7 Ways A Planner Will Organize Your Life

If you don't use a planner to organize your life, then you are missing out! Here's why....

I love planners! Honestly, I don't know how anyone manages to stay organized without them. For as long as I can remember (I think my obsession started in junior high), I have always used some sort of planner. The ones I used were the small calendars, but once I upgraded to a bigger planner (horizontal), I never looked back. It's amazing the difference it makes in keeping me organized  and if you're not already using a planner to organize your life, here are 7 reasons why you should:

 7 Ways a Planner Will Organize Your Life

1. A planner will help you remember your appointments

Most doctor's appointments and dentist appointments are made well in advance (especially for my kids) as well as hair appointments for all of us. My planner helps keep track of these appointments so I am less likely to forget them. 

2. A planner helps keep track of work commitments

As a blogger, I have various commitments that are all due at different times. I keep my blogging schedule in my planner and I have recently started a twitter schedule  that I also keep in my planner. My planner helps me keep track of all these things do that I don't miss a deadline.

3. No more belated birthday wishes

I love how Facebook often reminds of everyone's birthday but what happens when I don't log into Facebook that day? Because of this I have probably sent just as many belated birthday wishes as regular wishes. So, if it's in my planner I can see it in advance and send the birthday card on time or even early.

4. Keep various school activities and events straight

Using my planner for all of daughter's school activities was a life saver this school year. From school pictures, to field trips, to the last day of school, everything was in my planner. I even had her school lunch menu in there as well. 

5. Pay bills

Using my planner for bill payments is an absolute must for me. All of our bills are due on different days so it's nice to be able to check my planner and know what amount is being paid, to who it's being paid to, and on what days. Believe it's useful.

6. Remember past events

I have serious mommy brain and sometimes I can barley remember what I had for dinner the night before much less what year it was that certain events happened. I've saved all of my old planners because they have become like mini diaries to me. It's fun to look up certain things (like my second pregnancy) and reminisce about them.   

7. Piece of mind

There's something about being organized that just brings piece of mind. You don't have to try to remember a million different things because you can open your planner and it's all right there in front of you. Having a planner really makes life in general so much easier. 

How do you organize your life using a planner? 

 

 

5 Simple Ways to Stay Organized

 Lately I've been thinking alot about habits. I'm realizing more and more that habits are so important because they are what we resort to when we are going through the motions of our day. Forming good habits and sticking to them over time can build phenomenal long term results.

Today I thought I would share 5 habits that I've either gotten into already or am trying to get into that will make life more productive. These are all easy things to d that I think will help my days run more smoothly.

5 Simple Ways to Stay Organized

1. Make your bed. I never used to make my bed, but I quickly found out that If I made my bed my day was more productive. It gives a more positive start to my day.

2. Clean the kitchen and quickly straighten the house. Cleaning the kitchen and straightening the house are the two things that I strive to get done before going to bed each night. Like making the bed a neat and tidy house before going to bed puts me in the right mind set for keeping the rest of life organized. I do love waking up to a neat and tidy house.

3. Use your wait time. I used to be good at this before I had a cell phone. It I was heating up something in the microwave, I would use those minutes to wash dishes or wipe down the counters. I am amazed at what I can get done when I am waiting on something to finish in the oven when I commit to using my time wisely.

4. Make your to do list. I a good to do list. I mean, who doesn't? Right? I love checking things off and sometimes I make them just so I can check things off of them. 

5. Get some sleep. Sleep has everything to do with productivity. My natural inclination is to stay up as late as possible to get things done. Then the next day I'm tired and unproductive. Since realizing this I try to get to bed earlier so that I can get enough sleep.

So, there are my 5! What would you add to the list?

 

6 Basic Steps Towards Easy Meal Prep at Home

One of the best pieces of advice that I have for people in terms of saving money is to get into the habit of preparing your own homecooked meals at home – Restaurants are expensive. Takeout is expensive. Delivered food? Expensive. Prepackaged meals? Expensive. All of that stuff drains your wallet far faster than you might realize.

So, what’s the argument against cooking at home? Many meals require some degree of skill to make and although that skill level is often pretty low, it’s still present. There’s also the time issue and the energy issue and the equipment issue – each solvable, of course, but they again provide resistance against preparing food at home.

So, here are six basic things you can do to work towards effortless meal preparation at home.

1. Experiment when you have more time in the kitchen. 

The time to learn how to cook is not when you come home from a long day at work and feel absolutely exhausted, or when you just don't have the time and can’t afford anything going wrong. Often, people find themselves in these positions without any sort of cooking skills which makes cooking feel overwhelming or impossible.

2. Plan a little.

While it’s fun to imagine a home chef just throwing things together based on whatever’s in the cupboard, the truth is that it only really works if you have a lot of staples on hand, and if you’re reading this article, you probably don’t have a lot of staples on hand and also probably don’t have any ideas of how to use them.

That’s why, at first, it’s a really good idea to follow recipes carefully. A good recipe tells you what you need to have on hand right at the start, so plan ahead a little and make sure you have all of those things on hand. This will probably involve a trip to the grocery store, but it’s far better to do that before doing anything else.

3. Make a dump meal. 

This is about the easiest thing you can make at home. It basically just requires a slow cooker – it’s really the only kitchen implement you need for this. All you have to do is just put a small set of ingredients in there in the morning, turn it on low, and come home to a finished meal. Some of the ingredients might require a cutting board and a knife to chop up a vegetable or slice up a piece of meat, and you might need a can opener. It can’t get any easier than this – in fact, I find such meals to be less hassle than actually ordering food or going to a restaurant, and they’re cheaper, too.

4. Make macaroni and cheese.

 Almost everyone likes macaroni and cheese. It’s such a simple, pleasant food that can be made incredibly straightforward to please children or fancied up to please almost any palate. It’s also one of the easiest things on Earth to make, so I usually encourage people to make this as one of the first things they prepare in the kitchen. Each of my children – all of them pre-teen – have pulled this off with success.

5. Make scrambled eggs.

If you like to eat scrambled eggs at all, I strongly encourage you to learn how to make scrambled eggs. It’s an incredibly simple and flexible thing you can make for yourself or your family, it works with every meal, you can mix in almost anything savory, and it reheats well if you have extras.
Just crack a number of scrambled eggs in a bowl – however many you like – and beat them with a fork until they’re consistently yellow, a minute or two. Add a bit of salt and beat that in for a few seconds, then let the bowl sit.
Take a teaspoon of butter and put it in the middle of a skillet. Put it over medium heat and let the butter melt, then use a plastic spoon or a spatula to move the butter all over the skillet until the skillet is coated. Add the scrambled eggs and let them cook for a minute, then slowly pull that plastic spoon or spatula along the bottom of the skillet to pull up egg curds off of the skillet’s bottom. Do this over the entire bottom of the skillet, then repeat every thirty seconds until the eggs look like slightly wet version of the scrambled eggs you’d normally eat, then remove from the heat, wait a minute or so, and serve.
You can obviously mix lots of things into this recipe. Almost any savory vegetable works, as do most cooked meats and most cheeses. It all turns out delicious and with such little effort.

6. Handle Dirty Dishes the Smart Way

One of the big obstacles for many people in terms of cooking at home is dealing with the cleanup. If you eat at a restaurant, it’s done for you; if you get takeout or delivery, you can just toss the wrappers and other items. On the other hand, if you cook at home, you have to deal with all of that stuff.
A dishwasher makes it much easier, but even then, there’s some extra work involved. Also, many apartments and some homes (like my parents’ home) don’t have a dishwasher and don’t have space for one.
 Here are a few strategies I know from having lived most of my life in places with a kitchen too small for a dishwasher.

Have good tools. Have a strong scrubbing brush and a dish rag at your sink, along with good soap at hand. If you don’t have those things, it’s going to take far longer to wash dishes.

If you have a two bin sink, keep one sink full of water with a bit of soap in it. Just block the drain, fill it perhaps a quarter full with hot water, and add a bit of soap. Then, put your dishes right in that soapy water throughout the day, perhaps adding a bit more hot water once in a while. Just let the dishes soak. It’ll make it much easier to wash them when the time comes, and the other sink bin will be free.

If you have a one bin sink, get a large plastic bin, put it beside the sink, and keep your dirty dishes in there. This keeps the sink free of dishes so that you can easily start in with cleaning whenever you’re ready. Just toss dirty dishes in the bin for the moment, then wash everything in the bin at once when you’re ready. Since the sink is empty, you can dive right in. If the bin is watertight, you can put a bit of hot soapy water in there to soak some of the dishes, as noted above.

If something has caked-on grease or food pieces, pour a bit of vinegar, a bit of baking soda, and a bit of soap in it and fill it with hot water and let it sit for a long time, like a day. After that, it becomes really easy to wash. This takes care of basically every nasty caked-on grease problem I’ve ever faced.

Wash things in “streak order.” What do I mean by “streak order”? Start with stuff that will show streaks easily – glass items – then move onto silverware, then plates and plastic items, then pots and pans.

Have a drying rack beside your sink to put dishes in to dry, plus a ton of drying towels. Most things can air dry relatively quickly once rinsed, but a drying towel is great if you need something dry immediately.

Buy dish soap in bulk, then have a pump to dispense it. You don’t really want a bulk bottle of dish soap at your sink because it’s heavy and it takes up lots of space and when you pour it, it dispenses large amounts of soap. However, bulk soap is cheap.
These tactics turn hand washing dishes into a pretty easy task, even if you don’t have a dishwasher.

Final Thoughts 

If you can handle the things above, you’re already well on your way to cooking a wide variety of things at home. Move on to trying other simple dishes – pasta, for example, is incredibly simple – and try variations on the things you already know, like adding tarragon to the scrambled eggs.

 

Meal Planning Tips and Strategies

I have been meal planning for years now and it has become my flight plan for the week. Sometimes I make a very detailed meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and other times I just plan out a week of dinners. Honestly it depends on how busy we are during the week I am meal planning for.

Today, I will be discussing some tips and strategies for successful meal planning.

Meal Planning Tips and Strategies

Every week I try to accomplish the following:

• be flexible with meals 
• try to meal plan around your schedule (this is very important)
• leave at least one leftover night (depending on what I have made during the week I might have two or three leftover nights. It just depends.
• only plan/try one new recipe per week
• move unmade meals to the next week

When you are in a rut with your meal planning try the following strategies:

• take a week off and just use what you have on hand in your pantry or fridge 
• use cookbooks, pinterest, or you can even ask friends
• use an old meal plan
• use "theme' nights (these are my favorites) Monday-slow cooker, Tuesday- taco tuesday, Wednesday- leftovers, Thursday-slow cooker, Friday- pizza night, Saturday-Leftovers, Sunday-slow cooker.

When it comes to inspiration, I utilize the following:

• ask friends and family on facebook
• watch grocery hauls or what's for dinner videos on Youtube
• pinterest
• magazines
• use hashtags (#familymealplan #weeklymealplan #mealplan

What some tips and strategies that you use when meal planning? Please share in the comments below!

 

7 Things That Most Highly Successful People Do T Be More Productive

When you see highly successful people, they always seem to have plenty of work to do everything they want, but how? Just juggling the kids, getting groceries, and cleaning the house might seem like a struggle  for most of us. 

However there are certain things successful people do intentionally to be more productive. Adopting some of these practices will help you get more done in less time. Now that sounds more like something we can all get behind, right?

No matter what you are trying to accomplish don't reinvent the wheel. Learn from others and be successfully productive too. 

7 Things That Most Highly Successful People Do T Be More Productive 

 

1. Stop multi-tasking

Every truly successful person will tell you one thing; you can do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth and it does not work. While it may feel like you are doing more, you are actually less productive. 

2. Schedule to dos

In my opinion, to do lists are great, right? One of the things that successful people to be more productive is skipping the to do list. Instead, they schedule everything. Their list acts as their calendar. Scheduling your to dos into allotted blocks of time means you know when to do them and have time already set aside to accomplish these tasks.

3. Prioritize sleep

If there aren't enough hours in the day, why sleep? While it may seem that cutting out a few hours of sleep makes you more productive, just the opposite is true. Your mind and body need rest. You tend to get more sluggish as your energy dwindles.

4 Don't let work take over

Spending all of your time on work will not make you more productive. Instead you're more burn out and miss out on everything else you love. It might make you grow to resent your passion it you love your career.

5. Schedule some tech free time

Technology is both wonderful and terrible. For the most successful people this is an energy waster. Set aside time to go tech free or mostly tech free. For example, set aside one hour to eat dinner without a phone, tablet, or computer in sight. You could even schedule a tech tree weekend each month to truly step away.

6. Stop to eat

Much like sleep, you need to eat. Scarfing down your lunch while checking you r email, responding to texts, going through paperwork or trying to clean the house isn't healthy. Successful people take care of themselves. This means taking time to actually eat a meal in relative peace. It's a nice break and gives your body time to absorb nutrients without getting heartburn. The stress of eating too fast or skipping is terrible for your health. Poor health makes you far less productive.

7. Make time for your favorite activities

Finally, have you noticed every successful person has something that they absolutely love to do, besides succeed? They might play golf, go boating, or do crafts. 

Find something you truly love that makes you feel excited and energetic. Make time every day or week to energize yourself with activity. You get to reduce stress, have fun, and feel great. Thus makes for a far more productive person.

 

10 Ways To Cheer Yourself Up

Mental Health is something we all need to make less of a stigma. We all have tough mental health days and some days we just feel down or just blah. That’s totally fine and normal. When I have those days I love to find ways to cheer myself up and I hope you enjoy these ways to cheer yourself up so when you have those days come along you know what to do!
 

10 Ways to Cheer Yourself Up 

 

1. Read a book: Reading a good book is a great way to cheer yourself up. Just curling up under a blanket on the couch and reading is a great mood booster.
 

2. Go workout: I mean Elle Woods said it best, endorphins make you happy. But truthfully when I have been in a funky mood and gone to work out I am always so happy after. Workouts really can cheer you up. I love listening to a new playlist or a new podcast episode during a good workout too!
 

3. Spend time with family: When I am sad my biggest mood booster is playing with my girls and my husband. We love to play board games (Monopoly or Yahtzee) and card games (Skip-bo or Uno).
 

4. Color: I love a good adult coloring book or even kids ones! Lately my kids have loved just coloring or even drawing, which has been super relaxing!
 

5. Watch something funny: My girls and I love finding a funny TV series on Disney+ or Netflix to watch together.
 

6. Meet a friend for a walk: I love going for walks with girlfriends. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and go walk and talk with a friend. I promise you will feel better! I try to do this at least once a week and honestly with how busy we all are it really fills my cup.
 

7. Make a list of everything good: Everything good in your life. Maybe you can reevaluate why you are in a sad mood when you see everything good in your life! I also try to remember that all the things I have for now I prayed for once. It gives you great perspective! 

8. Declutter: Sometimes just crap everywhere can put you in a funky mood. Try to declutter a few spaces and see if that helps!
 

9. Volunteer: Because when you are helping others you can’t possibly be sad!
 

10. Paint your nails: Or go get a manicure! Because chipped nails will put anyone in a bad mood!

What would you add to this list? What are some ways to cheer yourself up that you utilize?

 

10 Ways To Find Motivation

Even during these crazy times we cannot be lazy 24/7 (yes we are still living in crazy times) and I know I feel better when I am motivated and accomplishing tasks. So, below are 10 things I do when I need the motivation within my day.

 

10 Ways to Find Motivation

1. Make your bed.

This is something that I do every morning (well, most mornings). Believe me, it does motivate you when your bed is made. It's been a life changer for me, trust me it will for you as well.

2. Get dressed and ready for the your day.

During this crazy time, the next tip is very important. It makes a huge difference in my mood for the day when I pick out my outfit, put on makeup, and do my hair. 

3. One goal for the day. 

Set up yourself for a successful day. Set up one big goal that you want to accomplish. Once that is done you will be so motivated to keep going. The term "eat the frog" is something that I do. The theory is to do your most hated/hardest task first that way it is out the way for your day. This really does work well for me. 

4. Get out of the house.

I know this may not be doable for some given the time that we are living in, but at least get outside, walk around the block or your yard, play basketball in your driveway. Self isolating is lonely and depressing, so at least get outside and have some fun.

5. Plan your week.

If you have a daunting to do list that seems impossible, take some time to spread those tasks over the next few days. You then have a reasonable game plan to tackle your week.

6. Take a nap.

I always feel better after a nap. I tend to run myself ragged (even when we are in quarantine) and napping to refresh means I can take on the rest of my day with energy. Find pockets of your day that you tend to have the most energy to take on your to do list. 

7. Reward yourself.

Make mini finish lines in your day and when you make it through reward yourself with a social media break, a coffee, some time to read, whatever it may be. 

8. Put on some music.

Music (my favorite is 80s hard rock), youtube videos, the TV, podcasts, whatever will keep on track but also keep you company.

9. Remember your why.

Remember why your are doing the things that you do.

10. Get of social media.

This is my biggest tip. Social media is a huge time sucker. Stop watching the news so much. Set time limits like you would for your kids, or use it as background noise while doing housework.

I hope these tips were helpful. Please share any tips you make have in the comments below.

 

June 2023 Goals

I cannot believe that it's already June! While March and April crept by (homeschool  continued), it seems that May just flew by (end of  our homeschool year  and marital arts class via zoom for my oldest).

We are just now into our summer routine and we are in the process of fine tuning it, so in today's post I would like to share my June 2023 goals with you!

June 2023 Goals:

1. Read 5 books.

2. Drink 100oz of water daily.

3. Start using my habit tracker in my bullet journal every day.

4. Eat more fruits and veggies (I have been lagging on this and I really need to fix it).

5. Walk 6 days a week and strength train 3x per week.

6. Have at least two at home date nights with the Husband. 

7. Organize the girls' bedrooms (purge old toys and outgrown clothes).

 

8. Add new printables to my Etsy shop.

 

9. Launch The Daily Planner on Amazon.

 

10. Launch Meal Planner on Amazon.

What are some of your June 2023 goals?