Home Organization- Bulletin Board

Above is a peak into a small section of our home office… this silver magnet/ bulletin board from Crate & Barrel keeps me stay organized from week to week and helps me balance all household work.

 

I use this bulletin board for meal planning, weekly to-do’s, and important family notes.

 

 

 

Lining the top of the board are three magnet tins (I also use these on the side of my refrigerator) which house push pins, magnets, and binder clips.

• World Market: Love these magnet tins! Perfect for keeping small storage handy- come in variety of colors.

• Office Max: Such colorful cuties! In-store you can purchase with pre-printed words: File, Urgent, To-Do, & Misc.

• Office Max: Love the round push pins in teal! Fun color.

• Mesh Basket: Don’t know where I purchased my basket from, but love this to keep everything I need handy. Dry erase markers, sharpie, and post-it notes.

 

The board currently houses four key documents to attempt to keep me organized.

 

1. Cleaning Schedule

 

2. Real Simple Grocery Checklist:

• This amazing list helps me stay on track at the store and is one place we keep a running list of items we are out of and/or in of from the store.
• Easy tear off sheets (with magnets on the back) are already divide into sections & have common items pre-printed.
• I simply put a line through each item while shopping and never rarely overlook an item!

 

3. To-Do List

 

4. Weekly Meal Plan

 

Anyone else have a home organization system you love?Feel free to share any ideas!

Weekly Meal Planning

I start this post with a nod to my dear parents! Love them both to pieces (taken last summer in Michigan for my cousin Rachel’s wedding weekend)!

I may not have inherited the organized gene, but I sure inherited the love for cooking, healthy eating, and the blessings that come from being surrounded at the dinner table by family and friends. This was something I looked forward to in my home on a daily basis. I still don’t know how my mom juggled it all with four very active kids and still managed to cook a delicious meal every day!

Even though it is just me and the hubby in our home right now, I  still love our nightly habit of eating meals together at the dinner table! That’s right… no TV dinners for us!!

• I know in some homes this is a long lost past-time… sigh! 

I truly believe families are blessed through the community and connectedness that can occur while sharing a meal. True… cooking at home takes time, but you can do it! For me, I like knowing what goes into my meal, like to substitute healthy ingredients in recipes I find on Pinterest, and waste less food when I plan for the week!

I began meal planning with the below template. I loved it at first, but found that I change my mind too often to stick to a rigid, pre-populated, meal daily meal plan. It really doesn’t matter, but the format was what bothered me as I was skipping all over the place.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132376088/Weekly-Meal-Plan-by-Day

After a brief search of my Pinterest favorites, I found I really liked the feel of the following pins: here, here, and here. But I was looking for something more… flexible, less restrictive, and adaptable!

A quick re-working of the template led me to the below. Ok, ok… not much different, I know! This template seemed fitting for what I was  looking to accomplish.

• Plan a weeks worth of meals- with the flexibility to each whatever meal we felt like during each day of the week.
• This allows us to swap breakfast for dinner or switch lunches for dinners (or visa versa for that matter) as we see fit!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132376346/Weekly-Meal-Plan-by-Meal

As always, you can download this to-do list for your personal use. Please leave me a comment if you would like a copy that can be edited to customize for your family.

Well hello beautiful! Below is a picture of the weekly meal plan (located on the front of our refrigerator). My hubby really likes this addition to the fridge as he gets to “pick” which meals sound good throughout the week. And I like the flexibility of not feeling locked into certain meals for the day.

We’ve also found this helps make future meal planning more of a concerted effort… allowing us to try a variety of meal options!

I have been saving the meal plan on my computer… hoping to archive a few months worth of meal and be able to re-use plans in  up-coming busier summer months.

Do you find meal planning a treat or a torment? How do you incorporate healthy eating into your busy lives?

Weekly To-Do List

My dear husband (and his lovely family) are some of the most organized people I know! I will not lie, when we first got married, this was a HUGE adjustment for the two of us! Rewind to then:

• Me- not organized & cannot find a thing when I need it!
• He- I half jokingly say to family & friend, “ he would love to live in a Sterilite Container!”

Notice- perfectly clear, square, clean, and neat!

Needless to say, we needed to meet somewhere in the middle. This was truly a learned behavior for me… I am a firm believer you can learn new tricks… sometimes you just need to notice the benefit of your action before they become habits!

Fast forward to now- in short what I learned from our journey toward organization as a family:

• Life is much less stressful when you can find your things
• Couples & families tend to argue less when living in an organized space
• More time exists for the important stuff when you consciously invest in a more organized lifestyle
• You CAN enjoy cleaning, organizing, and structure (even if you don’t intrinsically lean toward such tendencies 

** This all brings me to the to-do list **

I modified my husband’s (work) to-do list into a version I can use for home and I also use a version for my work.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132370994/To-Do-List

 

You can download this to-do list for your personal use. Please leave me a comment if you would like a copy that can be edited to customize for your family.

This is a very simple list format, but keeps all my to-do’s in one place. I am a person who can literally have 10 sticky notes from one afternoon, but loose track quickly of what I need to do.

Streamlining all the sticky notes, scratch paper, and messages items onto one document and moving incomplete items from one week to the next helps me be more efficient and feel less forgetful.

How do you keep your household and/or household to-do-list organized? Any tips from those inherently organized are welcome!

 

Cleaning Schedule

Inherently I am not a person who “loves” to clean. In fact, I fight envy am amazed by family and friends who take joy in housework. Nonetheless, I love everything about clean house… from the neat tidy look, to the sense of peace & tranquility, to being visitor ready at a moments notice!

So… how does one who is not fundamentally wired to just clean, go about this seemingly daunting tasks?

Well for me, I have found in my work and my personal life that I am a great “task master”. Give me a checklist, agenda, or row of checkboxes and I can move mountains! Somehow a list turns ordinary tasks into a challenge, a quest, something to be conquered…

Above is one view of the home office… to the left of the window is a silver magnet/ bulletin board from Crate & Barrel. I just love this recent addition to our office (repurposed from another space)! It keeps me organized from week to week and really helps me balance all the household work.

Located here is my cleaning calendar. I have used other versions in the past, but this seems to work best for our current home. I placed the calendar in a sheet protector in order to be able to use my dry erase markers to check items off as I go through the week.

This helps me see that I am accomplishing my “to-do’s” and also allows for adjustments to the schedule if I don’t feel like doing a particular item on a specified day. As long as it all gets done, who really cares which day a particular items is completed. The name of the game for me is consistency!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132341958/Cleaning-Calendar

 

You can download this calendar for your personal use. Please leave me a comment if you would like a copy that can be edited to customize for your family.

 

You will notice the calendar is broken down in to 4 sections:

 

1. Daily- Morning

Make Bed

Empty Dishwasher

Put in Load of Wash

Bathroom Wipe Down

 

If you aren’t quite a morning person (like me!)… this is a way to get some of your house organized before you are even awake! All tasks should take less than 15 minutes combined & save on work later in the day!

Note: I just started to use the NEW Windex Touch-Up Cleaner. This works well to give surfaces a quick clean.

2. Daily- Evening

 

Vacuum Kitchen & Dining Room Floor	Load Dishwasher	Clean Dishes & Sink
Fold & Put Away Wash	Sort & Shred Mail	15 Minute House Tidy

 

These tasks should take about 30-60 minutes depending on your household size and number of people in your family. The key is to keep ahead, so you do not end up with a full day worth of cleaning at the end of a long week. I try to break up the tasks throughout the evening & get the hubby involved!

Note: We have wood floors throughout our current home- I use a small light-weight vacuum to clean up the floors after meals. Such a time saver, thanks to my amazing sister for this tip: Eureka! Vacuum

3. Chore of the Day

 

This one is pretty self explanatory- separated by day of the week and room of the house. I have seen other cleaning calendars on Pinterest here, here, or here that focus more on a certain task versus a particular room.

 

I specifically chose to do mine by room so I feel like I am accomplishing something. Mind over matter… like the feeling of the entire room being done!

 

4. Swing Day

 

These are tasks that I personally didn’t feel needed to be done weekly, but wanted to have in the rotation (as they may get lost in the daily shuffle).

 

By no means is this list ALL INCLUSIVE, but rather my humble attempt to try to be a better homemaker. I do not perfectly follow the list, but rather attempt to stick to it more days than not to help run a clean, organized house!

 

Do you have a cleaning schedule you follow or any time-saving cleaning tips? Would love any & all ideas!

All About Molly McGee

I grew up in West Michigan with the most loving family and friends a girl could ask for!

I love trying new things- especially decorating, pretending to be crafty (I am really good at copying other’s ideas), trying out new recipes- added my own healthy/fresh spin, and making-a-go of organizing our ever changing home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am so blessed to have met (2001) and married the

love of my life (2006)! We have lived in three states

(so far!) in the Midwest and have sure learned

a lot about traveling, organizing, packing,

& being flexible/ forgiving.

 

My hubby and I have such an amazing family!  
We love any time we get to spend with our parents
and siblings (all who still reside in various parts of MI).
We are so blessed to have one niece and two nephews-
who are such cutie patooties!  

We actually grew up 12 miles apart (different cities and school systems), but didn’t meet until a blind date in college our sophomore year. This makes traveling back to our hometowns for visits very convenient!!

I am a nurse who loves caring for people of all ages…

but I have a special place in my heart for the

emergency room and pediatric patients!

 

My hubby is a college basketball coach and I am his biggest fan!! We love March Madness (although basketball season never ends in this house) and all things sports related.

 

 

 

This blog is my journey to focus on life’s little (and big) blessings. I have so much to be grateful for and try to seek to simplify the daily stressors in order to enjoy more moments with family and friends.

Thanks for stopping by my blog!