Cleaning Out the Glovebox

I don't know about you, but up until yesterday my glove box was the equivalent to my "junk drawer".  The really bad part is my Prius has TWO glove boxes!  That is double the mindless crap I keep in it!  I am talking about half eaten bags of Chex Mix, Pumpkin seeds, outdated insurance cards, pens that didn't work and all of the receipts for all of the oil changes I have had so far in my car.  

I cringe at the thought of being pulled over by a cop and NOT because of a ticket!  But because of the utter humiliation I will feel when I try to locate my insurance and registration!  Eeek!  I always THINK about cleaning out my glove box, but it's typically while I am in the car driving and I just don't have the time to stop and go through the disaster area.  So I don't.  Up until yesterday where I came up with a stroke of genius!  

I had Tony drive me around and be my chauffeur yesterday and oh my goodness!  Did I get a ton of things done in the car!!!  First, I tackled the main glove box.  I threw away all of the opened snack crap, pens that didn't work, crinkled up napkins, documents that I didn't need, and any other misc. trash I just happened to throw in there.  Next, I took all of the receipts for my car maintenance and folded them nicely and placed them back in the giant envelope with all of my manuals.  All of the car records are in one easy to find place.  Woo hoo!

I sectioned off a nice little space for the napkins and Kleenex so they were easy to reach in case of emergency.  =)  It looks absolutely LOVELY and it only took me 5 minutes.

Next came the second and smaller glove box.  Since I have this huge paranoia of not being able to find my insurance and registration, I put these two items in one plastic sleeve and my smaller glove box is now home to ONLY my important items.  The insurance and registration AND my Lorna Doone cookies!  Hey, a girl has got to have priorities!

So next time you are Co-Piloting, think about cleaning out the nightmare that is living in your glove box!

Organizing Multiple Freezers

A few weeks ago I purchased a freezer for the garage.  The freezer in the frig is just way too small and I was tired of going to the store every week for meat.  I was absolutely ecstatic when we grabbed one and instantly ran to Sam's Club and bought steaks, brauts, hotdogs, chicken, pork chops, you name it, I bought it!  I had to load up my new freezer!

Then came the time to plan out the week for dinner.  Can you believe I couldn't remember what I had in the freezer, how many I had or where in the world it was!?!  Was it in the kitchen freezer or the garage freezer?  My mind was in total turmoil!  I needed to get this under control fast or I was going to end up with 10 packages of brauts and no hamburger meat!  (which happened, by the way!)

So, I went out and inventoried the outside freezer and wrote everything I had down on a small magnetic white board that stays on the freezer.  I also put little tic marks with how may of each things I had.  

Next, I inventoried my kitchen freezer.

I decided that since summer is now here and the kids are officially out of school, I am going to use the inside freezer for their summer lunch snacks and the meat that I am going to use for the week.

I did up my menu plan for the week and went "shopping" in my freezers.

For next week, I pulled out a package of brauts, roast, hamburger for tacos and pork chops.  Everything that did not pertain to the kids or for dinner got switched over to the garage freezer and I updated the white board.

Now I can see what I have and what I'm out of and the only things in my kitchen freezer are the items I need right now.  Talk about a total relief!  Now I don't have to feel completely overwhelmed every time I go to get ice!

Checking In and Making a Little Update

It is amazing what can happen in a few short months!  I have moved, rearranged the house 4 different times, learned to actually cook without grossing out the kids, got engaged, chopped off a good ten inches of red hair, tackled and achieved several organizing enigmas and have completely destroyed my home office...twice!

There are a ton of little areas in my life that are in need of some severe organizational help.  We are talking a veritable organizing 9-1-1!  Thankfully I have been able to get a handle of some of the areas that have been causing me to lose a shit load of sleep.  Those are the ones that I figure I will share with you!  Just to show that my little hiatus was a little beneficial.  (Just a little!)

Organizing Family Game Night

We have and play a ton of games in the family.  I even have to give my 15 year old a by from the cuss jar during Nerts just because it gets soooo intense!  We even went out and bought three different versions of dominoes so we can play Mexican Train.  It's quite sad!  My little dilemma with my little game fetish is the fact that I have more games than I have space to store them in!  Closets are out of the question, it would be a pain in the butt to get to games in the kitchen cabinets, and the same would go for chests.  The games vary drastically in size and it was driving me insane trying to figure out what to do with them.  Plus I inherited a crap load of furniture when my fiance moved in so I needed to make room for a heck of a lot more furniture.  I called in the design expert aka Mom and we went to work rearranging the house.  What started out as an out of the way location for the games turned into an sheer act of brilliance on my mothers part.  She placed the games kitty korner in the game room and put a table cloth on our game table.  When you walk buy the room you don't see the games visually, but when we need to grab a game they are all right there!  Easy to get to, easy to view, and easy to take out the next pawn in my annihilation of the family!  Oh ya, baby!  Suzy is the Game Master!

Suzy Learned to Cook

I already posted on how I get through the grocery store with my new found passion for cooking more than hot dogs and mac-n-cheese, but now I have all of these wonderful recipes that I have stolen from family and friends and printed from the internet.  They were initially shoved in my junk drawer because I really didn't think I would use them THAT much.  Now my junk drawer is the resting place for a boat load of really yummy recipes that I pull out for BBQ weekends.  Mmmm, strawberry and chocolate crepes!  Yummmmmmm!!!!!  I thought about doing the little recipe box thing, but that really isn't me.  I am afraid I will lose those little cards and quite frankly, I write big and there isn't enough space.  Instead, I grabbed my trusty composition book and started putting the recipes in there.  I just taped the ones I printed from the internet to the pages (I am way too lazy to hand write them) and then ones that were just scribbled I actually re wrote them and put them in the book.  I can always find my favorite recipes because they are the ones covered in goo and oil.  :)  I'm not really what you would call a "tidy" cook!  I can stand up my notebook without fear and it makes me feel just a bit more confident because I LOVE my composition books!  I still have my 3x5 cards with the grocery items I need at the store if I get a wild hair up my keister to cook something and that has been worth it's weight in Crabby Cheesey Goodness!

Organizing the Craziness That is My Life

Trying to organize my day, bills, work, the family and remembering where I put my brain has been a NIGHTMARE lately!  So when Levenger came out with their new multi-tasker organizer I DIED!  I Twittered Steve Leveen and ordered my latest Circa brilliance and I can't tell you how much I LOVE IT!  I will blog about it separately now that I am getting back into the swing of blogging, because it is absolutely wonderful and deserves some undivided attention.

Although I was able to get quite a few things put in order, I am far from finished.  The garage is in need of a major overhaul, my car is a rolling disaster and pit of doom that my children call their bedroom is scaring the living daylights out of me!  Those are my next projects and I promise to blog and take pictures of our progress!

Until next time,

Happy Organizing!!!!