While shopping at our new Ikea last Friday, I spied the Sloam line of glass jars. I purchased two that day-the tall 68 oz jar for spaghetti and a 61 oz jar to store oatmeal. I buy the old fashioned oatmeal at Costco and the open bag makes a mess in the cupboard. As I was washing the 61 oz jar, it dawned on me that it would make a great container to store flour and sugar.

I’ve stored my flour and sugar in Tupperware containers for many years. Before owning my label maker, I wrote the contents on the top of the container in black marker. This worked great at my old house where the cupboard I stored these in was at eye level. In our current house, I store them in the cupboard above the stove.  This means that when I need them, I have to take each container out to see the contents.

I tried to always put the container in the same spot so that I would just know…the container on the far left is flour and the one next to it is sugar.  This works great until the kids get the sugar out for Rice Krispies. Its one of those things in life that isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme but on the other hand its an irritation.

Anyway, back to the Ikea jars…I tested the jar to see if it would fit in the shelf. It does! This is another problem in my cabinets. The shelves are often too short to accommodate plastic and glass storage containers. I knew this was a sign, that more Sloam jars were in my future!

Yesterday after church, I went back to Ikea and purchased four more jars. Here’s what my cupboard looked like before

The four matching containers held flour, sugar, powdered sugar and bread flour. I don’t bake bread very often anymore so the bread flour container was empty and I didn’t replace it. The clear container with the blue lid held brown sugar. Also in this cupboard is matches (out of reach of children!) and toothpicks.

and here’s what it looks like now

From left to right-flour, sugar, brown sugar and powdered sugar. The matches and lighter are on the top shelf. The clear container with the black lid holds toothpicks. As you can see, I have available space next to the powdered sugar and most of the top shelf. I love seeing empty space!

The total cost of this project was $15.96 (not including tax).

I’ve been slacking on menu planning lately and hope that making it public will keep me more honest. It really does simplify the week. It also saves me from answering the question my kids (especially my teenager) ask every day “Mom, what’s for dinner?” If its posted on the frig, they can check for themselves.

Monday

Breakfast for dinner (turkey bacon, pancakes and eggs)

Tuesday

Marinated chicken-I have a half bottle of Lemon Pepper in the frig that needs to be used up. If the weather is nice, I might drag the grill out of the garage. I’m trying to also clean out the freezer because we’re purchasing 1/4 of a cow. We’ll have frozen vegetables along with frozen rolls.

Wednesday

Crockpot lasagna-this recipe comes from my friend Leigh. As a side dish, we’ll have a loaf of Pepperidge Farm garlic bread that’s languishing in the freezer along with a green salad.

Thursday

Sticky Chicken and Rosemary Potatoes.

Friday

Homemade pizza- I posted the crust recipe I’ve used for years at my other blog.

Saturday

My husband and I will have chili while the kids have fish sticks. I don’t like fish and the kids don’t like chili. I’ll probably make some corn bread too.

Sunday

We go out to lunch after church. The evening meal is typically leftovers, a sandwich or a bowl of cereal. We have a church meeting now on Sunday nights so its even more important to have something easy.

Be sure to check out Laura’s blog for more MPM participants.

Remember way back 100 years ago when I told you about the shelf I ordered for my kitchen? It came a couple weeks ago. I wanted to live with it for awhile before I blogged about it.

Here’s how it looks in my kitchen. Its not crooked. I just can’t take good pictures!

I would rather have the microwave one shelf higher but my husband wanted it on a lower shelf because its quite a bit heavier than the toaster/convection oven. The red binders on the lower shelf are all the recipes from my recipe box. One binder is main dishes, soups and vegetables. The second is bread, cookies and desserts.

The lower shelf also holds my knitting pattern a day calendar and the Nielsen scanner. I”ve been storing the scanner in the office but it makes more sense to have it in the kitchen since a large portion of what we buy is food related.

So what do I think about the shelf? I love it. Love it. Love it.  It is solid wood and very easy to put together. An extra set of hands during assembly is helpful but not crucial. I love the look of my kitchen without all this stuff cluttering up the counters. Its an adjustment to have to walk into the attached dining room to use the microwave but its not terrible. Just different than what I’ve been doing for the past five years. My only issue with the shelf is that I wish it were a bit firmer. It tends to wiggle a little when we push buttons on the appliances. Again not terrible just something to be aware of.

I would be cautious about putting this shelf in a home with young children. I believe it could be fastened to the wall with the kits that home improvement stores sell.

This shelf is currently $119 at Bellacor.com. Shipping is free through tomorrow (2-25-08). I wasn’t able to find any current coupon codes. Be aware that Bellacor will hit your credit/debit card immediately although my order didn’t ship for several weeks later. The shelf was backordered and they had to wait for more to arrive from overseas. I called and complained about this practice and was told that this is their policy and it is spelled out on the website. I was not amused since they had my money for nearly a month but I didn’t have a shelf. Buyer beware.

Cara at Blissfully Domestic offers tips on how to start organizing your home when you aren’t even sure where to start.

Cara says

Start with small projects, things you can see improvement in quickly. Try organizing a closet.

If you don’t change your habits, your home will be a wreck again in a short time. Cara advises

Each day, keep up on maintaining your newly organized home. The key is to not get into the “I’ll do it later” mindset. If you have something that is in the wrong place, take the time to either put it away right away, or have a designated area on each floor, like a box, to put things that need to go to another floor.

Good common sense stuff. Thanks Cara!

there is a thread going on Ravelry that got me all riled up this morning. The title of the post is Knitting=Housework Guilt if you’re on Ravelry and want to read. The person who started the discussion feels guilty about the housework that isn’t getting done because she’s knitting. I often wonder about the prolific knitters I see on line because I sure don’t have time to educate my children, keep up with my house and knit. The knitting is the first thing to get shelved for me.

A few of responses to her question just made me see red. Here are a sampling:

Housework is for people who don’t have real lives or get paid to do it.

Boring women (read non-knitting) have spotless homes.

I have been on the receiving end of both of these comments before. Why is it messy people find it necessary to cut down people who enjoy order and cleanliness? Personally I think its a way of justifying their behavior. They know what needs to be done but refuse to do it. Its easier to just be mean to someone who buckles down and gets the work done.

The general consensus was that its perfectly acceptable to live in a messy house as long as you keep on knitting. One woman said she missed taking her child to school twice because she couldn’t get out of bed after knitting too late into the night. How incredibly irresponsible.

If the attitudes of the people responding to this post are any indication of our level of maturity, we’re in trouble. Like it or not, housework is a part of life. You can spout all the excuses in the world….my kids won’t help, my husband won’t help, its too overwhelming. The bottom line, especially for stay at home mothers, is its our job.

I’ve been a SAHM for most of the past 14 years. Its often not the most mentally stimulating job and let’s face it, the people we serve can be pretty ungrateful. All in all, its a pretty easy gig. If worked at a little bit each day, housework doesn’t take more than 30-45 minutes out of my day. Its when its left for weeks upon weeks that it becomes a major production.

I’m not a big fan of Oprah but I enjoy watching episodes with Peter Walsh. Yesterday he was on the show promoting his new book

The premise of the book is that over eating and buying junk is an attempt to fill a void in your life. My experiences don’t completely fit Peter’s theory but I’ll throw it out here for another perspective.

I was 80+ pounds overweight at one time. At the point of my highest weight, I was desperately unhappy with the situation around me. I was living in a house I hated, in a neighborhood I hated even more. It wasn’t fun to be home so I gave up on the house. I did only the bare minimum to keep it looking decent. I wasn’t buying junk to fill up my house but I wasn’t doing anything to improve it either. I ran a dust cloth in the visible spots and vacuumed the middles. I mopped and cleaned bathrooms when they were visibly (I mean visibly) dirty or company was coming. I knew my weight was completely out of control but working to improve the house and my weight was just too much to handle.

I lost 40 lbs due to illness. While the circumstances were far from ideal, it felt like the best gift I had ever been given. We sold that house and moved to our current home. I love my home now. It was much easier to get motivated to keep it nice because I enjoy it. There are quite a few things that we need to fix or update so in recent months I’ve started to feel a little of the same things I felt at the old house. Why bother? Anyway, I went on to lose another 46 lbs.

I’ve been at my goal weight now for nearly four years. The toughest part for me is the constant juggling act I have to do. Homeschool teacher. Homemaker. Weight maintenance. Sometimes I feel like I can handle all the jobs but the truth is most of the time something suffers. I’ve found I can keep two of the three balls in the air. It depends on the day and circumstances as to which one hits the ground.

My gut reaction as I watched the show was that Peter’s theory is interesting yet I’m not sure its completely accurate either. It seems like a rather general statement for issues that I know from experience are extremely complicated.

I hope they do a follow up show at a later date. It think it would be interesting to see if the family does indeed lose weight and can they maintain the house. In my opinion, there’s something to be said for putting your own sweat and tears into a project and getting Oprah’s money involved robbed the family of that pride.

Laura took notes during the show and has posted them for review and discussion.

***I posted this and came back to re-read it several hours later. I did a poor job of pulling the post together cohesively. Oh well. I guess I’ll fight my perfectionism and let it stand. I did however feel the need to post the disclaimer that yes, I’m aware the writing stinks!

Aby at Simplify 101 offers nine tips for staying organized.

Inspired by Laura’s work in her spice cabinet, I went to Meijer today in search of baskets. I hit the organization jackpot.

I liked the white wire baskets with handles but couldn’t figure out how much they were. I took one to a scanner at the end of the aisle. It rang up for 49 cents! I ran back to see how many more I could find. I came up with three more. I later found out these normally sell for $4.99 each.

Here’s my messy before shot of the cupboard. I keep spices on the bottom shelf. Baking supplies such as cocoa, cooking spray and baking soda are on the middle shelf. The top shelf holds items I don’t use on a regular basis like birthday candles, cookie cutters and cupcake liners. Don’t ya just love the recycled Dora shoe box on the top shelf? LOL

I emptied the cabinet one shelf at a time. I threw out spices I knew had been hanging around far too long. I found two open jars of cream of tartar. Doh! I wrote the names of the spices on the lid so it would be easy to find what I needed without emptying the basket.

Here’s how it looks now.

I’m very pleased with the results. I’ve been procrastinating on putting shelf liner down because I hated the thought of taking it all out. I didn’t get the liner down today but since the baskets just lift out, the job will be a lot easier.

I don’t know what I’ll do yet with the fourth basket. I’m tempted to hit every Meijer store in town for more baskets though.

After thinking more about recipe organization yesterday, I came to the same conclusion as Rebecca. I don’t like writing recipes on cards. This is precisely why my recipe box is stuffed with papers ripped from magazines or printed off the internet. A 3 ring binder will be a much better fit for me.

We have some large three ring binders (3 inches) in the attic but I don’t want anything that big. I found a snappy red binder on clearance at Meijer today. I’m going to start switching my kitchen decor to red so I hope the binder will look nice on the new shelf (which hasn’t arrived yet…grr)

Tis the season to get the kitchen organized! Laura has us organizing in the kitchen this month. Julie has some great ideas for getting your recipes organized.

I desperately need to get my recipe box in order. I planned to use a 20% off coupon from Bed Bath and Beyond to get a nice wooden box to store my recipes. However after reading Julie’s suggestions I think a rolodex would be a better fit for me.