Organization: A Link-Up

our monthly link-up topic for September is Organization, and for anyone who knows me, it is laughable that I would have anything to say on the topic. :) i am quite honestly, the least organized person EVER. my personality actually finds order in disorder. for example, if you were to go look in any of the drawers in my house, they would look completely chaotic to most people, and yet, I would know exactly where something was if I needed to find it.

now don't get me wrong, there are elements of my home and life that are extremely organized, i just have to work really really hard to keep them that way. there is one area, in particular, that i have had to force myself to be organized in...and that is in the kitchen. in order to maintain the vegan lifestyle that we prefer to primarily eat, to stay within our pretty tight food budget, and to actually manage to have a dinner meal prepared each night for our four little people 4years and younger, i have had to pull up my big girl pants and create some organization.

I thought I would share a few of the ways I am able to maintain this!

plan! plan! plan! this is another thing i struggle with as i usually am a fly by the seat of my pants gal, but when i truly take the time to plan each and every meal and snack, i am much more successful at staying within our budget, as well as feeding us well. this is where pinterest has come in extremely handy for me. i have a board that i have created for our weekly meals. (i made it secret for some reason...i think because i am changing it constantly). i go through each week and pin the meals/snacks that i plan to make and then make my shopping/meal planning lists from there.

prep ahead of time. whether its a full meal, or snacks, i like to pick things that can be prepared ahead of time and saved for later. so for example, i may cut up and freeze fruit, and place in individual snack bags for the boys to pull out as they want. or i pre-make our oatmeal, freeze it in individual servings and then pull it out in the mornings to heat up real quick. (recipe can be found here). i try to pick dinner meals, such as the spinach and artichoke wonder pot, that can be prepared in the morning, and then simply thrown into a pot at dinner time to cook.

cook in bulk. another method that has allowed me to keep our kitchen and my meal planning organized, is cooking in bulk. as much as i possibly can, i will prepare things that can be made in bulk and then frozen and saved for later. beans are one of the obvious things i do, simply because we eat so many of them throughout the week. 

well there you have it.

a few very simple tips i follow to help keep this area of my life organized.
i hope you will link up and share some of your best organization ideas! :)

xo. 

An InLinkz Link-up