Archive for the ‘Planning and Organization’ Category
Make the Most out of your Freezer
February 2nd, 2010 | 
Author: Today’s Tuesday Tip is to make the most out of your freezer. As busy moms, we need all the help we can get! And the freezer can be one of your best friends!
First thing you need to do is organize your freezer space. You can’t use it, if you can’t fit anything in there. If all you have is an above fridge freezer, don’t fear – you can make great use out of that space too! If you are blessed to have added freezer space in the form of a chest or upright, be thankful! I’m gonna focus mostly on the above fridge freezer since that is what most have. My freezer didn’t have any shelves in it for whatever reason, so I bought plastic shelves from Wal-Mart and placed a large one that was the same length as my freezer space. This gave me double room instantly! The next best thing you can do to conserve freezer space is the containers you use. I have never been a fan of buying matching square containers, but if that is in your budget or you already have some – enjoy! I actually use freezer bags. I fill them up, then lay them flat to freeze. They remain in a flat, stackable form. And you are using only the space you need. If you fill a square container half-full, you still have to use the whole space of the container.
Now that your freezer is looking better, what do you put in it other than frozen pizzas? Here are some of my suggestions:
Spaghetti Sauce – I make a large batch in the crock pot and then freeze meal portions in quart sized freezer bags. Stack and freeze.
Pizza Crust – Make the dough and roll out the pizza crusts. Bake at 400 for about 10-15 min. Then freeze flat. Once frozen you will need to package them in something. This can be tricky, but I found crock pot liners work pretty good!
Bread Rolls – I make a large batch of rolls, then set them on a cookie sheet to freeze. Once frozen solid, I place a meal portion in quart size bags. Obviously these won’t freeze flat, so they usually stack on the very top or in the door.
Veggie Stock – I take the ends of my celery, onions and carrots and turn it into yummy soup stock. Boil water with these leftover veggies with a little chicken boullion and salt and pepper for a few hours. Drain the liquid off the veggies and let cool before placing in gallon size bags. Freeze flat.
Taco or Sloppy Joe Meat – I try to make a double batch of these whenever I make them. Then take and store the extra meat in a labeled quart bag and freeze. It will be ready for a quick meal.
That list should get you started. Think up your own ideas and share!
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Make your own Schedule Notebook
OK, so now that you have had time to think about scheduling it’s time to kick it into action and create your own notebook! There are so many planners on the market, but none of them ever seem to fit my life! So for this Try Something New Friday we are going to create our very own personal notebook.
To begin you will need at least a 1″ binder (I prefer a 2″ binder). Then a word processor and printer will be your next necessary ingredients. With that set, you can do almost anything!
Get creative. Make a cover for your notebook that expresses your personality.
For ideas on what to add to your notebook, think about how your day goes. Do you need a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar? I prefer a monthly calendar for me since I don’t have a lot of appointments per day and I like to look over my month at one time. Do you plan your meals? Do you need a sheet to jot down all meals or just dinners? If you homeschool, do you need a lesson planning section? Do you have (or wish you had) a cleaning schedule? Jot down which days you mop and which days you wash sheets. After you have written down all your thoughts and ideas, now its time to actually create and print out these sheets.
For those of us who just don’t want to or don’t have time to make these pages there are many places to find them online. But if you want something specific to your life, you may want to create your own.
My friend, Courtney, has done a fabulous job on her notebook. Check it out at The Crosland Family.
There are so many options out there. I will be created mine next weekend and posting pictures soon! I can’t wait to feel organized.
Scheduling
Tip Tuesday will have to be Tip Wednesday this week. My hubby’s truck broke down yesterday and I had to go rescue him, so my schedule got off. Ahh! The topic of today: scheduling!
Since this week I am focusing on Mommy-hood, scheduling always seems to bubble up when mommy’s get together and I am especially focusing on such a topic this week. First I would like to start off with my experience, then I will flood you with some great resources.
Schedules change! And will always change! As your children get older and new children arrive, the needs of your family will change and so will your schedule. Once you accept this fact, scheduling becomes a more fluid project than a rigid one. I loved Terri Maxwell’s Manager’s of their Homes, but setting such a rigid schedule was not for our family. But her book is chock full of ideas for making a schedule, like what tasks need to be done and how long should they take. I still use her idea of making a list of what each person’s duties should be to get me started with a schedule.
I break my day up into sections and then decide what tasks should be done during each section. This works for us. Here is our basic schedule for this year:
Our morning block starts at 6:00am and ends at 9:30am. Here are the things we set out to accomplish during that time:
Send oldest to school.
Breakfast for everyone else.
Care for the animals.
Bible Quiet Time and Prayer.
Morning Chores.
Snack.
Middle of the day starts at 10:00 and goes until 3:00pm.
School: Math, Cursive, and Bible.
Lunch.
Quiet Reading Time and Nap for the Baby.
School: History, Grammar, and Science. We also finish anything else we need to catch up on.
Snack.
Afternoon starts at 3:30 and ends at 6:30.
Afternoon chores.
Oldest gets home from school and does homework.
Dinner.
Evening:
Care for animals.
Hang out with Dad.
Bedtime by 8:00!
That is how I schedule! Simple. That leaves plenty of room for flexibility. If I have a specific project that I want to get done, then I will schedule it separately within those limits. My biggest tip today is not to get stressed over your schedule! I do believe you need one, well I most definitely do! But I would get stressed out because I didn’t finish the dishes at 9:00am and it would ruin the remainder of the day. So now I have a guideline I follow and its amazing the amount of things I can get done in one day!
Here are some great resources as you try to plan your day:
Mommy Tracked – printable calendars!
There is this really great book that I read years ago that really boosted my motivation, but now I can’t find it. I will update this post with it when I find it!
Hope that was enough to get you started. Please share your ideas with me!
Eat from the Pantry Challenge!
Buying groceries is something we must do every month! As mothers, we care for our families by shopping for food and providing healthy meals. But sometimes we wish we had more money to spend or could eat at restaurants more often or have that special dessert. Not that those things are bad, but sometimes we need to change our perspective. Having a grocery store down the street (or in the next town over 
) is a privilege of living in this great country! God has called us to be good stewards of our resources and providing good meals at minimal cost is part of that calling. Cooking from scratch is how I have managed to feed our family of 6 on $200-$300/month. (Of course that is an average, sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less.)
So here are our family’s goals for the Eat From The Pantry Challenge:
2) Create delicious, original meals with what is already in my pantry.
3) Do NOT complain to my husband or children about not having the luxury to run to the grocery store.
4) Teach my kids about families in other countries and how they provide for their families.
Would you like to join us? Please do! You may use the logo above and post on your blog page and share with us in your post about your January Eat from the Pantry Challenge. Then go back to Money Saving Mom and fill in your Mr. Linky so that others can read about your challenge.
Kitchen Gadgets
I love to cook and love trying new gadgets in the kitchen! So I’m gonna tell you about some of my favorite tools. Since my husband sees cooking as my job/art/hobby he also sees the importance of having the right tools! So he allows me to purchase new “tools” whenever our budget allows.
Cookbooks – I’m listing these first because I wouldn’t have a complete kitchen without them! I love books and cooking so that turns into a large collection of cookbooks! My favorites are shown in the window at the top of the page. (Ordering from this page benefits me . . . a little! LOL)
Bosch Universal Machine – The everything machine can be found at The Urban Homemaker. I love this machine! I have the blender, bread bowl with kneading hook and wisk, meat grinder, and food processor attachments! It is a large one-time investment, but well worth it! I have had parts replaced for free on my blender!
Food Chopper – I have tried other brands but prefer the Pampered Chef version. I chop nuts, onions, peppers, cookies, and more with this gadget. This is great for the small jobs when I don’t want to dirty my food processor. I literally used this until it broke. I will be buying a new one soon.
Batter Bowl – I’m not trying to have a Pampered Chef advertising thing here, but that is where I bought my batter bowl. We use this for almost everykind of batter we make. We will make a large batch of pancake batter, cook some for breakfast, and then stick the lid on and put the bowl in the fridge until the next morning. Works great!
Stoneware - I also bought all of mine from Pampered Chef. What can I say? I’m a pampered chef junkie! I have two large pizza stones, 1 rectangle cookie sheet, 1 large bar pan, 1 medium bar pan, 1 small bar pan, 2 loaf pans, 1 pie plate, 1 round baker, 1 rectangle baker, and 1 small oval baker. We lived in a 5th wheel trailer for two years and I had to cook in a gas stove. I love gas stoves, but for some reason the rv ones don’t cook very evenly. My stoneware was the only way I could cook anything! It absorbs the heat and then distributes it evenly.
Electric Knife – I bought mine for $1 at a yard sale years ago, but would not like to go without it! We mainly use it to slice bread. It cuts so evenly without squishing the bread.
Dough Divider – This is a simple, but useful tool. I use it for dividing dough, obviously, but also works great for scraping dough off the counter or picking up tortillas. Urban Homemaker also sells this.
Sproutmaster – This is a fun and easy way to sprout! I used to use a quart jar, but this is so much easier and more effecient. You can find this little gadget at Urban Homemaker too!
Meal Planning
I have meal planned in the past, but never really stuck with it. Now that I am meal planning again, I love it! I wanted to share a few tips with my readers.
The first thing that made the biggest difference in my meal planning success is the worksheet I use. If it is not easy to use, I’m not going to use it! I will be offering my meal planning worksheets for free to my readers soon. (So keep checking back!)
The second most important thing is to schedule time each week to plan your meals. I find doing any more than a week’s worth of meals at a time is overwhelming. I do my meal planning on Friday’s and my shopping on the weekend. But if you don’t schedule time to do this then it usually never gets done.
I also discovered that meal planning is great when mom is not home! I had to leave home for a retreat this weekend and I planned all the meals for my husband. I made sure he had all the ingredients he needed and that it was easy, nourishing meals. This sure beat my family eating fast food all weekend! Here is the menu that I planned for my husband:
Friday
Dinner – Roast and Fresh Spinach. I started the roast in my slow cooker Friday morning. All he had to do was cook up the spinach and serve.
Saturday
Breakfast – Granola. I made some the morning before.
Snack – Fruit
Lunch – leftovers. We usually eat the week’s leftovers on Friday’s for lunch. I just saved the leftover day for Saturday so all he had to do was heat up the food.
Snack – dried sausage
Dinner – Fajitas. I had defrosted the pre-seasoned fajita meat. My husband loves to cook outside on the pit, so this was fun for him.
Sunday
Breakfast – cereal. I don’t usually buy cereal, but I did for this occasion.
No snack because they were at church.
Lunch – bring coleslaw to the church potluck.
Snack – fruit
Dinner – dine out with mom.
Now my husband didn’t follow it exactly, but he did real close. He didn’t have to think about what to make them. I have to leave again this weekend to visit my sister and I have already planned out their meals. This worked great!
