Getting Organised:- DIY magnetic meal planning.

Becoming more organised is a topic that is never far from my mind.  It's that thing I know I need to do but for some unknown reason I just can not seem to manage.  I sometimes think I expect too much too soon and set myself unobtainable goals ultimately setting myself up for failure.

One of the key areas I know I need to work on is putting together and maintaining a weekly meal plan.  On the occasions I do get my act together I have found that

1. We save money on our weekly food bill
2. We cut the amount of food we waste
3. I don't end up scratching around at the last minute racking my brains on what we are going to eat.
4. It's easier to maintain a more balanced diet
5. We have a more enjoyable week with fun after school activities without me being stressed out about dinner.

However I have found it can be time consuming and often I will end up with a mental block. Hence I put it off until we hit Monday morning when the whole saga of the school week starts over.  Ultimately we end up with a handful of meals which are my regular go to's.

So I created a series of our regular meals and made them into magnets which are now stuck to the front of the fridge, combined with a weekly planner I can now quickly meal plan for the week and on those days where things change or don't go to plan I have a bank of meals I can quickly choose from.

You can download my regular meal set here.

To make your own you will need.

• Printer
• 1 sheet of magnetic paper
• You can either create your own meals in something like word or publisher or you can download my meal sheet here
• Spray Lacquer
• Scissors
• Weekly Planner.

• Download and print off the meal sheet onto the magnetic paper being careful not to handle it too much to prevent smudges
• I found that the ink didn't dry properly so once it was touch dry I gave it a quick coat of spray lacquer to set the designs firmly in place.
• Cut them out and voila a set of magnetic meals for easy meal planning.

I hope you find these as helpful as I do.

Organised #7

I have a little obsession with all things stationary.  It isn't a new obsession.  I remember even as a child I would hoard pens and pencils.  I love a new notebook and starting a new planner.  When I was teaching I loved the planners we were given at the start of a new school year.  It is always so satisfying filling in fresh pages.  This week I discovered Ellie Fowler from I heart you coffee and I have developed serious planner envy.  I really need a bit of this in my life!!!!

Image is  from I heart you coffee

I am not sure why, but I had never thought of using stickers in a planner like this but it works so well, especially for some one who works visually like me.  Ellie is such a planner addict she even has a dedicated instagram feed @glamplanner

I wish I had heard about these Erin Condren planners at the start of the year because I would have definitely added it to my Christmas wish list.  This week I am going to invest in some stickers for my current diary.

Organised Love #5

For this weeks Organised Love I am going to send you over to I Heart Organizing.  This is a blog I found about 18 months ago and have become a regular reader ever since.  It is a fantastic go to blog for anything to do with organizing.  It is literally jam packed with tips for everything from setting up a cleaning schedule, organising the kids art work and school work, family folders (a project I have completed and actually have come to rely on quite a bit) to DIY projects, budgeting and meal planning.  I am in total awe of this blog.  If I could be fractionally this organised I would be onto a winner.  There are a multitude of free downloads and links to the I Heart Organizing Etsy shop where you will find a planner for almost anything that needs to be organised.

If you have a task that needs to be sorted and don't know where to begin  I Heart Organizing is a good place to start they make it look easy and fun and often on a very reasonably priced budget.  Check out their project gallery for handy tips and ideas.

I hope you have enjoyed this weeks Organised Love. 

Organised Love # 4

Working three days a week, being a full time mum to our two beautiful girls and trying to maintain my blog means that most days I am trying to beat the clock.  Some days I manage to get on top of things and end the day with a huge sense of satisfaction and other days it all goes to pot and it just doesn't happen.  I have over the years done a lot of sole searching, always promising that tomorrow I will get up early and get it sorted but you know how it is with little people in tow - nothing rarely follows the original plan of action.

I really struggle to focus my mind on any one project at a time.  Sometimes I think an endless "to do list" can be a hindrance rather than a help.  I end up making tea, flitting from one task to another procrastinating and never actually completing any one job.  It is a terrible habit that I would really like to kick.

So when I came across this amazing downloadable Life Hacks Printable / 01download on Design Love Fest it really hit a cord with me.  By focusing on just 3 things at a time it prevents the where do I start feeling with the endless to do list.  I like the "scheduled time" for emails.  I don't know about you but emails, social media and general internet surfing are one of my major daily time wasters.

Design Love Fest 

I have printed of a stash of these fab sheets.  I am going to try and use them to help me stay on track with the tasks I need to do in order to free up my spare time to spend with my girls.

Organised Love #3 - Day to Day organisation

This week I officially joined the auntie mims team.  I have been helping out for a while but it works for both of us if it becomes more of a regular thing.  With small children it is great that I am able (with the help of my parents and my in-laws) to work pretty much around the girls and their school hours.  However this means that I am going to have to get super organised so that I know exactly what is going on each day.  The auntie mims HQ has pretty poor mobile reception so it means that unless it is a complete emergency contacting me is not very easy.

Here are some of my top tips for organising the day to day running of our house and keeping me sane.  

I just love a weekly planner run in conjunction with my diary.  (Before kids I hated diaries and could never maintain them, now this is an essential item in my bag.)  Every Sunday I try to find time to sit down and fill in the weekly planner basically I transfer everything from my diary onto the weekly sheet.  I like the pads with the sheets that tear off.  Once I have written in everyone's movements for the week I then attach it to the fridge with extra strong magnets.  I also try and add in what we are going to eat each night, this makes it easier as I can quickly glance at each day ahead.  It makes it so much easier when notes come home from school as I can just quickly add it to the corresponding day and Michael can check for himself whats going on.

1 Betty Etiquette £11

2 Rifle Paper Co Fox and Star £12

3 Paperchase desk pad £7

4 Alexia Claire Etsy £10

I love my 18 month pink moleskin turntable diary.  I find it so easy to use and with hospital appointments for Harriet booked months in advance I love the flexibility of it being 18 months instead of the usual 12 months.   I have tried countless digital diaries but I just can not work with them.  I am pencil and paper girl.  Having said that I have started planning my blog posts using Google Calendar as it allows me to colour code things and move bits about.

I have also found the whole bullet journal useful to my day as it makes me focus on certain tasks.  I try to plan my days the night before as it tends to make me more focused when I get up.  Whilst I like the bullet journal I think for me it needs to work in conjunction with my diary.

Wow having read this I am feeling pretty organised.  What do you do to help you stay on track.

Organised Love #2: How Organisation Can Keep You from Organisation.

As I sit here writing my Organised Love post I realise that my desk is a complete state.  This week I did organise and tidy one of my kitchen draws but I my heart wasn't on the task.  I got totally side tracked and a task that should have taken me half an hour took far longer.  Don't get me wrong the tidy kitchen draw is making my time in the kitchen far less stressful as I can now find things a bit better but if I am really honest with myself I found the whole experience (whilst useful) just dull.  I kept finding myself searching the internet for "organisation" tips and ideas.  I slowly started to realise that this organisation planning was preventing me from actually completing my task of tidying my kitchen draw.  It was then that I noticed I kept coming across websites and blogs with beautiful awe inspiring work spaces.  These spaces were all neat & tidy, organised and thought provoking.

Here are a few of my favourite office spaces I came across:

I love the use of the pin board utilizing the space whilst creating an inspirational mood board. - Fabric Paper Glue.  I have a feeling that pin board could be the next "in" thing.  I keep seeing it popping up everywhere.  

Here I am enjoying the use of the simple monochrome colour pallet and the artistic way in which the drawings have simply been masking taped to the wall. Upcycled Treasures.

Domino 

Hub Pages

I love the inspirational quotes. Upcycled Treasures 

Domino

Throughout the day I spend a fair bit of time at my desk.  Sometimes it can be literally covered in a multitude of projects.  I discovered over time that I need a certain amount of chaos, somehow I thrive in chaos.  This last picture is how my desk currently looks.  Whilst this chaos can be good I think I need to start working on and planning a slightly more creative space in which to develop some of my creative ideas.

Organised Love #1

An area of the house that has really been bugging me for a while now is the general state of dis-organisation we bumble along in.  I feel like there are mountains of clutter building up everywhere and my head is just full to bursting.  Now the problem with clutter is that unless it has a home it just gets shifted from one place to another like a nomad.  Something always disappears as we are about to leave the house sending me into a mild panic, not only this but I am fed up being the only one who seems to know where anything is.  It is almost like everyone else has stopped looking and automatically just asks me.

I have found that when the house starts to feel like this it can become overwhelming and all consuming.  A relentless task of tidying up and moving the clutter about in the vague attempt to add some order to the house.  With Spring approaching and the idea of the traditional spring clean, magazines are packed full of ideas and tips on how to achieve the tidy organised house.

The dilemma I have is that our lives and expectations have changed dramatically since the origins of the annual "spring clean".  I don't know about most people but the idea of housework and spring cleaning definitely does not feature anywhere near the top of my to-do list.  In fact that is part of our problem it just does not feature on my list of jobs I want to do EVER.  I see it as a chore which I resent.  I accept however that we really need to try implement some form of structure and order into our lives whilst being kind and honest to myself.   I don't want the kids to grow up not knowing where anything lives and then having to deal with me stressing out because nobody tidies up after themselves or we cant find anything.

I need to acknowledge that it is a project which will take time and not happen over night but once sorted will help the house run more smoothly and free up our spare time to do the things we want to do.

Just like the article I am reading in Elle Decoration A Tidy Tradition I find even the thought of tackling our disorganisation and mess a daunting task  However as Lisa Messenger sets out in her book Daring and Disruptive I can choose to change my mindset.  You are never too old or too young to implement change.

My first organisation project is one of the kitchen cupboards which has been bothering me ever since we moved in.  In all honesty I am not sure what has been squirreled away at the back.  The reason I picked this cupboard first is because it is full mainly of cooking staples - tinned products, oil, pasta, rice etc.  I am constantly rummaging through this cupboard and shoving stuff back in again, stuff keeps falling out and I never know what I have in there.  This constant searching and rummaging is costing me both time and money.  I often end up doubling up on stuff or running out of bits and having to run to the village shop to pick something up.

I started off by picking up some curver medium baskets.  I got them from lakeland but they are on special offer at Ocado until the 17th March.

Then once the girls had gone to bed I literally tipped everything out of the cupboard.  I threw away anything that looked like it had past it's best or anything I hadn't used in months.  I re-filled the containers (one of my previous attempts at getting organised) and washed the cupboard out.

Then I allocated one basket to tinned products and the other one to bottles.  I also brought a smaller basket which I put the hot chocolate and tea bags in.  I used my label maker to label the plastic tubs.

In all it probably took me about 45 minutes to complete.  Just think of all the time it will save me by not having to look for things all the time.

I can't tell you how good it feels to open your cupboard and be able to see everything straight away.