Cleanup Is a Snap with these Kitchen Organizers

American kitchens are busy places. Today’s women spend on average over 1,000 hours a year in the kitchen, along with everyone from husbands to friends, teenagers and dinner guests. As a central hub of activity, kitchen organization is essential. Add to that the fact that kitchens often exemplify the excesses of American living, which inevitably leads to clutter. We have more dishes, pots and pans than we need. We purchase the newest kitchen gadgets in the hopes that, one day, we will have the need to make homemade bread, or freeze dry 200lbs of green beans. And when we think our kitchens have everything, we realize they lack the one feature we need the most — space! However, with a few helpful tips and some space saving kitchen organizers, your kitchen clutter woes will be a thing of the past.

Discard or Donate Seldom Used Products

When is the last time you used the food processor on top of the refrigerator, or the bag of pinto beans in the back of the cabinet? Donate food items you don’t need to can drives and charities, pass kitchen devices on to relatives who might actually use them, or have a yard sale.

Making your waste receptacles easy to access, and separating your recyclables is another great way to reduce clutter. How often do empty juice bottles sit on the counter, waiting for someone to take them to the recycling bin in the garage? Eliminate that aspect of clutter with stackable recycling bins. These recycling bins provide an economic, odor-reducing design for recyclables and trash. The bins’ lids are recessed slightly for easy stacking and condensing. The color-coded dials allow you to label the contents of each bin, and they fit beneath most counters for out-of-the-way storage.

Make Frequently Used Items More Accessible

Recognize what you use most often, and make those items easily accessible. Infrequently used items, like the roasting pan that you only use during Christmas and Thanksgiving, can go on high shelves or in the back of cabinets. They can even be stored outside the kitchen in the garage or attic. Store frequently used utensils together, separating stirring spoons and steak knives in easy to reach places, and put the melon baller and lemon zester in the far back of the drawer! Utilize drawer organizers to help separate utensils that are used frequently from the ones that are not. The same goes with pots and pans.

Free up Cabinet Space by Hanging Items and Utilizing Alternative Storage

Items like pots and pans can be hung underneath shelves and cabinets, freeing up cabinet space for other items. Organizers like a shelf pot rack keep kitchens clean and clutter-free in true restaurant style. These racks instantly free up cabinet space, offer easy access while cooking and look fantastic. Plus, these racks easily install into drywall, with no studs required, and are made of steel.

Other handy products like a xix-tier kitchen wall rack helps to relieve clutter on tables, counters and drawers. This rack has a slim, understated design, but the strong steel frame holds anything from cookbooks to cans of food. Standing 45-inches high, this rack provides great storage in a place where you might never think to utilize space.

Create Convenient Centers of Activity

Store related utensils, food items, and devices close to where they will be used. If you can successfully break your kitchen down into practical centers of activity, this will greatly assist you in reducing kitchen clutter. Whether you store foods in a pantry, cabinet, a closet, or someplace else entirely, don't forget to go through periodically and clear out items that are hopelessly old or will never be used.

Stacking and condensing items in this area can be very helpful. Items like a stackable roll down can rack saves space and organizes canned food and drinks on easy to access shelves for fast retrieval and restocking. The rack’s compact shelves will fit neatly in either your pantry or cabinet, and stack or separate for custom fits.

Your cooking area includes your stove, oven, and the utensils that go with them. Make sure to store pots and pans, pot holders, spoons and spatulas in this part of your kitchen. A great item for this area is the Pan Tree, which organizes up to 14 pieces of cookware, including six pans, four lids and a Dutch oven conveniently. The Pan Tree easily stores in a cabinet or on a countertop.
Kitchen organization can be a daunting task. Remember to pace yourself. Unless you are moving in, don’t try to organize your kitchen all at once. It will be much simpler to go drawer by drawer, shelf by shelf, reducing clutter and creating the ideal kitchen
Leslie Silver is a freelance writer who writes about kitchen organizers.

Simple Moving Advice: Large Apartment to Smaller One
The time has come to move and you won't be living in a large living space like your previous one. This article provides advice on how you can best organize your new apartment to feel like home again.
Read More

How Organization Will Save You Money

I'll bet you're wondering what organization has to do with saving money.

Actually quite a bit!

Imagine that you've been looking all over your house for that book/DVD/sunglasses/whatever and you can't find it. Or imagine that you're at the store and can't remember if you still have any bananas or jars of strawberry jam.

Simple things, right?

Well, when we can't remember what we have and don't know where to find what we have, we usually end up buying it again. And then, before you know it, you're like my aunt with 17 umbrellas.

My mother always says that once you replace something you can't find, you'll find the original missing item. I'm sure many of you have heard that as well. But for as many times as we've heard this, we still do not take action and bring some organization into our lives to avoid spending money when did not need to spend in the first place.

So, what do we do about this? The answer to almost every organizing problem is to have a system. Why a system? Because we are creatures of habit and mostly prefer to do things the same way every time. Not only that but with a system you have less to remember. You just follow the system.

There are a couple of systems you can put in place to help you save money in various areas of your life. Here are 4 areas in which you will want to find a system that works for you to help save you tons of money in the end.

1. Grocery Shopping

How many times have you been at the grocery store, without your list, and wondered if you should be an item you're not really sure if you have or need?

I'm willing to be it happens a lot. It happens more when you don't have a list. It happens even more when you don't know what you have in your kitchen.

Here's what I suggest. Go through your cabinets and fridge before you attempt to make a shopping list. The list you're about to make is what you can see that you're missing or low on. Next, depending on how often you shop (I suggest no more than weekly) and plan your menus accordingly. So, plan menus weekly if you shop weekly, two weeks at a time if you shop bi-weekly, etc.

Once you know what you're going to make, you can look at what you're missing (from your first list), and make your shopping list accordingly.

When you get to the store, do not deviate from this list. Take appropriate coupons if you want to, but don't go hungry and leave the kids at home.

2. Shoes

What woman doesn't like to have a variety of shoes? Unlike men, we must have different shoes for different outfits, occasions, and seasons. However, this love of shoes can go overboard.

This has happened to me, I must admit. While shopping for something totally unrelated, I saw a great pair of gray houndstooth heels in Target. The only problem was the heel was a little too high and the size 11 was probably one size or so more than I needed.

I reasoned that my feet would swell and I wouldn't be standing long anyway. Plus, the shoes weren't expensive. Well, I stood for a long time on the day I wore them, it rained, and they were too big. They were worn once and are now on their way to charity. What a waste!

I should have taken stock of what I had and thought about what I was going to wear on that occasion. Had I done that, I would have saved my feet and my money.

So, take note: know what you have before you start adding to your collection.

3. Clothing

What goes for shoes also goes for clothing.

I used to get clothing as gifts from my parents and internally wondered where they thought a 14 year old was going to wear a white ruffled shirt in 1995. (I eventually found a use for that shirt in one of the plays I was in.)

The point is, even though they were trying to be nice about it, the clothing choices didn't fit my existing lifestyle. We do that sometimes. Whether it's a trend or something great we saw on someone else, we figure it's just something we have to have. But, by thinking this way, we often ignore the fact that it's not our style, it's not flattering, or it's out of our budget.

The organization here also revolves around knowing what you have. This will help you determine what you actually need and if there is room in your budget and your closet for the things you want.

4. Bills

The key to organization and paying bills is really simple. Pay your bills on time.

One more time: pay your bills on time.

This advice is most important when the bill is a credit card or loan. Late fees and over the limit fees (sometimes as a result of late fees) can seriously hinder your ability to eventually be debt free. (Who wants to stay in debt forever?)

There are a couple of ways you can do this. You can pay the bills as you receive them in the mail (if you still get paper bills) or as you receive notification by email for electronic bills. Or, to make this more automated and ensure the bills are paid on time, sign up for a 3rd party service, one at your bank, or one offered by your creditor where the payment is automatically debited from a designated checking account each month.

There are a number of ways to have as much or as little control over this process as possible, but the point is to set up a system and stick with it so that you don't lose money to late fees and penalties.

5. Miscellaneous Items

This is the area where so many people get into trouble.

We find ourselves at the store and we see something we like. We think we have one at home, but we're not sure. So, instead of waiting until we get home to verify (or call someone who is at home), we purchase the item anyway and end up with multiples. (Remember the 17 umbrellas?)

It's good to wait to make some purchases anyway, but the more organized you become, the more aware you are of what you have. When you know what you have, then you also know what needs to be replaced or what you're lacking.

Once you start organizing, you will find a surprising number of items you have bought and you can't remember why or what it is even for. You will also find the things you thought were lost but were really just buried under foolishness and mayhem called clutter.

Do yourself and your family a favor and stop the foolishness. Get organized and save money. You'll be glad you did.


Wendy Stewart is your Go-to-girl for being in the know about small business, personal finance, personal style, and wellness. For more free tips on personal finance, visit her blog, Personal Finance Success, at http://personal-finance-manager.blogspot.com

6 Ideas For Organizing Your Home With Plastic Containers

Because you can find them in such a wide variety of shapes, sizes, styles, and colors, plastic containers are some of the most useful tools for organizing, storing, and displaying items.

The industry already knows how useful plastic containers are in businesses like retail stores, restaurants, and hotels; however, do homeowners know how useful plastic containers are in their own homes?

Maybe you need a way to organize your child's small toys, or you're looking for art supply containers for your craft room. If you're a homeowner - or even a renter - looking for ideas on how to better organize your home, check out the descriptions listed below for using plastic containers to organize six areas of your home.

1. Kitchen

Plastic containers are excellent organizational tools and display fixtures for kitchens.

Homeowners can use traditional round, square, or hexagon containers of various sizes to hold frequently used items like keys, address books, and matchbooks, as well as handgrip containers to store food items like flour, sugar, and seasonings. These containers are also great for holding those little extras like plastic utensils, packets of salt, pepper, sugar, and condiments, and even hand wipes we often end up with after a trip to or delivery from a restaurant.

2. Home Office

Whether you work at home or need a quiet place dedicated to managing your bills or doing homework, you definitely want your home office to be organized.

Consider using plastic containers to organize, store, and display various home office tools like writing utensils, markers, and highlighters; extra ink cartridges for your computer printer; staples, paperclips, and tacks; and small Post-It notepads.

3. Work Areas

Work areas vary from home to home. You might have a storage shed dedicated to completing your home repair tasks, or you might use your attic, basement, or garage. Wherever your home's work area is, it's important to keep it well organized.

Plastic containers are great tools for organizing and storing small work items like nuts, screws, bolts, and nails. You can even use them to organize rolls of measuring tape, electrical tape, and painter's tape.

4. Craft Areas

Like your home's work area, your home's craft area - whether it you have a special room set aside for crafts or you have dedicated a corner of your living room to your sewing machine - containers lots of small items in need of organizing.

You can use plastic containers to organize and display craft items like spools of thread, small balls of yarn, and sewing and knitting needles; small containers of glitter and sequins; buttons; appliqués; paint and paint brushes; and small bottles of glue and glue sticks for glue guns.

5. Children's Rooms

Children's rooms are havens for small toys like building blocks, rogue game pieces and puzzle pieces, and figurines. You can use plastic containers to help organize these items, making it easy for you and your child to find them and store them after playing.

6. Rec Rooms

Each homeowner uses his or her home's "rec" room for various purposes. This might be the room where your family spends time together, or it might be the room where you manage the bills. Because plastic containers work so well as organizational, storage, and display tools, they'll also work well to organize, store, and display any kind of small item you have in your rec room!


By Terry Keenan

Candy Concepts, Inc. specializes in providing businesses with everything from a wide variety of candy containers to the bulk candy and novelty items to fill them with! Learn more about the kinds of bulk plastic containers you can use for your merchandise displays when you visit Candy Concepts, Inc.'s sister website, All Candy Containers.com.

Organize Your Sewing Or Craft Room

One of the most cost-effective hobbies a person can have is needlework. The hobbyist concentrates on a creative, relaxing pastime that produces an attractive, useful item to wear, to use in the home, or to give as a gift. Also, as lifestyles become more and more hectic, these skills, once practiced by members of most households, have become increasingly rare. With time, patience, and practice, these skills can become marketable in this age of mass-produced, mediocre goods. The needlework hobbyist can easily justify claiming permanent space in the home for her hobby, and for collecting and organizing the best tools to practice that hobby. Here are some ideas for organizing your sewing room or craft room.

Whether your hobby is quilting, garment or home sewing, fabric-oriented crafts, or embroidery on fabric, you will need to divide your workspace into areas for specialized tasks, and will need some basic tools for working with fabric. First, organize your sewing/craft room around the following tasks:

•Wash: Designate a time devoted to washing or otherwise preparing your fabrics or other supplies such as tapes or zippers. Most fabrics need to be pre-shrunk before cutting them. All fabric needs to be clean before it is worked. Nothing is more discouraging than having a small smudge that will not come out on a completed embroidery piece or garment. The entire project can be ruined because care was not taken in the beginning. Set aside part of the laundry room for any special soaps, detergents, or spot cleaners suitable for the types of fabric you need to prepare. If the item is to be hand washed only, keep a small bottle of delicate care laundry soap or detergent (along with a couple of towels for this purpose) near your kitchen sink to take advantage of the larger sink and counter space—unless you have a large sink in the laundry room.

•Dry: Have an area where fabrics can be blocked on a table or stretched on a rack to dry. This area should be safely away from cooking fumes, pets, children’s hands, or anything else that might cause the fabric to be re-soiled. Some fabrics can be dried in the drier, but should be immediately hung or folded to prevent wrinkles from setting in. Other fabrics will need to drip dry, again in a safe place.

•Press: When the fabric is thoroughly dry, it will need pressed to set the grain. This pressing area can be in the laundry room, or in your sewing area, near your machine. Depending on the size of the fabric piece, you can press it on a full-sized ironing board, a table that has been padded with towels and a clean sheet, or a non-stick pressing sheet , which can be laid on a table or counter. In fact, a non-stick pressing sheet can become nearly indispensable near your sewing machine for touching up small pieces such as a single quilt block, or a collar or sleeve that is partially constructed. If this sheet is close-by, it quickly becomes habit to press each seam as it is sewn, rather than waiting until several are ready to press before carrying them all at once to the ironing board.

•Cut: Have an area that is a comfortable height for cutting patterns. This area can be a small table and chair, if you mainly work with small pieces of fabric or it can be a special cutting table. What is important is that it be a comfortable height and that you have good lighting. In the sewing room, this table can double as a pressing area. Be sure to cover the surface with a pad and your pressing sheet.

•Assemble: Whether you are sewing curtains or a prom dress, piecing a quilt block, hand-quilting a pillow, or creating a counted cross-stitch wall hanging, you need space for a comfortable chair, a table or frames at a comfortable height, and good lighting. Keep your tools close-by in a covered basket.

When your workspace is planned out according to the multiple tasks involved, when each area is conveniently located, and your tools are organized and close at hand, you will be able to relax and focus on your hobby. Your family will be able to enjoy your completed projects more quickly because you will be working more efficiently, and they will agree that it was worth the time and effort to organize the sewing/craft room.


Author Vincent Platania represents the Fuller Brush Company. Fuller Brush has been in business since 1906, and offers safe, environmentally friendly products for keeping your home and your body clean. Visit http://www.fuller-brush-products.com