Spice Drawer Organization

The first time we went house-hunting, I fell in love with a house that had a spice drawer in the kitchen. Just a shallow drawer with all the spice jars laying down, gorgeously organised – functional and pretty. We didn’t buy that house but I still remember that wonderful drawer!

When we moved into our house in Brisbane, there were lots of drawers in the kitchen and I bought a spice organiser drawer insert. Unfortunately, with our deep drawers, it wasn’t an efficient use of space and quickly had more jars than organiser space:

That photo is not staged – my spices were a disaster and it was impossible to find the one I needed.

A change of plan was needed, and with the help of some Avery round labels (Product number J5624 – seem to be hard to find these days…) and my printer, I turned my spice drawer into this:

So much tidier and so much easier to find my herbs and spices!

I plan to either refill the jars or swap the lids over as I buy new jars.

And to help you, I created a printable:

Click on the image to go to download the pdf file. I’ve added all the usual herbs (with green labels) and spices (with brown labels), and with a few blank labels if your spice of choice isn’t there. If you’d prefer, click here for blank herb labels or here for blank spice labels.

Since moving house, I don’t have the drawer space for my spices, but I’ve just put all the jars into a plastic container and store it in the pantry.

This is working really well for me too. So let’s have another look at the before and after:

So much better! How do you organise your herbs and spices?

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In-Drawer Plastic Bag Holder

I started with the very classy plastic bag filled with lots of plastic bags. I then moved on to fabric bag holders. You know the type – long cylinders with drawstrings that you stuff bags in the top and pull out at the bottom. But something about them always annoyed me. They’re too squishy, they bang against the door if you hang them in the pantry. My kitchen mostly has drawers too, and they just didn’t work for me. They just weren’t neat enough (yes, the engineer in me is just a little obsessed with order and neatness).

Then I found an old wooden tissue box cover that I wasn’t using, and a light bulb turned on. So I present to you my neat and tidy in-drawer plastic bag holder:

It’s also a drawer divider, stopping my paper towel from rolling away – double tidy duties, even better.

I have no idea why it is painted a bright blue. I can’t remember where I was originally using it. I probably should pretty it up a bit, but it’s not high on my priorities.

Does plastic bag messiness irritate you? (I can’t be alone in this, can I?) How do you store your plastic bags?

Free Printable: 2012 Monthly Planner

This may be a little late, but I’ve put together a monthly planner.

I’m using this planner as my blog editorial calendar and as a place to jot down goals, ideas and tasks. I’m using it primarily to keep my blogging on track, but you could use it for menu planning, as an ordinary calendar.

It’s set up to print double-sided and then fold all the pages in half to make a booklet. Download your free copy from here.

Please let me know if you use the planner and if you have any suggestions for it.

Edited to add: If you'd prefer not to make a booklet, you can download this version to just have a page for each month.

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How to Sew Fabric Basket Liners: Tutorial

Yesterday, I showed you my DIY Dinner Meal Kits. I used plastic baskets for the kits, but I wasn't happy with just plain. So I made up some fabric baskets liners, with Velcro to attach my recipe cards to the front.

You could find lots of other uses for these fabric-lined baskets: in the bathroom, nappy-change station, craft room. Wherever you use a plastic basket, you could pretty them up with a liner.

With elastic around the edge to hold them on, they are also easy to take on and off to wash, or if you just want to change the fabric.

Here's the full tutorial for how to sew fabric basket liners (previously shared at the CSI Project).

DIY Dinner Kits

I wish I was better at menu planning, but I  haven’t found the right system for me yet. Some weeks, I’m organised and it all goes well, and other weeks, I have no idea what we’ll have for dinner each night (except Fridays – that’s pizza night!).

Even when I have planned out my menus for the week, sometimes it gets to 5pm, and I realise I’m missing ingredients, I haven’t defrosted the meat, or I’ve run out of time to cook the planned meal. Standard story – life got in the way.

In the past, I’ve stared into my well-stocked pantry, trying to dream up something healthy to eat. I then get overwhelmed and disheartened, and it’s easy to go the takeaway option.

To get out of this rut, I made DIY “Dinner Kits” in my pantry (previously shared at the CSI Project). Three reliable, family-favourite recipes that are simple to cook and can get dinner on the table in a pinch. When I stare into the pantry, looking for something to cook, I can quickly pull out my meal kit and  a quick, easy and healthy dinner will be on the table before I know it!

What makes a good meal kit recipe?

1. Simple recipes, made mostly from pantry and freezer staples (ie ingredients you keep on hand).
2. Recipes that you’ve cooked over and over. You know your family will eat it and a it’s a no-stress recipe for you to cook.

How do I Make my Meal Kits?

I use  cheap plastic baskets from the Dollar Store (and I lined them with fabric to pretty them up – tutorial coming later this week!).

Most of my “meal kits” are based around canned food. So each kit contains the canned ingredients and dry ingredients (pasta, corn chips, even onions or potatoes). If I’m really organised, I measure out things like flours and spices and put them in small jars or zip-lock bags. That can make such a difference getting dinner on the table quickly!

I also have a laminated copy of the recipe in each kit (well, actually I used self-adhesive book cover stuff). No searching to find the recipe when I need to be cooking!

What are my current Meal Kit Recipes?

I have Tuna Mornay, Nachos and Creamy Tomato Pasta in my kits at the moment. I also have the ingredients on hand for my Pesto Pasta, although most of them are in my fridge. Feast in 15 has more great last-minute recipe ideas.

Stay tuned later in the week for a tutorial on making the basket liners.

Do you put together “meal kits” for easy meals? What do you do when you realise late in the day that you don’t know what’s for dinner? What are your go-to last minute recipes?

Project Simplify: Paper Clutter

As I mentioned in my ramblings yesterday, the hot spot for this week for Project: Simplify at Simple Mom was paper clutter. This was just the motivation I needed to get my paperwork in order. Here are three areas I decided to tackle:

Entrance Hall Drop Zone

Study

  

Cardboard Collection in the Playroom

The study is the most disorganised room in our house (except for maybe my craft room, but that’s a happy mess). I’m in charge of recording our finances and filing the paperwork, and that’s been low on the priority list since Little Miss came along (and in fact, records for one account were more than a year out of date). I was determined this week to chip away at the filing and updating our financial records. I stole moments during nap times and when I could get Little Man to play on an old computer, and here’s the result:

Most of the accounts are up-t0-date, with a small pile still to be processed. I’ve got rid of the index folder (that was really useful, but has just been hiding stuff that I should be dealing with). It even had a section for recipes to try – really useful in an upstairs study with kitchen downstairs! There’s another similar-sized pile of things still to sort out, but it feels much more manageable.

I sorted and process the paper in our drop zone. One of the things that annoys me is the way the folders gape open, so I added a few hook and eye dots to keep them closed.

 

The drop zone still doesn’t look great. I’ll pretty it up and coordinate the folders one of these days.

I culled the cardboard boxes in the playroom. The goal was to only have boxes stored under the table, but I couldn’t cull that much. Hopefully Hubby appreciates the efforts anyway, since the boxes were starting to annoy him. I’ve got a few ideas of toys I want to make, but it’s another thing I’m not quite finding time for.

Thanks Simple Mom for motivating me to do this. I feel so much better knowing one area of  my home management is almost under control… Can’t wait see what the next hot spot is!

Bedroom nesting - Shoes Shoes Shoes

For each month until my bub arrives (October), I'm having a nesting theme (see here for more details). June's theme is Bedrooms. So far, I've made curtains and London blinds, decorated a bathroom bin and sorted the baby clothes.

In my nesting before my son was born, I bought shoe boxes and decided to store my nice shoes properly, but I still always wanted it to be a bit more organised. Here is what it looked like:

 

This isn't all my shoes - just my nicer, dressier shoes that I don't wear very often (OK, not at all since my son was born). I love these shoes and want to look after them - here's some them:

It's so nice seeing my shoes again. I'd forgotten how much I love some of them, which is the problem with storing shoes properly. So I took photos of all of them, and stuck them to the boxes so I can see at a glance all my lovelies...

Here are my day-to-day shoes, not counting a couple of pairs by the front door downstairs. Looks like they could use a bit of a tidy-up too, but that's a job for another day.

The benefits of organising my shoes are that I now know exactly what I've got. I'm pretty sure I won't need to buy burgundy coloured shoes for a while, since I have 4 different pairs (although I may need to make a few more outfits that go with burgundy shoes!). I also feel so much happier seeing them when I walk into the robe, I can't help but smile!

I think that's all my bedroom nesting for now - July's theme is Living/Dining - better get crafting!