Organization Makes for Quick and Easy Dinners

You may not have noticed, but Amber and I switched things up a bit the last two weeks. We usually post our blogs in a certain order so that the podcast hostess has a blog post on the Monday before the podcast airs. Sometimes things just don’t work out that way, and this week has been one of them. I got upside down and backwards on a couple of big projects and totally failed at getting my blog for this week written in time. Luckily, Amber had hers ready to go, so she was able to swap with me. So in the end, everything worked out okay, but this is exactly the reason I wanted to do a podcast and blog about quick and easy dinners – because sometimes I’m just too darned busy to cook.

On the podcast, each of us named off quite a few recipes that we consider to be quick and easy. They’re the kinds of things that we can rummage through the pantry and find enough ingredients to make in a pinch, or maybe even plan to make when we know we are going to be busy. For instance, every Thursday, I host an all-day-long Zoom meeting with my crafty friends. We work on our crafts and visit just like we did in person before the pandemic. I never want to stop crafting and visiting with my friends to cook dinner, but I do have a husband and niece to feed, and sometimes it’s my turn to cook, so I usually go for something quick and easy so I can get back to the good stuff – crafting. Last week it was tuna salad, but this week I’ll be whipping up those tacos we talked about on the podcast. I like having a large repertoire of things to cook because I get bored eating the same stuff all the time.

One of the things that helps me come up with lots of different options is having a good recipe database. I’ve been collecting recipes for years from books, magazines, and the internet. I literally have boxes and boxes of recipes I’ve saved. Some I’ve cooked, and some I’m not even sure why I saved them. In any case, finding the ones I really like can be a challenge, and I particularly don’t want to spend more time looking for the recipe than I do actually cooking it. That’s why I decided to make a database to collect my recipes.

The form I created for entering my recipes in the database.

A "recipe report" generated by my database with a field for a photo and "ratings" by my family.

You can opt for one of the many recipe software options out there…just do a Google search for “recipe software” and you’ll be sure to find an option to suit your needs.  I started my database years ago, before there were any good software options, and I wanted to be able to customize it to my needs, so I made a simple database in FileMaker Pro. Over the years I’ve created custom layouts and printouts for my recipes, added input fields for my family to “rate” the recipe, and even put a place-holder for a picture in case I ever wanted to “publish” my collection as a printed book. The whole database is searchable by any field, including category, ingredients, source, or even just a specific word. The other day I did a search for “Cheesy” in the title because I couldn’t remember what the recipe was called.

A "List View" of my database, sorted by category.

What’s really nice about having the database is that I can see a running list of all my favorites (only my favorites go in the database), I can sort them by category, and then look quickly down the list of options for something that I can use. It also makes it very easy to print and share a recipe. I shared my tuna casserole with potato chips recipe on our website. You can download a copy here.

Besides looking through a ready-made list of go-to recipes, the other way I prep a quick and easy dinner is by looking through the pantry. Unfortunately, my pantry is tiny, and with 3 adults in the house who have different breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, the pantry gets really full. Sometimes, it gets so full that I can’t even tell what’s in it. Bottles of sauces get shuffled to the back of the shelf, and before you know it, they’ve expired because I didn’t see it there. One of the ways I combat that is to use the free Pantry Check app. As I bring groceries into the house, I simply scan the barcodes, and it adds the item to my inventory list along with the product’s expiration date. Depending on my settings, I can get notifications about items getting ready to expire as well as reminders to update my inventory. And, if I’ve been lax about adding/removing items as I use them (or if I just want a fresh start), I can tell it to clear the inventory. Simple as that. 

List of categories

Items within a category

Oops! These are expired!
Time to toss them out!

For me, staying organized with my recipes and the contents of my pantry is an important part of making sure the meals I cook are quick and easy when I need them to be. How do you store your recipes? Have you used a recipe database? Do you have a go-to system for staying organized in the kitchen? I’d love to hear about it! Comment below, or join us in our MMC Chat on Facebook!

The Ongoing Battle I Fight

Let me get one thing straight before I begin: I LOVE FOOD. My whole life I have been a foodie. I know this may sound weird because I grew up in a small town and the opportunities to try new things were limited. But I collected cookbooks and watched food shows dreaming of food adventures. We would eat at a “fancy” restaurant twice a year for my mom’s birthday and again on Mother’s Day, and I was always adventurous. Nowadays, eating adventurously is the norm for me, especially since my boyfriend of nine months is a chef. However, there’s one problem… I love food, but food does not love me.

Let’s talk genetics. Can we fight genetics? It’s similar to fate, right? I talked about my genetics in a previous blog and how unfortunate they were. For many years, being fat has been equated with being lazy or unhealthy. I can imagine people thinking “all she probably does is sit around and eat.” Until about 20 years ago, genetics wasn’t considered a reason some people were obese, especially healthy and athletic people. According to the article “Obesity and Genetics: Nature and Nurture,” about 43% of the population have the FTO gene that “predisposes them to gain excess weight.” In other words, if you are not careful to balance your life choices, you could easily gain weight. I used to joke that if I even looked at food, I would gain weight. If you looked at my family, you would see that many of them have fought the battle and lost.

These days, it is all about female empowerment and fat acceptance. Women are freer with their bodies, and they no longer feel like they need to cover up or wear a wardrobe that hides their curves. Growing up in small-town Texas, that wasn’t always the case. My grandmother saw early on that I had the predisposition to be a bigger child and she tried her hardest to steer me in the right direction. By the time I hit middle school, I had been through so many fad diets, and it grew worse as I got older. Aside from my weight gain, it was always a struggle to find nice outfits for a large female that weren’t geared toward an older woman. When I hit high school, I had no fashion sense. I wore “big and tall” t-shirts and bike shorts from the men’s section or oversized shirts with outdated flowers from the women’s department. The closest plus-size store for women was three hours away from where I lived, and we could only afford to drive that far once a year. A single shirt there usually cost around $50 and my family struggled financially, so, I made do.

Despite being overweight and bullied for it growing up, I was a pretty athletic child. The only sport I didn’t play (because it wasn’t offered) was soccer. I was even part of a running club in school called the “Elite Fleet.” None of this athleticism helped me lose weight. Aside from genetics, my family was poor, so we didn’t have the healthiest diet. My mom worked two jobs and oftentimes chose McDonald’s or cup noodles over cooking meals at home. If my mom worked late, I usually had cereal for dinner. Needless to say, my childhood was carb-heavy.

Because I was athletic and healthy, I maintained my weight throughout high school and continued to be pushed through fad diets by my grandma. For example, I was taken to weight-loss seminars, and hypnotherapists, and I was even taken to get my ear stapled once because it was said that the ear staple curbs hunger. According to the Mayo Clinic, “proponents of ear stapling claim that the staples stimulate a pressure point that controls appetite, leading to weight loss.” However, the Mayo Clinic says that ear stapling probably won’t work and it may cause ear infections. As I grew older, I developed a sense of body dysmorphia and depression that led to secret binge eating. I began to feel ashamed of my body, which worsened my depression and binge eating.

Throughout my life, I tried a few diets that did work, but they were never long-term solutions. For example, I tried Weight Watchers twice in my life, and both times it worked well. Weight Watchers is all about accountability and fellowship. If you are not familiar with the concept, you track your food using a point system. You go to weekly meetings and have weekly weigh-ins. The meetings and the weigh-ins held me accountable, and I lost weight doing the program. Unfortunately, programs like Weight Watchers can be costly, and after a time on the program, I wasn’t able to afford it anymore. I tried to keep up with the principles after I left the program, but the accountability was what originally kept me on the diet, and once on my own, I eventually lost my way.

Other diets/weight loss tricks I have tried unsuccessfully:

• Am 300
• Garcinia Cambogia
• Stacker 3000
• Adkins Diet
• Genesis Diet
• Juice Diet
• Herbalife
• Levell

 

In 2018, I started a low carbohydrate diet. The bane of my existence has always been sweets. Both of my parents were diabetic, and I knew I was headed toward that path. A low carbohydrate diet has been the most successful diet that I have been on to date. I don’t consider it a diet but more of a lifestyle change. I cut back drastically on eating sweets and added sugars, I focus mostly on getting protein in my diet and leafy green vegetables but that was only the stepping stone on my path to better health. I was slowly losing weight but not quick enough to better my health. 

 

My doctor suggested I have bariatric surgery and it was the hardest thing a binge eater could do, both emotionally and psychologically, which I will talk about in a future blog. Post-surgery I have consistently kept a low-carbohydrate diet and I have been successful at losing and maintaining since surgery, but every day is a constant struggle to go back to my comfort zone.

Things I do to try and maintain and continue to lose weight:

• Meal replacement shakes: This is mainly to keep my protein up, but a high protein shake in the morning helps me have a great start to my day.
• Small meals instead of large ones: Before surgery, I preferred to eat this way as well. If I eat small meals, I can maintain my energy and stay more alert.
• Limit what I drink to mostly water: I try to drink as much water as I can throughout the day. If I drink something besides water, it will be coffee or tea. Getting enough water is important to me because I feel crappy if I don’t drink enough of it.
• Cheat days are okay: One thing I’ve learned over the years is that an extremely strict diet will only backfire. So, I reward myself occasionally.
• If you fall off the wagon, pick yourself up: Every day is a new day! Don’t beat yourself up for gaining a pound or giving in and eating that slice of cake. You can start again tomorrow.
• Stay active even for a little bit: As a teacher, I move around a lot at work, which keeps me active. When I worked from home during quarantine, it was hard to stay active while sitting at a desk all day. Even if you just walk a little bit, staying active is important.

In conclusion, I am still learning the ins and outs of my body as I gain, lose, or maintain. There is never an exact science to weight loss that I have found. There also isn’t a quick fix. My best advice is to stay positive and always leave room for self-care. One of the biggest things I’ve learned throughout this journey is to love myself and the mess my body is and to strive for inner peace and not perfection.

I want to hear from our readers. What diets have you tried and failed at? Do you have any tips and tricks you would like to share? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments and on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

A Simple Cleaning Checklist for Anyone

Hi there, it’s Christen - Happy Monday! It is springtime, which always makes me feel perky and motivated. This year, I set a goal to manage my household more efficiently. Effective communication with my husband, Travis, has been a challenge due to our schedules. I wanted to find a way to make it easier for both of us to access important household information without having to call each other during work hours. I also wanted Travis to have the knowledge at his fingertips to effectively manage the household without me guiding or micro-managing him. I decided that a “Home Binder” was necessary, and set a goal to create one as part of my Cultivate What Matters tending lists and 2022 goals. I may have mentioned my home binder and some of its contents on the podcast a few times and hope to provide an update on my progress here on the blog soon. Be on the look out for that!

Among the sections that provide helpful information in the binder is one for household maintenance. By maintenance, I mean cleaning, seasonal care, repairs and services. This time of year, I have many of these processes in mind, especially the routine and seasonal cleaning. As a newly married couple, we have learned what each other’s strengths are and where we can give each other support. Although my husband knows how to clean up after himself, he does not know all the ins and outs of sanitizing and deep cleaning. I wanted to give him an idea of when each of these tasks should be completed, and with what chemicals and tools. 

Getting married and some drastic changes in my work schedule has changed most of my routines. I simply can’t count on using one of my days off to do all the laundry, cleaning and meal prepping and still make it to bed at a decent hour. I went back and forth trying to set up a new routine and struggled with sticking with it. Thankfully, my husband and daughter are willing to help around the house, and the chores do not all fall on me. 

In order to ensure that all the necessary tasks are completed in a timely manner, I decided to compile a master cleaning list. Since my brain has been conditioned to think in monthly, weekly, and daily tasks thanks to my Cultivate What Matters tending list, I decided to drop my previous weekly cleaning schedule and opt for a more flexible checklist. 

In the free download, you will find a cleaning checklist broken down into the three groups outlined below:

• Daily - Action items that should be completed every single day, like washing your dishes, taking the garbage out, making your bed, and tidying up.

• Weekly - Action items that need to be performed once per week and can either be done on a specific day or any time during the week. For example, the garbage can needs to be rolled out to the curb every week on the same day, and you will be sorry if you missed it. Vacuuming however can probably happen only once per week and you can often live with going one day longer if needed.

• Monthly - Action items that only have to be completed once per month, usually around the same time each month. For example, it's a good idea to dust the ceiling fans, but no one is going to suffer if you don’t do it exactly on the “first Friday of the month.”

My cleaning schedule might not be frequent enough for you, or might even be more than you want to commit to, but it should at least give you some ideas on how to create your own schedule. As I mentioned above, I’ve linked a free one to download for your own use - I encourage you to make it your own! I saved it as a WORD .doc so that you can edit it to your liking. Is there something that I left off? I would love to know what you think! Please don’t forget to come over to our Facebook chat group, and be sure to listen to the podcast on Wednesday when we’ll continue the conversation.

This week on the podcast, we talked about clutter and its tendency to collect in our homes. We had some fun laughs about the reality of our messes, too! I was inspired by our talk and the information provided from my www.Clutterbug.me results. I wanted to share my before and after pictures of my Clutterbug project – my kitchen.

Travis and I still had a box in our kitchen from when we moved almost 10 months ago. I was fed up with looking at that box one day, and unloaded it onto the kitchen island. The idea was to identify what was in the box and then put the items away, but I ran out of time to find a new home for these last straggling items, so they stayed in that spot. Now they were sitting on the catch-all, an already cluttered problem area of my home. 

The clutter got so bad, we could no longer work at the kitchen island, and complacency had become the norm. Each day, one more thing wound up on the island and did not leave. My husband even started leaving the groceries out; instead of putting a can in the pantry while unloading the groceries, the can would find its new home on the island. 

Clutter stacking up on the kitchen island, inside the cabinets, and "the box".

Since the Clutterbug quiz suggested storing things in clear containers, I got these acrylic bins from amazon. Unfortunately, I did not measure my cabinet space (whoops), and the bins are too big for my pantry. I was able to use a few of them around the kitchen, and I will get some smaller ones for the pantry. I can use the remaining large ones in my craft room. 

This week I worked a lot of overtime at work, so I haven’t had as much energy or time to dedicate to my organizing. I did however decide to organize the cups though. The clutter was persistently on my mind after I had mentioned them in an earlier blog. The nice thing about spring cleaning is that it doesn't have to be done all at once. In fact, the best thing to do is one small area or task at a time. There are a few areas that got worked over that I didn’t capture with my camera – mainly the pantry. I tossed out a lot of half eaten cracker sleeves, stale cookies, old protein bars, and random odds and ends that were taking up space. 

I'm happy the way the catch all areas turned out.

For the near future, I have plans to clear out the utensil drawer and utilize the empty cabinet space above the fridge, but I know that it will be little by little. I don’t want to try and do a total overhaul on the kitchen all at once, which would wreck a major working area in our home. Next up after the kitchen will be my dressing table where there are a slew of cosmetics, hair products, earrings, and misc. items strewn about. I am really looking forward to that much needed project.

Have you had a chance to check out the Clutterbug quiz to see what type of Clutterbug you are? I’d love to hear about your style! Maybe you can share some tips in the comments! 

Heard It on the Podcast - March 30, 2022

 

Did you miss a link we mentioned on the podcast? Here's a quick post we'll do every Wednesday to share any links or information from the podcast. We'll also keep a running post on the "Links from the Podcast" tab so you can refer back to any previous episode. Here's the links for this week:

30-MAR-2022

S2E14: What Kind of Clutterbug Are You?

• What Kind of Clutterbug Are You? (Quiz):  https://clutterbug.me
• Totally Tiffany: https://totally-tiffany.com
• Thistle Creative Reuse, Denton, Texas: https://thistlecreativereuse.com

* Please note, as an Amazon Affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

I'm a Clutterbug

This week on the podcast, we are talking about Clutterbugs and the idea that each of us has a different organizational style that can be categorized as one of four different kinds of bugs: the cricket, the bee, the butterfly, and the ladybug. When I took the quiz, it said I was a “Bee”, and when I read the description, I felt like it described me to a “T”. For instance, Bees are generally very organized, but they also like to keep their tools and supplies close by in plain view, and if they are working on a project, they will keep all the supplies out until they are done. The bad side of that is that if the job doesn’t get done right away, Bees tend to make piles of things to put away later, and those piles can be a big, hot mess.

Yes, it really does get this messy sometimes.

Organizing has been an ongoing project of mine for years. I am constantly organizing something, so there’s always some part of my house that’s a total mess. Right now, I feel like my whole house is a total mess! In December and January, we remodeled our living room and dining room. We had to move everything out to the garage so the contractors could rip out our carpet, install hardwood floors, update our baseboards, install crown molding, and paint. And while all that was going on, we were caring for a sick friend and so had also emptied one of our bedrooms to make room for his belongings. That meant I had stacks and boxes all over my house, too.

We had 3 rooms of stuff stored in the garage.

Bees make lots of piles until they're ready to file things.

Some of my displaced craft supplies.

It’s hard to get motivated to put a whole house back together. It’s almost like moving, so I’ve decided to give it a “moving” type of approach. Rather than just bring everything back and put it back where it was, I’ve decided to go through my belongings box by box and decide what to keep and what I can give away or trash. And like moving, I’m being a bit selective about which boxes I open first.  Do I really need to open the box of knick-knacks that was on the top shelf in the hallway closet before I sort through that box of linens? Probably not, so boxes and tasks are done by priority, and that way I can do it a little at a time. Taking on one box or one small task at a time is a lot easier to manage than putting away all of the books or setting up the whole guest bedroom. So that’s what I’ve been doing, tackling one small task at a time whenever I can. It might take me a little longer to get it done, but I’ve already lived with this stuff in my garage for nearly 5 months, so what difference will one more week make?

One of the handy tips I picked up from the Clutterbug website was to stop worrying about finding the “perfect” storage solution. One of the Bee’s traits is to pile things up while trying to find the best way to store them; we also like to wait for better timing to put things away. That is a bad habit of mine that I am trying to break! I have piles and piles of paperwork that I “mean to” do something with, but haven’t. Sometimes the relevance expires before I get it filed or put away. To fix that, I’m using a couple of different techniques that I’ve learned from Totally Tiffany and another that was inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

I’ll start with Tiffany. Tiffany Spaulding launched her company, Totally Tiffany in 2003, and since then, she has been dedicated to producing innovative scrapbooking and craft storage products as well as providing free, no strings attached, virtual classes on getting organized.  I took her online classes about 10 years ago or so when I purchased a “Scrap Rack”, one of her early products. The storage system was awesome, but it was her organization technique that really makes it work. For starters, she broke down and categorized almost all scrapbooking supplies into four simple categories: alpha-numeric, date-specific, themes, and colors. By sorting all of my stuff into those four categories (in that order), I was able to arrange six tubs of stickers and embellishments into one neatly assembled Scrap Rack. Even more importantly, I can quickly find just about any item I might be looking for. Bear stickers…got that! It’s in the “Animal” theme category. Working on a page and need something pink? I can find that, too, because everything pink that doesn’t have a specific category is right there in the pink section.

One tub of craft supplies that I loaded into the Scrap Rack.

More of my craft supplies.

The Scrap Rack with my supplies in it.

I can even apply this technique to other things in my house. My closet uses a similar system, but instead of “themes” and “colors”, my clothes are sorted by type.  Sleeveless shirts here, then short sleeves, then long sleeves, followed by t-shirts. The pants are sorted by length and use: yoga pants, sweats, capris, jeans, dress slacks, and so forth.

Shirts organized in my closet.

Another key point that Tiffany teaches is the “touch it once” principle, which I’ve mentioned in the podcast coming up this week.  I go back to this concept all the time because it just makes so much sense. The idea is that you should never wait to put away new items you bring into your house (or to put away items after you use them). In her example, Tiffany uses ice cream. If you go to the store and you buy ice cream, what do you do with it when you bring it home? You put it away in the freezer – immediately! You don’t set it on the counter while you make dinner, walk the dog, or do a load of laundry. You simply put it away. It takes two seconds and it’s done. That’s what you should do with everything you bring into the house. Bring in the mail, sort it, and put it in its appropriate place: the bills go in the bill file, the correspondence goes in the correspondence file, the junk mail goes in the trash. You should never leave it in a stack somewhere to deal with later. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way more times than I can count. Bills that I thought I paid were found months later at the bottom of a pile. Correspondence was ignored. Opportunities were lost. But by handling things once and only once, to put them in their correct place, documents can be found, bills can be paid, and you won’t accidentally buy the same craft punch twice because you’ll know that you already have one of those.

My last trick to organize comes from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but it was my daughter Christen who pointed it out to me. Several years ago, she introduced me to the Eisenhower Matrix, which is a very simple time-management method that stems from a quote by President Eisenhower (read the quote here). The basic idea is that you categorize your objectives or tasks by their urgency and importance. It’s a very effective technique for prioritizing tasks, and, as Christen also pointed out, it can be adapted to other sorting methods. She recently used it to prioritize her crafting projects, and that prompted me to use it for prioritizing my household remodeling “recovery”. 

For my restoration projects, I set up the matrix to differentiate the tasks I needed to manage myself versus what my husband could tackle. These were arrayed across the grid so that they were further divided between tasks that could be done by one person versus tasks that would require help. Within each quadrant, I also sorted the items by urgency and whether another task had to be completed first. The final list looked like this:

My remodeling matrix.

I had the good fortune of a friend stopping by to help me unbox books one day this week, and Christen is often quick to offer suggestions or ideas on how and where to store things, so my mess is dwindling. There’s still a lot to do, though; I’m still working on my organization projects, and probably always will be. For me, organizing is always a work in progress, and I don’t think I will ever be completely satisfied with just one method…I just keep adjusting and looking for whatever is “good enough” for now, and when that technique no longer works, I’ll just have to think of something else. 

Be sure to listen to the podcast on Wednesday to hear more about the Clutterbug technique, and join the conversation on our MMC Chat Facebook group!

Download a FREE copy of an Eisenhower Matrix HERE.