Need Help with Organizing Meals, Toys and Clothes Any Suggestions?

I need a lot of help in this area too. I've been using http://www.flylady.net and the advice that is offered there. It has helped me a lot. FlyLady is associated with http://savingdinner.com which helps me with meal planning. Both FlyLady and Saving Dinner have books that you can get at a book store or on Amazon.

I started these nearly two years ago. Actually I started the week my second child was born. I don't do everything they advise but I have been creating routines and habits that work for me. Not all the Saving Dinner meals work well for my family but most have been great!

Take a look and see if there is anything that might help you.

HI there. I put white contact paper on my fridge and have two sides: one for the week's menus and one for a to do and grocery list. I can visually see what I am cooking and what errands and things I need to do for the week. I also plan my meals ahead of time and try to keep all the items for each meal together in the cupboard or fridge(that is until my OCD husband puts them back into order of shortest to tallest package and i have t ostart all over again :(

hope this helps

I do what's called "4 meals in 4 minutes" by prepping all my meals at one time and putting them in the freezer. Just this morning I took one out of the freezer, cut the bag open, and put the meal (Italian Roast) into my slow cooker (it took 35 seconds...honestly!). I am in LOVE with this idea. See my blog for more meal planning tips. www.FamilyMealstogether.com

toys: Good luck! I am lame at this one.

Clothes: We have a "Monday, Tues, Wed, Thur, Fri" slot for them. So I wash the clothes and put them in the slot for my first grader to dress himself in the morning. He has to wear a school uniform so that makes it easier.

Good luck!
Email me if you want a free meal planning consultation.
-G.

I just heard from someone that she has a certain night each week for a specific meal. I am going to try this for example
Monday Pasta Night could be spaggetti, mac n cheese, fettucini (sp?)
Tuesday- Chicken I love to throw chicken in Crock Pot with Cream Mushroom Soup(cook low for 6 hours) & serve with rice & Veggies
Wednesday- Fish Salmon is good and easy to bake in oven with lemon & garlic seasoning or fish sticks & Fries
Thursday- Pork Again crock pot a pork roast covered in water on low (8hrs or high 4-5 hrs) Then pull out in fry pan add BBQ sauce use a fork to shred and you have excellent BBQ Pork for sandwiches
Friday- Steaks I love to BBQ tri tip or NY steaks what ever is on sale.
Saturday- Salads Taco Salad or any Chicken Salad
Sunday- Beef Meatloaf, or Shepards Pie also tacos is a favorite.
Hope this helps any other questions or receipes send me a note

I know a lot of people have said it.... flylady.net. She'll have your house clean 15 minutes at a time. I don't follow her precisely and thats nice. My house is still wonderful. she will get you on the right track. It was what I needed, someone to teach me to get into a routine.

Check out www.flylady.net. Sign up for the daily emails. She is great for guiding you through organizing your entire house, keeping it clean and generally organizing your whole life. One of her contributors does a feature called "saving dinner." I think that part is a paid subscription, but at any rate it's a monthly meal plan. You don't have to subscribe to a service for this, though. I try to plan our dinners at least a week at a time, based on what's on sale. Ex: we eat a lot of boneless skinless chicken breasts. Supermarkets put them on sale frequently at $1.99/lb. When they do, I buy a lot of them -- at least 20 lbs. at a time, then break up the packages into smaller ziploc baggies of 2 to 4 breasts per bag, then I freeze them. That gives us at least a month's worth of chicken breasts (I make them for dinner about twice a week.) Grill, bake or sautee them. Find simple marinades you like and pour marinade over the chicken breasts into the ziploc bags before you freeze them; that way when you thaw them they're already marinaded and ready to go onto the grill or into a pan. You can do similar things for ground beef when it goes on sale (mix up a huge batch of meatloaf mix, for example, divide it into single portions and freeze), boneless pork or whatever you like. Keep some rice on hand and a lot of fresh veggies for side dishes. Nearly any veggie can be roasted in a 400 degree oven with a little olive oil, salt and pepper -- or blanched (boil for about 3-4 minutes, drain, rinse in cold water, then toss in a teensy bit of butter or some olive oil with pepper). You can bake potatoes in the microwave in 8-10 minutes; scrub the skins and pierce a bunch of times with a fork, then nuke on high 6 minutes, check to see if it's soft all over and if not, turn it over and give it a few more minutes. If you map out the main dish in advance and have these sides on hand it's easy to throw dinner together quickly and save money, too ... as for the toys, if your kids have so many they're all over the place, try rotating them. Divide their stash into two, three or four bins, hide all the bins but one and they can only play with the contents of one bin each week. At the end of the week, rotate that bin out and replace it with a fresh batch. Meanwhile if there are toys your kids have outgrown, hold a yard sale or donate to a women's shelter or Salvation Army. Tell your kids they can keep the money from the sale of their stuff at a yard sale; that helps cut down on the tendency for them to yell and scream that they love everything and want to keep it all! I'm also a big fan of any kind of open-top bin or basket where kids can quickly toss their toys when it's cleanup time. Keep some under their beds and each night they need to scoop up all the toys, dump them in the bins and push the bins under their beds. Voila, clean(er) rooms! We also keep toy baskets in our family room where my kids have to stash their toys when it's cleanup time. My son is hugely into Lego kits full of a zillion tiny pieces so we put a cheap plastic rolling cart with drawers in his room. When the Legos start to spread around the house and make me nuts, I tell him it's time to collect them all and put them back into the drawers. The cart has shallow drawers for the loose pieces and deeper ones where he can store completed sculptures. ... Re: storing the clothes, take an honest look at how many clothes each kid really needs. Anything they don't need, don't wear, don't like or that's gotten way too beaten up, get it out of their rooms. The yuckiest stuff can be tossed or turned into rags. Evertyhing else can be given away to friends, the Salvation Army or take it to a second-hand shop to try to sell (you won't sell all of it or make much money but it clears out the clutter from the closets). I keep large plastic storage bins on a shelf in MY closet. As my kids outgrows things, I put the outgrown items into one of three bins: 1 to save the oldest kid's things for his sister to wear eventually, if it's something really unisex, 2 to take to a second-hand shop and 3 to sell at our next yard sale. Also each kid has one dresser drawer designated for clothing they haven't grown into yet. When I find clearance sales I buy things for them a size or two larger than what they're now wearing, so we never have a time when they've had a growth spurt or the seasons chang and we're caught with literally nothing to wear. About twice a year I pull stuff out of the "too-big" drawer to see what they've grown into. Anything that currently fits goes into their closets or their drawers of items they're currently wearing. Just try to avoid accumulating too many clothes at a time. If you have about 7-10 days worth of everyday outfits for each kid that should be plenty, and don't keep a lot of extra around in their current sizes. It just clutters the closet and makes it harder to keep track of what the kids already have and what they need ... sorry this is so long. It took me a long time to wise up to what works in my house, but these things really do help! Meanwhile definitely check out www.flylady. She's amazing. Good luck.

Whatever method you use... it has to be something you can maintain, be it something simple or super complex.

For me, I have plastic/woven bins and baskets...and I put similar toys in it. Then that way, my kids know where goes what. By themselves. Simple.

Or you can have the bins/baskets color coded. And of course, put labels on it, so they know where goes what. I just keep these toy bins on a shelf, or in the corner of a room or along one wall of a room. The kids can get to it themselves, and they can put it back themselves.

For meal planning, I make menus for each week... and then I rotate them. Then, my grocery list is made according to the ingredients I need for each menu/recipe. That way, I can keep my grocery costs lower... and prevent 'emotional' buying/splurging at the grocery store.

For easy meals, I like to marinate different kinds of meats. I buy bottled marinades/teriyaki sauces, marinate the meats in ziplock bags, and then it can marinate even for more than 1 day. Then, I BBQ it on our grill. Or, I cut up the meat in cubes, and make shish-kabobs, along with pineapple or bellpeppers or onions etc. Real easy. Tastes good, and even my picky son will eat it.

Or, I use the recipes from Martha Stewart's "Everyday Foods" magazine. You can also find it online at www.marthastewart.com She has good, simple, fast recipes. My family likes it.

For laundry, well I do laundry whenever it piles up, like 3 times per week. I don't separate the laundry, and just wash it all at the same time..that way, I don't waste water or my time. For delicate laundry, I just put it in those mesh lingerie bags. It turns out fine, no problems. I usually do laundry in the morning, as soon as I wake up and before I take my daughter to school, then I put it in the dryer before we leave the house. Then when I get back home, it's all done and I'm not just waiting around for it or hearing the noise of the washer/dryer at the same time. EVERYONE (except for my 2 year old) in the family, has to put their own dirty laundry in the laundry basket themselves, or it does not get washed. That is our rule.

I just keep things simple, and accessible for us and the kids. See what works for you and is manageable.

Good Luck,
Susan

Hi A.,
For organizing clothers, I have one of those, looks like a hanging shoe rack, with the pockets and after laundery day, which is Sunday, when we are folding and putting away our laundry we put an outfit into each cubbie whole for each day of the week. Of course sometimes this changes as the weather lately has been unpredictable. For the toys, I went and bought plastic tubs with lids and put my sons toys in those. Each tub has a specific kind of toy, ie: cars, puzzles, balls, music, etc. All of the bins are labeled and my son (now 3) knows that when he is done playing with one tub, he must pick it up and put it away before getting another one. It keeps his toys organized and when he asks Mommy where is my... I know where to find it =)
Hope this helps,
Take care,
H.

Looks like you have some great suggestions already but here is my two cents:

Organizing meals - I started using the Once A Month Cooking method when my husband deployed and I was home with a three month old and a perpetually hungry pre-teen. There are several sites you can use to do this, recipezaar.com, busycooks.about.com,etc. I even used my favorite weight watchers recipes - and YES! You can do this for a week at a time. The trick is to invest in two things: 1. A Foodsaver (I tried other containers, freezer bags with not so great results. Get the foodsaver if you plan to do this more than a week at a time) and 2. Invest the time to plan.
My plan is something like this:
1. Wednesday, check the store sales fliers for the great deals to stock up on. When cooking in bulk you can buy in bulk and save more (so you get the bonus of organizing your finances too :-))
2. I try to buy my groceries on Thursday or early on Friday to ensure there is a good selection and I am not using up my whole weekend for this.
3. Saturday after breakfast, I do the prep (cut, dice, measure, etc), I put a roast in the crock. Then after I feed the family lunch, I start cooking...I put chicken in the oven to roast, some on the grill, I brown ground meat, I even make up a batch of weight watchers vegetable soup for the week. You can do this prep for your breakfasts and lunches too, we just tend to be cereal and fruit people for breakfast but you can bake egg scrambles in muffin cups, flash freeze french toast, pancakes, etc for the week too.
As stuff finishes cooking, start dividing it - I will take some ground meat and portion it for spaghetti sauce, and some I will use for tacos or stroganoff. The roast is divided, some for dinner that night or Sunday lunch, the rest can be sliced for sandwiches, cubed for stew, you get the idea right? You can customize it for your family and your taste. Even vegetarians can do this.

As for organizing toys, put the kids to work... instead of demanding perfection, give them totes and baskets to group things in. My five year old has it down, art supplies on this shelf, stuffed animals here, dolls here, etc. Make it a fun game for them if you need to, bribe them at first if you need to, but have them do this work and you will be pleasantly surprised at how good they get about it. Also, as others told you, do a sanity check with your kids at least once a year - get rid of broken toys, donate toys that they don't play with... I involve my kids with this too - they know every year before Christmas that we go through our house and find things that we feel are worth giving to those in need. This makes it more real to them than just giving to toys for tots or sending money. They imagine someone else enjoying something of theirs and they are glad to give. Again, kids can really surprise you if you let them make some decisions about it.

Clothes, same applies - we are fairly strict about the 6 month rule in my house. If you haven't used it in 6 months and are pretty sure you won't use it in 6 months, out the house it goes. Obviously there are exceptions, but it helps. If you are crafty (which I am not) you can recycle clothes, but we usually donate, turn into rags or toss. The clothes you keep, I organize in categories, dresses together, then skirts, then pants, etc - some might think it is too much but trust me, taking the few extra minutes to do this when putting the laundry away saves so much time during the week! My husband is a big believer about putting your clothes out the night before too.

best of luck to you! Sorry this was so long.

I love the cookbook "Busy Moms" it has fast simple kid friendly recipes and a shopping list for each recipe. Find it at wwwsouthernlivingathome.com/danacarey
Hope this helps.
Dana
www.scentsy.com/danacarey

I agree with Abigail! I love the menus from savingdinner.com and so do my kids. And FlyLady has lots of good ideas! good luck!

Meals - I discovered my crockpot and used A Year of Crockpotting.com. It gives pictures of the finished dish, the ingredients (with photos) and the result.

Toys - This one is tough. We have a toy room, but they don't all stay in there. My friend has luck with keeping only one bin of toys in her living room and one bin of toys in her child's room. I have a lot more!

Clothes - We have two rods in the closet for my son (6) and my daughter (2). I found that picking out a weeks worth of clothes moves things a lot faster for me. Try it.

Good luck!

Check out flylady.net

Hi,
It just takes diligence. Most working moms do not have a lot of time and when they do, they are usually tired. I learned that even if you have just a short period of time (10-15 min) its ok to organize or clean for this short period of time. It does help. Organization for me begins with separating out what I do not want or need. Throwing-out or donating clothes, food, or toys that you do not want or need can make a big difference, hopefully making what you are left with more managable to put in drawers, storage bins or piles.

Organizing includes cleaning out my fidge periodically. This way you know what you have (for shopping and meal planinng) and you can find what you need when you need it.
I have a white board on my fridge. We plan our meals for the week on Sundays. I let each of my three daughter's choose one meal (my hubby and I pick one too). This way everyone knows what we are having for dinner each day including me! This also help my girl's know how to set the table for dinner.
Good lucka and hang in there!

I got a thermos for my son and I heat up leftover soup, chili, pasta, mac'n'cheese, spagettios, etc. He has a lot more variety in his lunch choices now and it is just as easy to prepare as a sandwich. I write out a meal plan for the week before grocery shopping. That way I have everything on hand for mealtime. Check out Mothering Magazine's website. I just read a fantastic article about organizing your week written by a single mom who starts her day before 5 a.m! Best wishes!

Lately I have been cooking a lot of meals that I found on receipezaar.com (I'm not sure how to spell it). I clicked on 30 minute meals and there are hundreds of great really easy ideas. I also buy bulk meat and put it in meal size baggies and freeze it.

As for toys, I have a lot of bins for different types of toys.

flylady.net
dinnerdiva.com

All I do is easy meals. Do you own a crock pot? If so you can buy your meats for the week and freeze them until needed. For the crock pot you can do shredded beef tacos by throwing in beef stew meat and some salsa to cook all day and it just falls apart when it's time to eat your tacos. Another is a pot roast in the crock pot, throw in pork or beef pot roast, garlic and seasoning then a few hours before ready to eat throw in onion, carrots and potatoes. One other great/easy meal I do (not in the crock pot) is chicken pot pie. chop up pre-cooked chicken, onions, lightly steamed broccoli and cauliflower and add two cans of 98% fat free cream of chicken soup. Place in back dish with top and bottom crust and bake for 45 minutes.

Hi
Clothes: http://www.organize-it-online.com/itm_kiddays.html

OR: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_?url=search-alias%3Dap...

Toys: I use a big toy box, or a plastic storage container, and let the kids put everything in there before dinner

OR: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/...

Good luck