For all things at home.

My top five ways to keep organized at home.

1. Keep a magnetic notepad on your refrigerator with a pen. As soon as you finish a product in your fridge or cabinets, write it on the pad.  This saves you time making a grocery list. When it’s time to shop, just grab the list. You can also keep an envelope of coupons near by so you can flip through them to see what coupons you have for the items on your list.

2.  Hang a clear shoe over-the-door organizer in a closet/laundry room/ utility room.  This is a perfect place to put all the “junk” you sometimes find yourself searching around the house to locate!  Mine is hanging in our laundry room and holds flashlights, batteries, nail files and nail polish removers, scissors and tape, tape measures, our camera and download cords, a lint brush, screwdrivers/hammer, and plastic bags for walking the dog. (Thanks to my sister Roberta who gave me this idea!)

3.  Label all storage bins in your closet so you don’t need to search through bins to find what you are looking for.  I rearrange the bins in my closet twice a year. At the end of summer, I move the Halloween/ Thanksgiving /Christmas bins so they are easy to get to and after New Years I move those bins to the back of the closet. (Ok – my husband does the lifting, I do the supervising!)

4.  Keep all of your gift bags, wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbon and greeting cards in one place with scissors and tape that you only use for wrapping presents.  This way when you need to wrap a gift – you have all the supplies in one place.  Buy greeting cards after a certain holiday when they are on sale – or stack up on generic thank you and birthday cards.  Organize them in a file folder by category.

5.  Keep a binder of recipes that you always make for certain meals or holidays.  This way you are only referencing one binder for all the recipes you will be making for that one holiday meal.  No flipping through cards or searching through recipe boxes.  I have a binder for each holiday – and the first page is a complete grocery list that I need for every recipe.  It took time, but I went through and figured out how much butter I needed for every dish in the binder so I had a total for every ingredient.  Now holiday grocery shopping is a breeze!