Why I Stopped Making a Menu Plan

I used to make a menu plan, two weeks at a time to coincide with my grocery days.  But I stopped. 

I know, I know, everyone says to make a menu - it saves you time, it saves you money.

Well, it can but it can also waste a lot of time, for me anyway.

I would spend way too much time going through recipes, deciding what looked good and where it would fit in my week and then make my grocery list based on my menu. 

But do you know what happened, things would come up and we wouldn't follow the menu. Or a certain day and meal would come up and I just really wasn't in the mood for that particular meal that day. It eneded up being a waste of my time. 

So, I found a system that works much better for me.

Preparing for Christmas All Year

This year for Christmas I did very little planning ahead, perhaps none at all. I want to do better next year. 

I think I could put more thought and effort into each gift if I started much earlier. I think I could save money by watching sales or making more presents. I think my husband would be happy if I didn't spend so much money all at once. I think I would enjoy more of the Christmas season if I had most of the shopping done ahead of time. I think I would have more time to bake cookies and candy with my children to take to our neighbors. I just think it's a good idea to start much, MUCH earlier.

There's one problem. Okay two.

One, it kind of overwhelms me trying to figure out exactly how to start planning for Christmas in January.

Two, I'm a procrastinator.

I can overcome number two, I am getting better in this area.

About number one, you can help me.

How do you plan ahead? 

How do you plan gifts yet make it something that person won't buy between now and Christmas?

How do you handle the people you draw names for when your family doesn't draw names until thanksgiving?

How do you keep track of what you have for whom?

I would love to hear your ideas for planning ahead.

 I really am determined to do something each month, starting in January, to prepare for Christmas next year. I've already been pinning ideas for crafts and Christmas ideas.

I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

 I plan to do posts sharing how I'm planning ahead each month, so that, maybe, I can encourage others to make the most of their Christmas as well.

Blessings,

Rashel

My Makeshift Pantry

My weekend project was to declutter and organize my pantry. Have I ever mentioned we live in a small home? Well, we do, a 900 sq. ft. home to be exact. It is a pretty open floor plan which helps but there is not one built in closet in our home - NOT ONE! I use a lot of shelves: homemade, pre-made and bookshelves - everywhere.

I decided a while back to use three of my shelves to make a pantry in my kitchen. 

Organizing my THM fridge

I don't have much time today but did want to pop in and say hello and show you a picture of my THM fridge!  We are blessed to have two fridges, one is our regular everyday fridge in the kitchen and the other is our "extra" and is on our porch. Yes, we might be a little redneck. That's okay with me. We have a small house and no garage so if it has to go on the porch for me to have an extra, I'm okay with that.

I made some premixes for my fat stripping frappa, chocolate muffin in a mug and cinnamon muffin in a mug and put those in the fridge. I also washed my new 1/2 gallon mason jars my hubby brought me the other day and filled some with coconut flour, almond flour, flax meal, diatomaceous earth and chana dal. Some of those are in the fridge and some in my cabinet or on my shelves.

That is it. Nothing fancy but I do like how it is nice and organized and easy to see. You can see I write on the jars, I use a permanent marker and it washes off with soap and water.

  Those eggs are from my dad, we are blessed to get free range eggs for free from him. You can also see on the next shelf down in the back is some raw milk. Those two gallons have soured but I still use them when baking for my family.

Short and sweet today, too much to do!

Blessings,

Rashel

Some goals for the new year

I don't really like "new year's resolutions" because I feel I make them on a whim and I never really stick to it and accomplish them, however, I do have some goals for this new year. These are just some things I would like to accomplish this year; in fact, I wanted to accomplish some of them last year! I decided to make two categories of goals, one for health and one for homestead. I did place them somewhat in order, but that is open for change as time goes on. My original plan was to work on one goal a month throughout the year, but  as I was making my lists I realized I really would like to accomplish some things sooner than that. Therefore, my plan now is to tackle one goal at a time and progress as I feel I am able. I don't want to take on too much at once but I also know I can work on some of these at the same time. So are you at all interested in what my goals are? Well, if not, you can quit reading now but I have a feeling if your weren't interested, you wouldn't have read this far! So here they are -

Health Goals

1.  Eliminate all processed sugar from my diet, this includes any food that contains processed sugars. I will allow myself honey, sucanat and raw sugars.
2. Drink my coffee black or use only stevia. 
3. Consistently drink 64oz of water daily.
4. Exercise two times a week. I know most people say three, but I am focusing on a doable goal right now.
5. Eat fruit at least two times a day. I have not been doing good at getting enough fruit in my diet.
6. Eat RAW vegetables at least twice a day.
7. Keep kombucha made.
8. Learn to make 2-3 fermented foods that we enjoy, using Nourishing Traditions.
9. Learn to make kefir.
10. Learn about 5 herbs and their uses.
11. Find a properly combined bread recipe. This is one of those I will work on throughout the months as I have time, I just hope to have come up with one by the end of the year.

Homestead Goals

1.  Follow my home management binder consistently. 
2. Work on Christmas presents throughout the year.
3. Keep track of all of our spending.
4. Increase my pantry/preparedness stock.
5. Declutter each room thoroughly.
6. Keep meals and bread in freezer at all times.
7. Keep up with my sewing.
8. Have a better garden this year and preserve more of the harvest.
9. Make a family favorites cookbook.
10. Make soap.

Well, there you have it. Those are the things I would really like to accomplish by the end of the year, hopefully sooner!

Have you set goals for the new year? I would love for you to share them with us.

Blessings,

Rashel

Organizing my bedroom and pictures

My bedroom seems to be the catch all for everything that doesn't have a home, which means it gets cluttered very easily. It is also home to our office space- desk, filing cabinets and bookshelves. Our computer is on a small desk in the living room for accountability purposes, but the rest of the office stuff is in our bedroom. We also don't have a closet in our room, we use a clothes rack for our hanging clothes which means they are also visible and add to the appearance of clutter. I was motivated today to do some reorganizing and work on getting it all under control. I took some before and after photos for you. 

This is as you walk into our room, before:

and after:

I still have alot of paper filing/decluttering to do but a little progress is better than no progress.
Before:

 After:

Before:

After:

Below shows where my skirts were before. They weren't easy to get to.  I like the area shown above much better. I feel like I have my own little closet space!

Like I said, I still have work to do in here, but I didn't expect to get everything done in one day. I am happy with the progess I made today.

Hope you enjoyed a look into my home and hopefully these pictures will encourage you if you need to declutter or organize an area.

Blessings,

Rashel

Clutter to cleaning to reorganizing

I don't know what it is about me, but when I really get the urge to do some cleaning, I end up rearranging things. It happened when I cleaned the kitchen yesterday. My poor children are always asking where I moved such and such; it's their chore to put away clean dishes. I just can't help it. I am always looking for ways to make things less cluttered or more efficient and that means reorganizing some things.

I rearrange my living room furniture between 2-4 times a year. I get really bored with it being the same all of the time. I think I got some of that from my mother, I remember her rearranging the furniture as well.

I also realized while cleaning yesterday the reason I don't deep clean very often. I have too much clutter to put away that I never get to the real cleaning. Most of my time is spent picking up things my children leave out or just  picking up stuff in general. I really need to focus each day on doing the little things that will keep my home picked up. Then when I get the mood to clean, I can actually clean instead of just putting things away.

I did get some cleaning done yesterday in the kitchen and the living room. I mainly got cobwebs, ceiling fans, dust and swept the floors. We had unexpected company for a couple hours or so which cut down my cleaning time, but I am not complaining, it was some friends we love that we hadn't seen in several weeks.

My goal now is to stick to my home management binder and follow the schedules I have in there. If I do that, the little things and the deep cleaning will all get done eventually and consistently. If you want to read more about my HMB, you can read here. 

Feel free to share your homekeeping experiences with me. I love to read them!

Blessings,
Rashel

Monthly Grocery Shopping

I have been working this morning on getting my bedroom more organized. This is the catch all room (everything that doesn't have a home ends up here), it is also my office area, sewing area, scrapbook area. That all equals alot of clutter and not a very relaxing area for me. (or productive office area)  Anyway, I have been working on that and making some progress but at lunch I decided to sit down and read some blogs for a little bit and maybe find some encouragement in my organizing.

I came across a really encouraging blog post at Jabez Farms, although it has nothing to do with organizing my bedroom! She shares her struggles with spending too much at the grocery store and how she decided to start monthly grocery shopping. Her thoughts really encouraged me to reevaluate my own grocery shopping, I currently shop every two weeks and spend $250 for our family of 6. However, I must admit that I usually make a couple stops at a local dollar store in between and spend a little more there. I really need to stop that. I've decided to at least try monthly grocery shopping and see how it works for us. I have always gone every two weeks because that is how hubby gets paid, but I think I can make this work and it will save me a lot of time. I'm still in the early stages of planning this, but I will try to post my plans and my progress as I go. There are some things I still don't know when it comes to how I will do it, but one thing I know for sure, hubby will  love it if I can find another way to money and I will love gaining the hours I would normally spend shopping!

I will post more as I make my plans and I will follow up and let you know how it goes when I shop.  How often do you grocery shop?

Blessings,
Rashel

What do you do to stay organized?

I've really been thinking lately that I seriously need to get more organized in alot of areas. I am not really talking about house cleaning organization, I have a plan for that and it works well - when I follow it. I am more thinking about a plan to keep up with paper clutter, plan better for birthday and holiday gifts that will save me from last minute shopping and things like that. I know if I plan better, I can give more presents and make them more meaningful without spending more money; I just need to plan ahead and follow through. I also want to be more organized about planning my garden, starting it earlier than normal and keeping up with it. I want to be more organized in many areas so that I will have more time to spend on the things I want to do. I know organization is such a time saver and a money saver. I really feel as if I'm rambling, so I'll stop now.

What do you do to help stay organized, in any area of your life?  What things do you like to plan ahead for and how do you do it?


** On a side note, I'm so sorry to all my blogger friends. I have been so bad about getting online lately. I haven't been posting on my blog or visiting with my friends. I should be able to get online more now. I've missed visiting with you.

Blessings,
Rashel