TCO Menu Planning Checklists!
NEW FREE CHECKLISTS FOR MEAL PLANNING! 
We have said it in the Meal Planning Podcast and we’ll say it again.. One of the best ways to eliminate the “What’s for Dinner?” stress during the 4 o’clock hour is to plan! It takes a little time at the beginning, but once it’s done, it saves you time, stress, and money!
That’s right, even money! If you plan your meals, you will only buy what you need to make the meal… No more food going to waste in the refrigerator!
TCO is very excited to bring you Three New Forms you can get for Free from our Resources page!
Master List of Meals – What I love most about this checklist, is it does the thinking for you! You add your favorite family main dishes, side dishes, fruits & vegetables, and desserts. When you start to plan for your week, you can reference back to this sheet and decide what to make. It listed in a way where you can mix and match. It’s a great reminder without having to think about what your family likes.
Weekly Menu Planner- This is the checklist that will be hanging on our bulletin board every week! It will have what we are having for dinner for each day with what sides, etc. Remember when planning your menu to take into account your schedule. Who has practice or meetings and when? How much time do you have to cook that day etc….
Grocery Checklist- This will also be a staple in the house! The grocery list! When you find you are out of something, quickly grab your sheet and write it down in the category it belongs! Make sure to not leave any ingredients out from the menu’s you just planned!
These are all great forms and can be used together as a package or used separately! Print off several Weekly Menu Planners at one time, and you can plan for more than just one week at a time, or maybe you prefer to go week by week… Just having a plan in writing will eliminate the stress and time you may be wasting!
We always want feedback.. tell us if you love the forms or let us know if they need improvement! We want to know!
To print out these forms and others like our Daily Checklist or Vacation Checklist, please visit the Resource Page on the Website.
Happy Organizing!
Packing School Lunches!
Organized.com Lunch Box!
To continue the theme of Meal Planning from our podcast on Monday, I wanted to share with you some tips and ideas in preparing and planning school lunches. I have come across some great products and websites I wanted to share!
Goodbyn.com
Tip#1 – Have a bin ready to go for all your lunch ingredients! I have one bin that includes; bread, peanut butter, and snacks just designated for the school lunch. This bin is so handy, instead of grabbing all the ingredients and wasting time, you just have to grab the bin with everything in it, make the lunch and place back into the pantry until next time!
Tip#2 - Go green with your lunch box! There are wonderful products out there to use in the lunch box, get rid of the plastic sandwich bags and go green… Have a few containers on hand, so you are not having to do the dishes everyday. Pete Wright from Taking Control, The Home Organizing Podcast highly suggests Goodbyn.com. This product looks great! Instead of having a lot of different pieces, you have one box, one lid! Check it out!
Tip#3 - Have a drop off for the lunch box! Just like the backpack, make sure your kids know where to drop off the lunch box! It saves time in the morning looking for it and then finding old food! Yuck! It’s happened to us and it’s not fun! Make sure they drop off the box after school, so you have plenty of time to clean it and get it ready for the next morning!
Tip#4 - Explore different recipes and get out of the rut of PB & J! I have found some great websites with different recipe ideas and tips for healthy lunches. It breaks the monotony of the same old, same old stuff! Here are my favorites!
If you have any additional tips that makes your life easier, please share! The more the better!
Happy Organizing!
End of Summer To Do’s!
"Charlie" - The Newest Addition to our Family!
What’s on your list of to do’s before summer ends?
I have a few projects around the house that need to get finished. The school supplies have been bought and as I mentioned in my last post, I am waiting to buy any new school clothes. Overall, I feel pretty organized for the upcoming year. I have systems in place to help with the incoming overflow of school papers and artwork! We will have our family meeting soon to explain the upcoming schedule changes, chores and responsibilities. The calendar and bulletin board are ready to be filled!
The most important item on my “To Do List”….. is to just enjoy these last couple of weeks of summer and live in the present!
I want to appreciate each day I have with my children. I know it’s easy to get wrapped up in the freedom we get when our kids are in school.. I get that… There are definitely pros on the kiddo’s going back to school!
But I must admit my heart is a little heavy!
My children are now reaching an age where their independence is getting stronger and I know as each summer passes, playing with mom and dad is not going to be their top priority! Time goes by so fast, and I just want to sit back and enjoy these last few moments we have this summer!
My to do is list for the rest of the summer is to hear my kids giggle, take a few trips to the park, get ice cream on spur of the moment, maybe have a few more camp out’s in the backyard and teaching them about our new puppy… Yes, we got a new puppy this summer! Charlie! And he has been a great addition and certainly has made this summer one not to forget!
In a couple of weeks, our lives will change and we will begin in a new chapter. I will have a second grader and a pre-k student in the house, both will be involved in sports and other activities, and these moments of just playing in the backyard will quickly be filled with game schedules and recitals.
Which are all great things too…
But for now, I am going to enjoy where we are right now, right at this moment!
Closet Organizing for Your Kids!
Here we are just a couple of weeks away from the kids going back to school! I went to the mall last Saturday and saw several kids with their parents shopping for school clothes. This brought back a lot of memories of when I was kid! This is a big deal! I remember how exciting it was to pick out what to wear on the first day!
I never did understand why my mother would only buy a few items prior to school starting, then we would get the rest as we needed it. She would say it would give me a chance to see what I really wanted and needed! Now as I parent, I get it! It was really about saving money! Things go on sale as the season goes on and you will most likely always get better deals after school as started! So the tradition now has been passed on… I only buy what they really need right now, and then wait until the sales start coming!
On this weeks podcast, Organizing Closets!, we talked about several tips and ideas to get your closets organized! As with our own closets, the change of season is a great time to go through your children’s closet as well! It’s time to see what fits, what doesn’t, what can be handed down to a sibling or taken to a charity. It’s also time to take inventory on your winter gear, like coats, mittens, gloves, hats, etc. Don’t forget the shoes! Our children grow fast and so do their feet!
**Remember to have a landing spot for all of the outerwear, I have found a hanging sweater organizer works great for hallway closets. Each person as their own cubby for the gloves, hats, etc.
** During the Closet Podcast, we talked about Huggable Hangers! They have these for kids too… You can get them at a variety of different stores. Heres a few links to check out: Target, The Container Store, HSN.
Last summer I wrote a blog post about how to organize your children’s closet. Click here, to read the entire post. It gives great ideas on product and how to most efficiently use your space!
Enjoy these last days of summer! They go by fast!
Happy Organizing!
Back to School – Creating a Homework Station!
Depending on the grade of our child, there is a good possibly they will have homework from day one! The best thing you can do is to be prepared and make sure you child has everything they need, when they need it. It will save time and keep them focused on the homework and not trying to find their pencils and erasers!
You can set up a homework station in a variety of ways. The student could have their own desk in their room or in a common area in the home. If they like to do their homework in different rooms around the house, a portable desk may be a good option. The study space should be a place where the student can think, focus, brainstorm, and if set up correctly, should make doing homework a little less painful!
These are the essentials you need no matter how the work station is set up:
- Kids will not work in a station if it’s not user friendly. You must get their opinions and thoughts about how to best set up a workspace.
- You want the station to have storage space and surface space, they need to have enough space to store all of their supplies, printer, computer, paper etc. You need to have the surface area to write, cut, paste etc.
- Good lighting- It’s hard to do your best work if you can’t see what you are doing!
- Make sure the student is comfortable- if they don’t like their desk chair, they will never sit it in.
- Let me them put personal touches around their workspace – just like if you were working in a cubicle, you want around you the things that make you happy.
- Include a bulletin board and calendar to the workspace – they need to see deadlines and bulletin boards are a great way to post reminders and other information your student may need. (Teach the child to go through the bulletin board on a weekly basis, so it doesn’t fill up with paper clutter)
- Make sure the station is stocked with everything they need! Nothing is worse than finding out you used the last staple. Keep up on the inventory of supplies!
Happy Organizing!
Back to School – The Daily Drop Off!
Pottery Barn Entryway System
Back to School Organizing Tip: Create a space in your home for your children to put their stuff! The daily drop off occurs the same time, the same place, everyday!
Your children are going to need a place for their coats, hats, mittens, backpacks, lunch pails, shoes, and anything else that may come home with them! If you designate the same place every time, it will eliminate the running around in the mornings trying to find the missing shoe!
This is an easy organizing system to put into place in your home as long as you teach your children what is expected from them. You want the kids to put their jackets on hooks, make sure the hooks are at their height, make placing shoes in a bin or a rack easy and painless. Have a basket or bin accessible for the mittens and hats.
Make the drop off place as convenient and easy as possible to ensure success!
Practice! Before school actually starts, do a run through with your kids, and if there is anything that needs to change, now is the time to do it!
Happy Organizing!
Back To Campus- The Organized.com Way!
Back to School!
Ready or not, school is just around the corner! For some of you around the country, it may have already begun! If you have any lessons learned this season, please share your wealth of information! We are always looking for tips to make our lives easier!
I will be the first to admit I am not ready to let go of summer. However, I do know it’s better to be prepared and plan for this upcoming season change. If you are not organized during this time, it can easily turn into chaos with a lot of frustration and stress!
So what can we do to make this time less stressful? Organized.com is one way for sure! The Back to Campus webpage is a great resource for great products and information all of us can learn from…
Here are just a few of my favorite articles and products:
How to Prepare for the First Day of Preschool
More Back to School Posts our on the way.. Visit our Back to School Central Link… This will take you to all the blog posts related to Back to School plus more products I recommend to get your season off right!
Happy Organizing!
Building Your Organizing Skills!
Most likely if you are reading this blog, you are hoping to get some new idea or suggestions on becoming better organized. My business is about helping people build solid organizing systems around their home and work life. It’s about giving them direction and support on how to lead a more organized lifestyle. There are so many wonderful tips and products out there to get you where you want to be. Organization is a skill and if it doesn’t come natural to you, you have to some how learn this skill. With anything you learn, once you learn it, it can’t be taken away from you.. It’s the power of education!
I recently listened to an education podcast for Professional Organizers and the speaker said something that really stuck with me. So much so I have to write about it… She mentioned how the most important piece of what we do for our clients is teaching them new skills!
It’s not just about getting organized.
Being organized comes and goes.
We all have different events and things that happen to us unexpectedly. Even the most organized people will and can become disorganized. It’s the skills we have learned and practiced that help us get our homes and offices back into order. We have the skills to put it back together. It’s just like ridding a bike, once you learn, you never forget! The same is true for organizing.
There will be times of the month or year, where your office is going to look like a mess. If you are moving or in some kind of transition, there will be things that will slip by. If you are dealing with an unexpected life event, your organization will falter.
I think it’s easy for people to be too hard on themselves. Life happens and our priorities shift. Organization is not about perfection or how clean your home or office is. When you see the organization around you start to break, take a step back, look at the reasons, build off of your organizing skills, and make the changes you need to make at the time you need to make them!
Happy Organizing!
Paper Clutter – Pile after Pile!
In our podcast this week, Conquering the Clutter, we discuss a few different tricks and tips to control your clutter! If you were to look around your house right now, I am willing to bet a lot of the clutter you see is in the form of paper… Believe me you are not alone. Even as a Professional Organizer, there are times where my desk looks like a paper wind storm went through it! It happens!
Here is a quick tip to prevent the paper pile up….
Do everything you can not to place more than two pieces of paper on top of each other… I said it’s a quick tip, I never said it would be easy!
A small stack of paper can easily turn into a large mountain of paper, if you are not aware that you keep stacking and stacking… I go back to the organizing rule of “touch it once”.. it’s hard, but the more you are aware of it the better you will get at it.
Ask yourself to really identify what the paper is, can it be filed, does it need some kind of action? What better system can you build to prevent these pile ups? (If you don’t know, call a Professional! This is what we do!)
Think before you pile!
Happy Organizing!
Guest Post for The Confident Mom – Letting Go!
This month for my guest blog post for the Confident Mom, I list out a few different questions to get you through the sorting process. These are to guide you along the process especially for those items you really just don’t know what to do about.
An additional tip to add for those “Maybe” items, is to place them into a box for 6 months. If you do not return to the box within the 6 months or even think about the box, give yourself the freedom to let the box go! Put this on your calendar to remind yourself, otherwise it can easily be forgotten. 
In addition to all of the great services, Susan Heid provides with the Confident Mom, don’t forget the Summer Survival Calendar! Yes, we are closing in on summer, but these activities are good all year around! For only $7.00, you have access to different websites with great activities, recipes and just great fun! Enjoy these last days of summer without worrying about getting bored and what to do next!
Happy Organizing!
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