Having an organized pantry is important in your kitchen. It allows for less time during meal preparation and a much better feel in your kitchen. I know that I feel a whole lot better when I walk into my kitchen and know exactly what I have in my pantry.

We do dehydrate a TON of veggies and herbs from our garden that I use in a variety of cooking when I do not have fresh available. I know that if I bag them up in zipper bags, then I can’t always find what I was looking for when I need it. We also store all of our mixes in gallon sized jars.

In my pantry, I use mason jars in both pint and quart and recycled gallon size pickle jars work great for mixes and bulk food.I don’ t loose anything this way!!!

I also use chalkboard labels so that I can change the label on them if I need to (There are many out on the market. I posted a link to the least expensive that I found on amazon.com.) The changable labels come in handy with our homemade instant oatmeal container. The kids always know what flavor is available!!

It does not take a ton of money to make your pantry be usable. (Yes, those are milk crates as extra shelves as well!)

Our Organized Linen Closet

Trying to organize the 7 of us has, at times, been an EPIC FAIL! There are certain things however that I really keep organized, because it makes our life just a bit easier! And trust me when I say that this is easy to maintain as well. Even my kids, when helping with laundry, can find the correct baskets to put items away with this system.

My linen closet is one of the most important things that I do organize. I always have the fear that someone in the middle of the night will get sick and I will need to change the sheets, but can’t find any fitted sheets or any pillow cases. I can just imagine myself trying to comfort a crying child while DIGGING through the closet, just making myself even more flustered. I still cannot imagine the horror that I would go through and would probably wake up the entire household in the process.

I started out by picking up a few of the $3 laundry baskets from the dollar store. They fit directly on my shelves in my linen closet. I also picked up 2 gallon zippy storage bags at the store. A twin set of sheets fit perfectly in these – I know BRILLIANT! I fold down all matching sheet sets – the fitted, the flat and the matching pillowcase along with a dryer sheet and fit it into the zippy bag. I then throw these into one of the laundry baskets in the closet. This basket is now the matching sheet basket!!! What an easy grab if I need to change sheets in the middle of the night (or any time for that matter!).

The kids pull their sheets off of their bed on their laundry day (another post on this next week) and grab a new sheet bag from the closet. The empty bag goes back in the basket so once I wash and dry their old set, it gets folded right back into the bag and bask into the basket in the closet. The rotation begins! And everything stays neat and tidy in my closet for the next person, the very next day to grab their new set of sheets.

I found some twin comforter sets at Target for $10 (marked down from $69.99) so I bought 4 and have left those in the bags. (For those who didn’t already know, my husband and I are on a waiting list for both foster kids and foster adoption along with emergency intake of kiddlings for singles and siblings 12 years and under, boy or girl) I wanted to have something new for new family members. The bags that those comforters come in are useful for my organizing. And will come out of the bags once we get kids. Those sets will go back into the bags if the kids don’t stay with us permanent.

I also have a laundry basket in the closet for just table clothes, baby blankets, afghans for the living room snuggle time, extra pillow cases, etc.

We change our table clothes at least once a day in the dining room sometimes twice or more. My kids are messy eaters! But, the table clothes do cover up my old table that needs refinishing. I don’t bag up table clothes like I do sheets, but I do fold them and keep them in their own basket. A HA! The Table Cloth basket! We even have smaller baskets in my pantry for our cloth napkins (don’t use paper in this house).

After the organization got going, I got rid of any sheets that I did have all 3 pieces except for the extra pillow cases. Goodwill was more than happy to take them, although, I wish now that I kept many of them to make skirts and dolls for my girls.

This is our 8th year homeschooling. I feel like I have successfully accomplished so many things with the kids. I was in my studio and was thinking this morning. “What Items Can I Not Live Without?” Besides the kids computers(yes, they each have their own netbooks) and AOP homeschooling curriculum called Switched on Schoolhouse, there are a FEW other things that just make my life a bit easier!!!

We started off our homeschooling sitting on the floor in the living room with a few workbooks for a lone 1st grader. Shelby was AMAZING to go along with mommy, having a 2 year old brother and and a one year old sister. Then, we moved out of boxes at the dining room table. – We never ate at the table because there were always projects going on all of the time. When we moved into our new house 20 months ago, we converted the formal dining room into a classroom. I really don’t need anything “formal” in this house since, well, we have little hand who break things. We got a FREE dining room table and chairs set off of the local Freecycle group. It needed a bit of “re-gluing” but is perfect! I also have a dresser that we have added into the room in order to have some extra space for art supplies.

My Cricut Machine is never far from me and it lives on the dresser in the schoolroom. Today, I am using the calendar set and cutting the months of the year to hang on my classroom wall for Berlyn and Rowan. (Berlyn is my autistic child and does go to a half day Kindergarten class at a public school with the most AWESOME teacher.) Berlyn has been learning the months of the year at school, so I wanted to add that to our classroom wall too! Shelby even got the new one for Christmas this year that hooks up to her computer and has digital art and can also use the cartridges. I can’t imagine not having this tool in our collection. The kids use it for reports. I use it for scrapbooking, and school related items (both theirs and mine).

My Cube Shelving in my classroom is another essential. I pick up a lot of items at local yard sales and I needed a way to organize them. These cubicle shelves are at places like Walmart, and Target. They have all different color shelves and you can pick up drawers separately.

We use the drawers for “glue”. Yes, I have an adhesive drawer! And one that has all of their painting supplies, and decorative scissors, and extra supplies.

The shelves also hold the plastic shoe boxes GREAT and can double as bookshelves! I have math counters and science equipment in those. Along with a shoebox of crayons, and one with colored pencils and one with markers. I have never run out of or lost my colored pencils while they are in these shoe boxes. (Hey, I even labeled the outside of the boxes with my Cricut machine and wall vinyl!!!

INTERNET plays a HUGE roll in our schooling as well! I use it for project ideas and the kids use it for research. I find worksheets online and activities as well.

Last but not least – a TIMER is essential in our house. We DO NOT school all day with formal lessons, however, we do school for a time every morning. I set the timer to 3 hours at 9am and get started. Once that buzzer rings, I check the computer work. If everyone has gotten done their today’s work, then… WE ARE DONE! In the afternoon is free reading, activity, cooking, etc.

I hope that this gives you an insight to “US” and what we can’t live without.

I am serious when I say that I believe in NOT giving out allowance for everyday household chores. As a mom, I don’t get paid in money for washing the floor or folding laundry… why should my kids earn money for keeping their rooms clean or brushing their teeth? These are every day items that are required to run a household (I know that I will have those who disagree with me, however I want to show your something else that we have implemented with out clan before you scold and cuss me out for being a bad mom!!)

Having one child who doesn’t understand the concept of money anyway and thinks that you can go to the store and ALWAYS buy him a toy while we are there, we have made out own store at home with items that I have picked up on sale racks, dollar sections of Target, Walgreens sale aisle, etc. We call it Mommy’s Treasure Box Store.

Here’s the Breakdown for our family

Point Reward System for chores and extras

(I found everything that I used on sale or at yard sales – DO NOT overspend on these items… I budget this very closely and take $20 cash out and can only use that $$$.)

I started by making POINTS – I used the pre-made sheets of business cards and ran them through my printer with 1 Point, 2 Points, 5 points and 10 points on them. I then took with the kids and stamped on each card.

I keep these in my desk. As children complete normal chores, I give out these points. If I have to ask more than once for something, then, they don’t earn anything. We don’t ever take away points… If my kiddlings do something extra, without asking, they will earn extra points. And we give them for good behavior (especially with my Autistic son, Berlyn.)

At the end of the week, our family store opens up. I spend less than $20 every paycheck on items for the store. The kids get 30 minutes to shop and purchase items with their points. I purchase little things at the dollar store, Target Dollar section, sale rack at Walgreens, etc and also print up (on the same business cards) rewards that they can buy as well.

Everything in the point basket is priced at 5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 points… and then there is a movie theater card that is 500 points.  Included in the basket are school supplies (decorative pencils, notepads, stickers) toys, games, candy, dolls, bubbles, color books, cooler TEEN stuff for Shelby, etc.

I store everything in a basket that I picked up at a yardsale for $1! I store it up out of reach of kiddlings. If they have 50 points and spend 35, then they have 15 that carry over to the next week. They store their points in an envelope on their chore clipboard in the hallway. Here is the link to the Chore Clipboards that we made: http://scrapwarrior.com/blog/2010/07/03/chore-charts-on-our-wall/

My kids LIKE to help out around the house. They make it a point to remind me when they do extra things just so that they can earn points.

Point Reward System for chores