceries, so I’ve been buying them two or three at a time and slowly cleaning out my tea cupboard.

Note: You can also take advantage of the current packaging. In the jar on the left I have the back panel of a box of tea so I can remember what the tea is good for.

Here’s the scoop: I’ve created a simple, but pretty label for you to download and print out. There are three different sizes on one sheet, or you can download a single label and make it whatever size you want. You can find sticky paper to print on, or just use regular paper and glue it on. (I went with a repositionable sticker sheet that I had left over from school because (1) I already had it and (2) I may want to change the contents sometime.) The labels are blank, so you can print them out and hand-write on them, or pull them into an editing program like Gimp (Free), Photoshop, etc. and add your own text. You can also change the black to a color if you want to, using either of those programs.

Click to open pdf and save:
Single Label or Label Sheet

Filed under: organization, Printables by Rachel
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So, I’ve been toying with the idea of putting some downloadable wallpapers, made using some of my photography, on my blog.

I started out with a background with some of my birds photos. There are two sizes, one for regular screen and one wide screen. If you are interested, you can find them on the left side of the blog, under “About Me” and the links to my website portfolio.

Let me know what you think of this idea.

Filed under: downloads by Rachel
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