#12 Don't Let This One Creep Up on You

#12-Yesterday's post was long, but necessary.  So continuing with the theme of healthy clothing, today's item on the 30 Things list is short and sweet.  Get up from the computer right now and throw away that pair of underwear.  Now.

My point.  Well, if you have that pair, you already know the point!

#11 Everything has a Shelf Life

#11-Some of the storage areas in our home get a lot of traffic.  They are used multiple times a day for storing and retrieving things. These areas need to be highly efficient. Think about your refrigerator. This is one of the most frequently used storage spaces in your home and if you’ve never thought of your refrigerator as a storage space before…you need to start now!  Most of us are so good about managing the items in our fridge.  We toss the old and replace it with the new. When dealing with food items, it's simple to decide what needs to stay and what has to go. If you open up a container and the foul smell knocks you out because food item has spoiled, you toss it. Simple. It wouldn’t be healthy to put it back in the fridge. If you cook something and it doesn’t turn out well or you didn’t enjoy eating it, you throw it out. It wouldn’t make sense to pack it up and make space for it in the fridge. If the milk container gets a hole in it, you wouldn’t let it leak all over, you would fix it before placing it back inside. Simple. Ideally your refrigerator is filled with good food, that has not passed its shelf life, that you enjoy eating.

So, would you eat what’s in your closet? Closets of all kinds, especially clothes closets, are another area of our homes that need to function efficiently at all times. We go in and out of them many times a day and they need to be filled with things that meet our needs. The refrigerator analogy works so well for thinking about closets because we are smart about the stuff in the fridge. When we find an item in the fridge that’s not healthy, we throw it away but when it comes to our closets we get weak.  We forget about the rules of making healthy decisions. Does it fit me? Is there a hole in it? Do I even like the way it looks?  Is it still in style? Healthy decisions about clothing are about what’s good for your mind and your spirit. Spoiled food makes you sick, but staring at a closet full of clothing that has passed its shelf life makes you feel guilty, self conscious about your body, rushed and frustrated. That’s just as unhealthy as eating spoiled food.

Why is it so easy to throw away wilted lettuce and so difficult to let go of the unflattering green cardigan? Part of it can be that the lettuce cost about $2 and that sweater might have been a big purchase. The investment of time and money we spent on that sweater brings guilt and we force ourselves to hold on to it for the wrong reasons. If it looks great on you and it serves your needs, it should be hanging there. If not, it should be tossed with the wilted lettuce.  We fix the leaky milk container before returning it to the fridge but let the skirt with the torn hem hang there for months with no attention. The potential mess is easy to see when it’s the milk container that has a hole. It's not so simple to see the mess caused by a torn skirt hanging there week after week. The damage is two-fold. You are wasting your valuable time passing over that skirt every week.  It takes time to pull it out, realize its torn and hang it back up. Those moments add up and you have better things to do with your time. Leaving it there might also cause you to feel ashamed or burdened by the fact that you haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Let these feeling go. Toss them out, they’re not healthy. Fix the rips or get rid of the clothes.

My point.  Why is it so simple to read the expiration date on the yogurt and toss it when it gets old, but those acid washed jeans and that blazer with the huge shoulder pads continue to hang in our closets long after they have passed their prime? Don’t you wish clothing came with an expiration date printed right on the label?  The most important thing about healthy clothing, is holding on to things that make you feel good. If you reach for it over and over again, if you put it on and tell yourself you feel great and if it serves a need in your current life then it should stay. If not, it should go. It’s not healthy for your mind and your spirit to let it take up space in your closet.  So, would YOU eat what’s in YOUR closet? Are you holding on to things that are past their expiration date? Do you have items in your closet that are unhealthy? Feed your spirit with the same healthy stuff that feeds you body. If it is past its shelf life, let it go. 

#10 Your Bedroom is Not a Tropical Destination

#10- Is your bedroom as a storage facility for those items you're taking to Someday Isle?  Take a visual tour of the space where you rest and renew.  Think hard about the clutter on your dresser, the pile on your nightstand, the items stashed under your bed, the pile in front of the bi-fold closet doors that keeps them from opening properly and hanging stuff ditched behind the door.  Did that moment of clarity include thoughts like "Someday Isle return that thing to the store."  Or maybe "Someday Isle finish that needlepoint/knitting/quilting project."  Do you pile books and magazines by your bed with the idea that "Someday Isle get around to reading those."  Yeah?  Well stop.  Stop storing things for what you'll eventually get around to doing and live in a space that serves your needs today.  Take a few minutes each day to remove an item slated for Someday Isle and relocate it to another storage facility. 

Most people wouldn't consider stacking their large pieces of luggage in the corner of their bedroom as a monument to the vacation they are planning to take in a few months.  We keep our luggage in a place that's easy to get to when we need it, but that doesn't get in the way of our daily lives.  Do that for your Someday Isle items.  Don't hear me saying throw away your unfinished projects, forget about making retail returns and don't bother collecting wonderful things to read.  That's not what I'm saying.  Do that.  Do a lot of those things.  Just don't store them in your bedroom if they are not giving you pleasure today.

My point.  You can actually increase the usable square footage of your bedroom by treating it like a bedroom and not a storage unit.

#9 Contain Yourself

#9- Today's thought on how 30 Things in 30 days might make you a bit more organized is one final big idea for your kitchen.  If you have your plasticware under control, stop reading now.  This post is not for you.  However, if the scramble for a container in which to place leftovers, tote-able lunches and homemade sauces regularly involves falling towers of recyclables, swearing over bowls without matching lids and a large pile of containers that must be completely removed from their home and then completely returned before progress can be made, then this idea will change your life.  Consider buying all one size plastic storage containers.  All one size.  Every lid fits every bowl, every top fits every bottom.  When you break a single lid, the bowl does not become useless, you can just use a lid from another one.  When you stain one container with too much tapenade, you can toss it and use another one that fits the same lid.

The image above should not be viewed as an endorsement for Ziploc, although this type of container is what we use in our home, you can achieve this goal by purchasing a single size of container from any number of retailers or brands.  I suggest that you focus on a 2 or 4 cup size as your universal container.  "But what if I have 12 cups of chili leftover?" you ask.  Who said you have to have a 12 cup storage container to hold all of it at once?  Get over it!  It is just as easy to put it in three 4 cup containers that will stack neatly in the leftover zone of your refrigerator.

With multiple containers of the same size they will all nest neatly in your designated plasticware location, the lids will  stack calmly and the 'Toppling Tower of Terror's' reign will end once and for all.  If you're not sure of where to store plasticware in the first place, consider getting a small laundry basket or tub of some kind that will fit into a lower kitchen cabinet and toss it all in there.  The basket will function like a large drawer, you can slide it out when you need to grab something and the containers will no longer spill out whenever you open the cupboard door.

My point.  Here is another place where having fewer choices makes your life easier.  You gain back minutes that you used to waste sweating over containers for leftovers and you'll barely be able to contain yourself!

#8 End Surface Abuse Now

#8-People of the world hear this!  The time has come to end all kinds of abuse.  Look inward at your needs in the kitchen and then turn your gaze outward towards your counter tops and see if you are an abuser!  Kitchen counter space is prime real estate.  Like a lot in Beverly Hills or a corner in Manhattan, nobody buys one just so they can store a huge stack of bricks on it.  The same is true for the counters in your kitchen.  If space is at a premium in your kitchen, do not store items on the counters unless you use them every single week.  Every.  Single.  Week.  If you don't use it daily or very, very often it belongs someplace else in your home.  That might mean inside the cabinet.  That might mean in the laundry room where you can grab it once a month when you need it.  That might mean the tree shaped jello mold that is propped against the backsplash and is only used twice a year should be stored in the garage with the other seasonal items.  There is no rule that says every kitchen appliance that you own must be stored in the kitchen.  If you have an empty shelf in the guest bathroom, you can store your crockpot there.  If you have space under your bed, you can stash seldom used cookie sheets in a plastic bag.  There are no rules.

My point.  Surface abuse happens when appliances, dishes and other items prevent counters from fulfilling their dreams of being functional work spaces for people in their kitchens.  If you don't use it weekly or very, very often, it's abusing your surface and not serving your needs.

#7 Get in the Zone

#7- All organized spaces have zones.  Think of a Kindergarten classroom.  There is a reading area, an art area, a play area, a math center, etc.  Everyone knows where things belong and where to go when they're looking for a certain type of item.  Also when you take something out of its place, there is an empty space left waiting for that item to be returned.  One trick to keeping your refrigerator organized, waste less food and make assembling a grocery faster and simpler is to assign zones for certain types of foods.  Most refrigerators already do some of this for you by labeling veggie and meat drawers.  Some have cheese drawers, butter keepers and assigned spaces for eggs or cans of soda but you can take it one step further by designating a specific shelf for all leftovers, prepacked lunches or snack foods.  This way your people will know where to look for the things that need to be consumed first, you'll have fewer spaces to sort through for food that is past its prime and there is less chance of items in small containers getting lost and funky behind larger bottles and jugs. 

Know this.  Your people will not automatically put food in its assigned place, but neither does a 5 year old on the first day of Kindergarten.  Once you start your system, don't keep it a secret from your people.  You must tell them where the ketchup is and where to put it when they're finished or you'll get comments like, "Mom, I didn't put it away because I didn't know where it went." or "Mom, I left it out because you're the only one who knows how to put it away correctly." You'll have to do this several times, but as long as you keep it consistent they will learn where to put stuff and where to look for it when they need it.  The teacher doesn't move the reading center every week.  Don't keep moving the yogurt or your people will keep asking you where it is.  Get a system, but don't make it a secret system.

My point.  Having zones in the refrigerator cuts minutes off the time you spend looking for things, minutes off the time you spend telling other people where to look for things, and minutes off the time you spend throwing away things that got lost and furry in the back of the fridge.  These are minutes you can use for something else.  And everyone could use a few extra minutes.

#6 Get It Together

#6-In the kitchen, group the food items in your cabinets by how YOU use them and not necessarily by what they are.  It might make the most sense for you to group your baking spices together and keep them separate from all of the other cooking spices.  Baby food comes in a glass jar but it might not make sense to keep it with the other items your store in glass jars like fruit or pasta sauce.  Put all the baby food together, whether it's a cracker or peaches in a jar and you'll end up saving time when you're looking for things to give that kid.  If you're so far past the baby stage that those last two sentences both scared and confused you then maybe you should be thinking about Foodie food.  It is most efficient to group ingredients by ethic cooking needs instead of by type.  For example, in my pantry, I have rice noodles and lasagna noodles, but they are not stored together.  I keep my rice noodles with other Asian cuisine items like brown rice and chili sauce and the lasagna noodles on a separate shelf with risotto rice and Italian sauces.  My dad likes to make fun of my Mexican zone which houses things like black beans, salsas and peppers.  The same is true for canned goods.  It is not always efficient to store them all together as a group.  Diced tomatoes, creamed corn and artichokes are not used the same way so it may make more sense for you to store them with their component ingredients so you'll know which items are missing when you are ready to prepare a dish.  You'll also save time hunting through your cabinets.  The only time I ever use roasted red peppers in a bottle is when I make hummus, so in my pantry you'll always find the peppers next to the garbanzo beans. 

My point.  When you're deciding how to group items in your cabinets, store them based on how you use them not by the type of food that they are.