This Is Us

  We don't have a very big pantry.  So, Nick built this  Food Storage  shelving system in our basement for most of our food and we just keep a few things upstairs in our  Pantry  that we can grab quickly. When we moved in there were a few little basket storage things screwed to the back of the door.  We have been using those since we move in, which was in 2011. I finally had enough and decided that we needed more storage on the door.  I was able to find this one and I love it. It is made of plastic and some metal, so it's not the best built, but so far, it's held up.

Today is National Organize Your Home Day. So, in honor of that (and because I love to organize) I am going to be straightening our house, organizing things that aren’t, and decluttering! Wish us luck. 🤣 I have some stuff already organized, but I want to do more.  Here is some stuff already done… Pantry Spices Sink New Sink Chore Chart Plastic Storage Containers Food Storage Bedroom Shelves We have under the kitchen sink organized, but I would love to do more with it! Under Kitchen Sink Our fridge is somewhat organized, but I wish there was more I could do to it. We need some baskets for our linen closet for the sheets and pillowcases.  The towels are pretty well organized just being stacked. I would love to go through the kid's rooms and declutter. Here are just a few photos of places I'd like to organize: This is our craft corner. I need to figure out how to put something in the corner, but still be able to get to it. This spot is in the basement under the stairs. Nick put a...

We have our food storage in the utility room in the basement. Nick built shelves for the the box stuff and bottles and rolling shelves for the canned food. We also have buckets full of flour, unbleached flour (for sourdough), and sugar. It’s so nice and I love it so much!

  We had this  Sink Organizer  in our sink for the scrubbies and stuff, but then I found a dark one and like it so much better! It matches our kitchen better. I found it in the dollar bins at Target.

  I hate our plastic food storage containers being all over. I didn’t use anything special for this. I just stacked them and keep them together. Everyone in our home enjoys these being organized, so it doesn’t get messed up. Or, maybe they just know it bothers me and so they love me and keep it this way. 😁

I bought a planner from  Michelle Gifford  and I’m hoping to get it all filled out and things moving and going in the next six months! I have big plans for lots of things, so here’s hoping! 🙏🏻  I haven’t set my goals to high, because I don’t want to discourage myself, but also I want to give myself a little bit of a challenge. 1 goal is to hopefully have 1,000 followers on Instagram. I know that’s not much, but for me that’s almost double! ☺️ Here is the front of the planner: Here are a couple of the inside pages: I’ve prayed about what to do to help make our future more financially secure and this is what I feel is right. I’m praying that this IS what Heavenly Father said I should be doing! I also want to be able to pay for our kid’s college, without going in to a ton of debt, so they don’t have to worry about their financial future. Here is the start to a bright and beautiful 6 months! 🙏🏻

  Here is a list of all the dinners we make. We are a household of picky eaters and allergies (garlic, shellfish), so we don’t have a big variety of meals. Every once in awhile I will try a new recipe. If most of us like it, I will add it to this list. If not, then we don’t ever try it again. If you see a recipe on here and we haven’t added it to our blog, let me know and we will share it with you! I’m not usually an exact measurement kind of person, so you’ll either have to guess or just do what I do. Here is the list. I’ll try and link the recipes we’ve added to this blog. Here are the recipes that we’ve done: Biscuit Mini Pizza Chicken Nachos Potato Soup Rosemary Chicken Kabobs Taco Pan Pizza Porcupines Peach Chicken   BBQ Chicken and Pineapple Kabobs   Chicken and Rice   Mac & Cheese Bake   Hamburger and Macaroni   Bacon Chicken Pasta Side Dish: Twice Baked Potatoes

  Here is our February dinner calendar. I’ve told you all before that we have a house full of picky eaters. So our dinners don’t change much. Every once in awhile I’ll try something new. If most of us like it, it gets put on our List . If most of us don’t, it doesn’t make the list. Anyway... here is February:

  Several years ago I decided to make a laundry schedule. I felt like I was constantly doing laundry and at the same time not being able to keep up with it. So I wrote down which laundry I would do on which day. It’s been very helpful, and I don’t have to do laundry on Saturday (I’ve never done laundry on Sundays). It’s not perfect (I have Nick’s work clothes written on two days. I actually do them on Friday), but it works for our family. I only have to do laundry 5 days of the week, and it’s only a couple loads so it’s not even all day. I do wash all of our socks separately. I just wash them when the hamper in the laundry room is full, which is about every other week.

Here is our November dinner calendar. The picture isn’t very good, but you can still see it! If you’re using it for ideas, I’m sorry it’s late. I e had a bad headache the last couple of days.

  I love our sink. It has two sections, one small and one large. The large side is nice for washing big things, and I can use the smaller side for filling up with hot soapy water so I can mop the floor.  When Lorena was alive she and JoElla would make scrubbies for all the holidays. Now it’s just JoElla. I used to have them on a suction cup with a hook, but recently I found this metal holder at Target. I had the yellow scrapper (for scrapping cheese off dishes) and magic eraser just sitting behind the faucet, but it would get really dirty back there. With this metal holder I can have all of it stored in it, and it drains access water into the sink. This is the suction cup. I had it stuck to the inside of the sink. This is the metal holder. It was only $4.00!

I needed a place to put my sewing machines, our cameras, and some other things. So Nick built shelves for our bedroom. We just bought unfinished 1X2. Then we bought the finished shelving in black. We also bought black stain. He cut the wood to the size we wanted and then I stained it. He then cut a notch out of the shelves to attached the wood to. Then he used screws and attached it all together. It’s so nice! I just love it!

  We could all use more places to store stuff right? Right! So in 2017 we decided to build a big shelf in the garage for all our decorations.  Obviously Nicolas is great at building things and knows what needs to be done to support the weight. He did a really great job (as he always does) and had some help too (from our kids).  It's really nice to have this storage.  It's out of the way, but not so much that we can't get to everything. He also put a couple of lights up there so we can see. Here it is with all our storage!

  We have the kids do a chore every week day.  I made a chore chart, but after a little while I think they got bored of it and didn't want to follow it anymore.  So we just let them choose which chore they wanted to do, but that got confusing and they tried to pick the same chore everyday.  Either one they didn't mind doing or one that was easy.  So the harder chores weren't getting done and then it wasn't fair to the kids who were picking last because they were always getting the "left over chore".  So I created a new chore chart.  It gives each of our kids a different chore every day, and they have to do everything in one week. In this post  Staying Organized  I talked about how we have our calendar, chore chart, school schedules, etc. all in one place.  It's our command central. In this chore chart I color coded the different chores, included when they clean the litter box, feed the chickens, and feed the cats. It's only for Monday th...

  Here is our October dinner calendar. Yes, I’m finally ahead of the month. 🤣 Remember... if there is ever a recipe that you want, please don’t hesitate to ask! I changed Saturday from Grill meals to Crockpot meals. October starts to get chilly here and not a good idea to be grilling. Haha!

  With our family of seven we need to stay organized. With all that everyone has to do, we need some way to remember everything. This is one way we do it. This is our “command center”. We have it by our garage door so we see it all the time. There is our monthly calendar, dinner calendar, chore chart, and school calendars. I will go in more depth on each one in their own posts (although I have talked about our dinner calendars in other posts:  September 2020 Calender  and here:  How We Meal Plan ) Here it is: Here is the link to our  Chore Chart

  For September’s dinner calendar I did a different theme for each night. On Sunday’s we eat dinner with Nick’s parents so we don’t do anything for that night. Monday’s are Italian Tuesday’s are Mexican Wednesday’s are Comfort Thursday’s are Asian Friday’s are Pizza Saturday’s are Grill (at least for now. Once it gets colder, we will change it) Having a different theme every night really helps! It’s more organized and less likely to have something of the same theme in a row. Here it is: If there is ever a recipe on our calendar that you would like, just ask!

  I really hate things being messy and chaotic. It’s hard to find things and it makes me uneasy. One thing I really like is an organized pantry. It easy to find things. It’s easier to see what you have and what you need more of. Plus it looks nice. It took us a little while, because I’m picky about my baskets and I don’t want to spend a lot of money. So we would buy them here and there as we would find them. It’s not quite finished, but it’s almost there! Here is what we have done so far... We just need a couple more baskets and then it will be finished. We are also going to build some shelves on the inside of the door for smaller items and to make it easier access to stuff we use everyday.