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Meal Planning Made Easy – Save Money and Eat Healthy

 

Do find yourself in the afternoon or on your way home from work wondering what you will have for dinner?  If you are the one that does most of the meal planning this can become very stressful and you may find yourself resorting to less than healthy alternatives.  If saving money and eating healthy are high on your wish list than here are a few things you can do to make a change today!

 

  1. Make a list of all the meals that you like or would like to try.
  2. Put each title of the meal on an index card.  You can include the ingredients and preparation instructions on the card or simply the location of the recipe (i.e. Betty  Crocker Cook Book, page 7).  Don’t forget to include index cards that say “Left Overs” or “Eat Out” for days those solutions might apply.
  3. Each week, choose a day to plan out your meals.  For instance if you choose Sunday, you would decide what you wanted to eat each day of the next week, Monday through Sunday by selecting an index card identifying the meals you want that week.
  4. These 7 cards can now be used to plan the meals, do the shopping and prepare food in advance.  For instance we can chop onions for 2 or 3 recipes if we know we will need them several times during the week. 

 

This will allow you to plan ahead for shopping, meal preparation and tasks like defrosting frozen items.  You can display the index cards if you wish in the kitchen in clear index card holders, make or purchase clips to hold them or store them in a convenient place.  Now you can spend that time you would have been worrying about what’s for dinner, doing something more enjoyable.

Happy Meal Preparing!

 

Rosanne

770.995.8556

www.dtsorganizing.com

 

 

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Overwhelmed - Where Do We Start?

Ever have those days when the feeling of being overwhelmed is foremost in our mind and we don’t even know where to start?  It can make the entire day very unproductive or even worse, the week, or year. 

 

One way to deal with the stress of being overwhelmed is to take time out to really figure out where we are.  We might say, we don’t have time to sit down and do that; but it is quite the contrary. We do not have time not to. 

 

It is through a daily and once a week review session with our goals, tasks and schedule that we have any chance of doing anything but treading water at best.   We must take time out each week to really look at our goals, our schedule, and our tasks to see what we wish to accomplish and what are we going to do to get there.  A list of tasks is a good start but a list alone doesn’t really assure we are working on those things that are really important and have a connection to what our goals really are.

 

If we want to make a change here is a way to get started:

 

During the next month: 

 

1.  Choose a time to sit down and really think about and write down what is really important to you.

 

2.  Schedule a time weekly to sit down and review your goals, schedule and tasks for the week and decide what is important this week to meet those goals and when they will get accomplished.

 

3.  Find a time that is good each day to review the daily tasks and accomplishments to monitor and adjust for daily changes.

 

Enjoy a less stressful life!

 

Rosanne

770.995.8556

www.dtsorganizing.com

Tags: Uncategorized by organizing atlanta
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The Value of Setting Goals

Many of us talk about goals but seldom do we really sit down to define and set them.  With the Olympics Games on our mind and televisions, it is a good time to think about why we should take the time out to set goals.  I don’t think anyone would argue that each Olympic athlete is in Beijing right now because they set a goal to be there.  Not all goals are achieved, but they are essential if we want to have a chance at achieving them.

 

Goals and the plans to get to them create our destiny.  We don’t often get anywhere by accident; except maybe lost.  We can think of a goal like a vacation destiny.  If we don’t decide where we want to go we will never get there.

 

How can we get started? 

The first thing to do is to think about all that is important to us.  These should be written down so that we can work with them.  This can be jotted down in a brain storming fashion initially and then it is best to study them to be sure we have everything covered.

 

The second step is to think about which of these areas we feel are not being addressed sufficiently in our life.  Do we feel like we need to spend more time with family?  Do we feel like we need to continue our education?  Do we feel like we need to take better care of ourselves mentally or physically? 

 

Finally, we can now take those areas that are important but we feel like we need to do more and set goals.  From those goals we can then establish a plan to achieve them and get started on our way.

 

Happy Goal Setting!

Rosanne

770.995.8556

www.dtsorganizing.com

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Back to School Tips

As kids go back to school in the coming days and weeks this is a good time to establish habits to start a successful new school year!

 

  1. Talk to your children about their schedule.  During the summer many children stay up later and sleep later in the mornings and now have to adjust.  Don’t wait until the night before to make this schedule change.
  2. Make sure that they have all of their school supplies needed; not just for school but at home.  It is good for kids to have duplicate items at their desk at home or where they do their homework.  This saves time and stress.  Most of these items are very inexpensive; especially when buying them at back to school time.
  3. Be sure to get the school calendar and record the important dates on your personal or family calendar.  This will save much stress over conflicts later in the school year and allow everyone to be more prepared.
  4. Create a plan for school papers.  Where will they go?  What will you keep?  It is good to have a file or box to keep kids papers in for the school year for each child.  If you can make decisions readily, just keep those samples of their work that are special.  If this is difficult, keep the majority of it and review and purge to keep the special items a few times a year when it is easier having all their work together.  Do not store anything with food on it!
  5. Determine the best communication method with your child’s teacher.  Is it via notes in their folder?  Is it e-mail?  Be careful about last minute e-mail messages to their teachers when they might be absent and a substitute will not have access.
  6. Kid love to have choices.  When it comes to snacks for school, create a box of choices in the pantry of “acceptable snacks” and allow them to choose each day what they want to bring.
  7. Mornings before school can get stressful; especially with regard to choosing what to wear.  This can be more difficult with younger children but often teens have a similar slowdown in the morning.  Have kids get in the habit of choosing what they will wear the night before.  For younger kids, you can have them choose what they will wear over the weekend for the entire week and label them.  This gives them more independence during the week.
  8. Finally, see what other opportunities are available at your child’s school to get involved in.  In the younger ages they can gain new experiences before they get to “set in their ways”.  Introduce them to what is available, such as chess clubs, student council, jump rope teams, etc. 

 

 

Rosanne

770.995.8556

www.dtsorganizing.com

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