Welcome to the Plan-and-Organize-Life.com Newsletter. I hope you enjoy getting the newsletter and that it helps to keep you on track with your organizing goals. Remember, you can get a lot done in only 10 minutes of decluttering and organizing! Little bits add up over time.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Monthly Mission – Kitchen
What’s New on Plan-and-Organize-Life.com - Recent site additions
Stop Wasting Food

Interestingly enough, the monthly mission for March is the kitchen, and I’m working out a couple issues with food storage in my own kitchen (see below).

Did you know… according to the National Soap and Detergent Association, the average home would eliminate 40 percent of its housework if you got rid of the clutter. Wow! Forty percent is a lot. I don’t know about that. However, I do have to agree that clutter certainly gets in the way of my housework, or rather, creates more housework. If the floors could only stay free of toys and clutter, I would vacuum more often. Things on flat surfaces prevent me from wiping them down regularly. Once I eliminate all the excess in my home and give everything a definite spot to live (and then put it away 100% of the time), there would be a lot less to do around here! In fact, I might not know what to do with myself if I was 100% organized! Haha! I’m the type that has a difficult time just sitting in one spot relaxing and not multitasking.

Let’s continue on though with getting rid of the clutter in our homes. Less housework or not, I’m sure it’ll leave us feeling better about our homes and our lives. If the kitchen isn't what you're focusing on right now, that's fine. Just keep working on an area that better suits you.

To read about the monthly mission for March, click here.

Here are some of the more recently added pages to the website you may have missed.

Organizing Your Bathroom - Suggestions to get your bathroom neatly organized.

Bathroom Drawer Make Over - How to organize a bathroom drawer, an example with before and after photos.

Declutter Your Home and Life - Lots of information on how to declutter, what the benefits are, and how to keep the clutter away, in your home and in your life in general.

Stop Clutter - Quick simple tips on how to stop the clutter from coming into your home in the first place.

Organizing Your Magazines - Suggestions to help you downsize your piles of magazines and how to store them neatly.

Organize Your Junk Drawer - take control of that drawer you toss stray items into. Give it purpose with a few minutes and a little organization.

Organize Your Refrigerator - some simple guidelines to help you use your refrigerator more efficiently and waste less food.

I don’t consider myself a true “stockpiler”, but I have been learning a lot from professional couponers and sharpening my couponing skills. Which also means buying some things in multiples and stashing them away in my makeshift pantry…. A dark corner of a shelf in my linen closet. The problem is, unless food items are visible and I remember to eat them, or use them in my menu planning, they could end up expiring before they get noticed. The same thing can potentially happen in the refrigerator and freezer. If food isn’t organized and managed properly, it can go unnoticed and go bad. And after spending extra time trying to save money on my grocery bill, it hurts to throw things away because of poor organization.

Here’s what I’ve started doing. In my “pantry” I keep a list of what items are in there, how many, and if necessary, the expiration date. Now I can go to my pantry area and look at the list easily to know just how many jars of pasta sauce or bottles of ketchup I have.

I also started using this same idea for my refrigerator and freezer. I have a lot of food stashed in my freezer and sometimes I can’t see some of it, even though it’s stacked neatly and like items are together. I can now take a peek at my freezer list (instead of hunting through the cold freezer) and know if I have enough ground beef stashed away, any bags of French fries, or specialty food items my family eats that are sometimes tricky to find in stores. I can more easily plan meals around the ingredients I have in my freezer.

My list for the refrigerator section is slightly different. Usually food in the fridge gets used more quickly. Or does it?! I started making a list of foods in the fridge that are about to expire that need to be used. As well, I list leftovers that need to be eaten. So now, when I’m trying to plan lunch or dinner, I can incorporate those leftover mashed potatoes, or that pita bread into my meals. Instead of grabbing the same thing for lunch every day, I check the list to see what can be eaten as part of my lunch. It seems to be working quite well so far.

Any food saved is an improvement! And, someday, the garage makeover that’s in progress will be completed and it will provide me with a much better storage area for my stockpile of extra food. Not a real pantry (sigh) but it will do the job. Someday…

Follow the links here for more information about the importance of meal planning and organizing your refrigerator.

Sincerely,

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com

P.S. Sometimes links to website pages get broken. If a link doesn't work, you may need to copy and paste the entire link into your browser.