#Organizedin2013: Organizing Routines

The first two weeks of our #Organizedin2013 mission have left me feeling very optimistic about the rest of the year.  I love how clean my pantry is, how much more space I have in my refrigerator, and my newly reclaimed cabinet space above my refrigerator.  Now, if I could only have an organized morning routine!  We’ll get to that…

After our purging sessions of last week, it’s time to make sure that everything is located in spaces that make sense.  Do you make coffee often (uh, yeah!!!), well make sure your coffee maker gets a prized counter spot, and your mugs are nearby with stirrers, coffee filters, sugar and such.  Are your potholders near your oven?  Are your cutting boards near your knives?  Your wine tools near your wine glasses? Think about how you use the space and make sure your space is working for you.

You’ve also probably gotten better at purging now that you’ve done two “Time and Toss” events in your kitchen.  I know it’s made me ruthless.  I’m finding it so much easier to get rid of things I don’t use often as I’m moving items to different drawers.

I also cleaned out under the kitchen sink.  Is yours a wasteland like mine?  I found several bottles of dish soap, various wipes, and a crap-ton of plastic grocery bags.  I combined the cleaners that seemed safe-ish to combine, tossed and few crusty ancient ones, and I’ll be taking those bags to the Teeter today to be recycled.

The other goal for this week, is to put myself in the position to stay organized, especially now that my kitchen, a.k.a. command central, is thoroughly organized.   For me, the most frantic time of the day is the morning.  Guaranteed I’ve overslept, the kids have torn up the house, and my husband (bless-his-heart) has left all of his breakfast dishes on the counter along with leftover containers from yesterday’s lunch.  I’ll need to unload and reload the dishwasher, get the kids dressed and everybody fed, get lunches together, return the house to some semblance of order, and have a cup of coffee for my sanity…. all in about 20 minutes.

It’s true insanity that has been much improved since I’ve made these few basic changes to my routine:

1. Make school lunches while making dinner.  Now that I have more space in my refrigerator, I have room to put the whole lunch box in there.  So, while I’m putting dinner together, I also make a sandwich cut up some fruit, add a little snack, pour his milk, load up the lunch box and store the whole thing in the fridge overnight.  It’s not genius, but it has single-handedly had the most positive influence on my mornings.
2. Put dishes drying in the sink away each night and start the dishwasher before going to bed.  This means that the dishwasher is never crazy-full in the morning, so it makes it less of a pain to unload.  It also means that I don’t have to put a sinkful of dry dishes away in the morning.  Plus, it just feels good to have a clean kitchen before going to bed.
3. Complete an entire load of laundry each day.  I never mind starting the load of laundry.  But I hate folding it, and I really hate putting it away.  Only having one load to manage at once is so much better than having five baskets to tackle.
4. Keep my meal plan, recipes, and grocery shopping list in at the ready.  I’ve found that using my Grocery Shopping List, and then printing off my Menus on Mondays with recipes at the beginning of the week, makes me so much more likely to make my meals come Thursday.  I can read what I can prep ahead of time in the morning while making my coffee and so that I’m not surprised that a casserole takes 60 minutes to heat in the oven at 5:30 pm.
5. Go to bed with a perfectly tidied house.  It might not be clean by the time I get up (it’s amazing what a husband and two kids can do to a home in 30 minutes), but I’m much better off if they start with a clean slate than with a room already messied from the day before.  After cleaning up the kitchen at dinner time, I go from room to room, having the kids help me with the play room and their rooms, then move on to my office which tends to get overwhelmed with paperwork throughout the day.

What routines would you like to add to your schedule to keep you more organized this year?

If you’re just starting with our #Organizedin2013, don’t miss out on our past weeks:

Week 1: #Organizedin2013: Beginning with the Refrigerator and Pantry

Week 2: #Organizedin2013: Time & Toss Kitchen Organization