Organizing

Decluttering Your Recipes

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I love to cut recipes from magazines and print out ones from the internet. I have good intentions of expanding my culinary skills with mouth watering new recipes. The pictures look so good. I love to bake but I have very little family in town to bake for.

Since my children have grown and moved out of town I find I cook the same old recipes each week. Because my husband doesn’t have a sweet tooth (a real oddity) I don’t have anyone to bake for besides myself (I do have a sweet tooth). Controlling my weight is a problem so not baking is a good thing in the long run. It’s just not much fun when looking at those recipes for cookies (my big weakness) and other sweets in the magazines.

My local grocery store puts out a bi-monthly brochure filled with recipes for the upcoming season. Autumn is just around the corner so recipes for those sweets are catching my eye.IMGP0384_edited-1 But what about all those recipes I already have collected but never tried? It’s time to do some decluttering of the old so I can start collecting the new. The key is to be very discriminating about the criteria for keeping a recipe, whether old or new.

So I am now going through my old recipes in the evening while watching the baseball games (Go Cardinals!) on TV. Here are a few questions I am asking myself with each recipe. I hope you find these questions helpful when decluttering some of your unused recipes.

1. Is this a recipe my family would like, not just me?

2. Are the ingredients ones I have on hand?

3. If I need a special ingredient is it hard to find, expensive, and will it be used up? Is it worth it if I only use a small amount and the the rest gets wasted?

4. Is the recipe time consuming and would I ever want to spend that amount of time on it? I love baking bread and don’t mind the time but other recipes are not worth it to me.

5. Is it a recipe that can be cut down for fewer servings? Rarely do I cook for more than two and my husband isn’t good about most leftovers from the freezer.

6. Is it a recipe where leftovers or extras freeze well? Cookies freeze great but I love them frozen. Not a good thing when watching my weight.

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7. Is it a healthy low fat recipe for everyday? Special occasion recipes don’t need to meet this criteria.

Do you have other criteria for keeping recipes to try? Please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors (please follow me on twitter)

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Clean House

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Most of the time I don’t turn on the TV during the day while I’m working. It is too distracting. But today while taking a lunch break I turned on Style TV and started watching the show “Clean House”. They were showing the messiest homes in America.

When I watch these kinds of shows I become motivated to tackle some of the cluttered area’s I have been putting off. Although the show has a whole team of workers to tackle the clutter in a short period of time (unrealistic for the rest of us) it is helpful to see the before and after pictures.

You can do the same by taking pictures of your cluttered area. Print it out and put in a place you will see it each day to motivate you to take action. Even 15 minutes per day of decluttering will eventually clean it up. Take a picture after the area is cleaned up and put it next to the before picture.

You could even create a scrapbook of before and after pictures. Sort of a brag book of how far you have come!

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

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Organizing Children’s School Papers

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My decluttering tip week in my newsletter is about organizing and controlling children’s school papers. I have listed several links with more information for you. Check it out at: http://www.aweber.com/b/1emGI

In my research for the links I have found a website that is very helpful with many areas of decluttering and organization. It is written by Marilyn Bohn, a professional organizer. Check it out at: http://www.marilynbohn.com/

If you have a good way to control and organize the huge load of school papers that come into our homes each year, I would love to hear about it. Please leave a comment.

Janice

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How to Declutter the Junk Mail

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When I opened my mail box today there was one lonely envelope in there. A sad feeling came over me for a second. Then I remembered this is a good thing! In the past I use to get all kinds of junk mail, catalogs, bills, and lots of magazines. Now it is reduced down to a few pieces of junk mail occasionally, a few bills, and a couple of magazines that actually get read.

I use to love getting a full mailbox because it made me feel like I was important enough for people to send me mail. But most of the mail was just trying to get me to buy their product or service. They weren’t giving me anything, they wanted something from me. Then there was the fact that it took so much time to go through that pile of mail to find the few pieces that really were important.

If you feel this way then it’s time to take the steps necessary to reduce most of the unimportant mail. The sites below will help get your name off the lists that fills your mailbox with mail you don’t want. It can take several months before you see a big difference so now is a good time to start.

To reduce general junk mail:   DMAchoice.org

To reduce unsolicited catalogs:   Catalogchoice.org

To reduce the credit card and insurance offers: Optoutprescreen.com

 

To a lighter load along the way

Janice

P.S. For more support on getting control of your paper clutter, please join the free Facebook group “Controlling Your Paper Clutter Support Group”.

http://facebook.com/CutClutterWithScissors

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

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School Sales Tax Holiday 2009

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Many states are having their school sales tax holiday this coming weekend. This can save you a lot of money if you live in or near one of these states especially when buying computers. Each state has different requirements. Check out these two sites to find out more info. You can always Google your state tax department (usually the Dept of Revenue) to find out if your state participates.

http://www.mytwodollars.com/2009/07/01/find-the-2009-sales-tax-holiday-for-your-state/

http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/sales-tax-holiday-schedule.html

Before you go shopping make sure to go through what you already have in school supplies and clothing. There is no reason to buy more than you need even if you are saving a few dollars on taxes.

Here are several blog post from the past that deal with back to school. Check them out for more information.

http://organizebythemonth.com/?p=242

http://organizebythemonth.com/?p=100

http://organizebythemonth.com/?p=101

Janice

https://cutclutterwithscissors.com

http://twitter.com/jlscissors

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