Getting Organized Day 17

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

 Today's task: Declutter pots, pans, and lids


Really easy today. I got rid of one little pot and wiped out the cabinet. Less then 15 minutes today!

 How did you do today?

Getting Organized Day 16

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Challenge: Under the sink

Not to bad. Mostly dirty. Took less then 15 minutes. I cleaned a few things out and wiped it all down. Nice and clean after.

 

How does your under the sink look now?

Getting Organized Day 15

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Challenge:
Declutter food storage containers

Well this was the easiest task so far . . . 

Before

 

 

 

After

Yep I didn't have to do anything. I love having stackable containers. It makes life much more organized. 

How did you do?

Getting Organzied Day 14

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Task:
Declutter foil, kitchen wrap, and plastic bags

Not too hard of a task. It gave me a chance to see what I had and wipe out the drawer.

Before

After

 So how did you do today?

Getting Organized Day 13

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Challenge:
Junk Drawer

Before

Throw away pile, picture to hang up, pile of things that go somewhere, anywhere else

After picture with my awesome top tray

After! Look at what hides under that top tray. Love this junk drawer organizer from Target. 

 

 

 

Well how did you do today?

Getting Organized Day 11

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Task:
Declutter potholders and kitchen towels

Potholder to keep

Donate

Towels to keep (plus a couple bibs for any babes that come visit)

All pretty put away

To throw away

To re purpose. Wash clothes were given to the girls for their babies. Towel was from a grandma and will be used as a curtain whenever my curtain rod is hung.

All done! How did you do?

Getting Organized Day 10

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

 Today's Task: 

Declutter everyday tablecloths, napkins, placemats

I have two tablecloths, no napkins, and a few placemats. This was pretty easy to declutter. I kept the tablecloths and got rid of a few placemats that I just don't need. 

Keep pile

Donate pile with added bonus find

 

Getting Organized Day 9

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Task: 

Clear off kitchen table

Since moving into our home almost 4 years ago, the table has been keep pretty clear. We eat at the table at least 2 of our meals.

Most days my table actually looks like this: 

 One area in my kitchen that is usually easy to keep clean.

Going dairy free

What does every parent pray doesn't happen to their kids? An allergy to some type of food. Our youngest has been having reactions to chocolate since she was a year old. A few months ago we started noticing some odd reactions her body was having to something and doing some research it pointed to a dairy allergy.

Oh boy, was my reaction. I was hoping it wouldn't happen but something was not right with our little one. After having a hot dish that had TONS of dairy in it and waking up the next morning with a little one complaining of a tummy ache, we decided to cut dairy out for a month. After a week we were seeing a lot of improvement and elimination of symptoms.

It was a long and tough month for us. The list of things we couldn't feed our daughter grew daily. After a couple of weeks into it I was wishing she had a gluten allergy instead. Dairy is in EVERYTHING. We have to buy Hebrew National hotdogs, because other brands have a dairy protein used in preserving the product. Pepperoni has the same dairy protein. Some spice mixes can also have a dairy protein. The list just keeps growing and growing.

It was completely overwhelming. I found a great website that really helped me figure things out. dairyfree.org has been an amazing resource for me. I am slowly getting better at not only finding substitutes for dairy but meals that we can all eat together. 

As I continue on this journey I will be sharing with you recipes that I have found that work well, taste good, and are easy to make for my family.

Getting Organized Day 7

Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

Today's Task: 

De clutter and organize kitchen sink area

I did this awhile ago because I was so tired of having too much around the sink. When we got a new faucet, it had a soap dispenser so we filled it with hand soap. The dish soap went under the sink. All my little things are in a small container and my husband got a small hanging basket for over the cabinet under the sink.

Getting Organized Day 6

 Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time. 

Day 6 task is decluttering kitchen utensils and silverware drawer. I didn't think I'd actually get rid of a lot. Surprise, Surprise! 

Here is what my lid and medicine drawer looked after I cleaned (I forgot a before picture). 

I put many lids on the cups and on our top shelf since we typically use them when little ones are over. I had a vary large pile of medicine dispensers. Every time we get a new bottle of something, there is a medicine dropper and it just kept getting tossed in the drawer. Lots of room for a few little items that were crowed into another drawer. 

The drawer that was crammed full of odds and ends looked like this: 

After moving this into the other drawer and throwing things away, it looked like this:

Nice and clean and no digging for things anymore.

Lastly was the large utensil drawer that has to be a certain way for it to close and not get stuck. Here's what it looks like and it wouldn't shut at the time of the picture:

And since I had room in another small drawer, here it is all organized: 

It was nice being able to discard things we didn't need and wipe out the drawers so they are nice and clean. It's the little things in life that make your day.

Spelling-You-See Demontstration

Spelling-You-See

I really love being able to be home with my kids and involved in what they are learning. By homeschooling I am able to accomplish this. 

If you are wondering what I curriculum we are using and haven't read my previous blog post, you can read it HERE.

We have been using Spelling-You-See consistently since August. I am really loving this program. It is meant to be used for up ten minutes. There are no spelling lists and repetitive writing of words that only allows your student to memorize for the test and forget. 

Check out the video below to see how we do our spelling session.

As you can see we do school time in pj's and sweats. There are kids giggling in the background and a dog walking around under the table. I didn't stage this, I just set up the camera and pushed play. I wanted to give a real look into how we do it. 

 My daughter is fast at spelling and it has come easily to her. If my child was struggling, I would stop at 10 minutes and that would be the end of the lesson. 

What I really like about this book is how it is set up for mastery. A child works on a specific spelling skill or rule before moving on to the next and there are days and weeks of review before moving on to the next skill level. Because they say to stop at 10 minutes, the child who is struggling isn't going to feel that frustration hump they can't get over. As a homeschooling parent, you don't want to feel like your pulling teeth to get them to finish a lesson. This curriculum allows you to do what your child needs.

In the next book, level B, the child begins practicing dictation along with practicing spelling skills like chunks. This continues on throughout the series. Dictation length increases with each book and gives the child repetition in spelling words within context rather then a spelling list. 

Here is a sample lesson in book B

I haven't decided yet if we will continue with Spelling-You-See only because our reading/phonics curriculum also has spelling. Once we finish Level A I will reevaluate at that time and see what is the best choice for us. The programs are similar. I may end up using this program for my other girls in addition to their phonics, especially my 4 year old who has had speech problems, or just use the phonics spelling. It will depend on how much extra practice my girls will need.

Getting Organized Day 3 and 4

 Do you have 15 minutes a day to spend on a simple task that will make your home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time. 


The weekend organization was super easy. To get caught up here's what you need to do:

1. Make a to do list. I made one, laminated it, and put it in my household binder.
2. Declutter old Christmas cards or something else. 

Here's what I decluttered as I put away the Christmas tree. 

If I haven't used it in the past few years, I threw or donated it. Most items were my mom's old toss off or dollar items from our first Christmas.

Getting Organized in 2015!

Are you ready to organize your home. Do you have a list of things you'd like to someday get to? I do and that list keeps growing and it starts getting overwhelming.

I do have 15 minutes a day I can spend on a simple task that will make my home life run easier. Here's how I'm doing it. With a little help of Home Storage Solutions and their 52 week challenge, I am going to get things organized a little at a time.

I'm starting a day behind but the great thing is the first few days are just getting us geared up to have a great organized year. 

Bonus Mission: Write New Years Goals. Here are mine.

Day one assignment: Set up donation and selling collection station. 

• I have a spot in my room that always has a box for donation. When it's full I donate and put a new box in it's place.
• In the closet in our school room I have the sell pile for our garage sales. Most of this is clothes and shoes the girls grew out of and a few toys. 

Day two assignment: Create a binder for household notebook.

• My favorite item is the password list. I use it all the time.
• I did this last year so I just need to make a few adjustments.
• Of course I had to replace my goals for the year
• I am making a daily to do list that is a simple list that is separate from my cleaning list.

Would you like to join me? Head on over to Home Storage Solutions and sign up today.

2015 Goals

Looking back to last year's goals, I had way to many. I did complete several, but since I had so many it was harder to keep track of things. This year I came up with 10 goals for me so I can better take care of myself and my family. Here they are:

1. Finish middle daughter's crazy quilt, nephew's rag quilt, and start youngest daughter's quilt.
2. Maintain quite time and prayer life by getting up at 5:30 M-F
3. Meal plan every week
4. Date night with hubby 6x a year
5. Create a recipe book complete with pictures and helps for going dairy free
6. Decide on a plan for IRA and kid's college fund
7. Exercise 5x a week
8. Plan at least 4 homeschool field trips including vacations
9. Thursday tea parties (with three girls, tea parties are a must)
10. Thursday baking day

That's it. I want to accomplish something this year and a few simple goals will leave me feeling less overwhelmed and excited about the coming year. 

Did you set goals for this year? What do you feel is your most important goal? I'd love to hear what you have to say.