humbleneighborhood.com» Get Organized http://humbleneighborhood.com Maia J. Lagerstedt, Holistic Health Coach Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:55:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 In the Kitchen with Maia http://humbleneighborhood.com/in-the-kitchen-with-maia/ http://humbleneighborhood.com/in-the-kitchen-with-maia/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:03:47 +0000 Maia http://humbleneighborhood.com/?p=179 Cooking I love. Cleaning up, not so much. My neat and orderly Virgo nature goes on vacation when I’m in the kitchen zealously concocting this, that or the other thing. A pinch of this, a dash of that and the next thing I know my inner Tasmanian devil has unleashed herself in a whirlwind of spice bottles, wooden spoons, and a variety of pots, pans and mixing bowls. What began as a fairly tidy kitchen soon resembles a post-apocalyptic calamity.
    OK, I exaggerate. A little. I am actually grateful for the little devil—it’s because of her that I’ve come up with a few tricks to minimize the yucky cleaning-up part.

Look Before You Leap
 
This is very important: If you’re using a recipe, read through it—in its entirety—first, thereby eliminating one of those “Oh, rats (or your favorite expletive)!” moments when you realize too late that you were supposed to chill, soak or otherwise prepare something ahead of time—or that the cooking time exceeds the time by which your guests will be arriving by several hours. Trust me. You’ll thank me for this.
This is also the time to make sure you have all the ingredients—or if you don’t, you can decide what substitutions you’re brave enough to make.

Get it Together

Get your ingredients together before you start cooking. In accordance with my Virgo nature, I line them all up on the counter in the order in which I’ll be using them. You can line them up any way you want to; the important thing is to get all your ingredients in front of you, so you can do a headcount. Make sure you have everything—and enough of it.
To simplify the cleaning-up process, I put away each item after I’ve used it. By the time I’m finished, all my ingredients have either been used or put away! 

Wash and Go

The clean-up-as-you-go method works really well for all your pots, pans and utensils, too. I use whatever spare seconds I have to quickly wash up any items I’m done with so I won’t have a huge mess to contend with when I’m done.

These are the tricks and tips that work for me—feel free to share your own!
 

]]> http://humbleneighborhood.com/in-the-kitchen-with-maia/feed/ 5 Keep it Simple, Sweetheart http://humbleneighborhood.com/keep-it-simple-sweetheart/ http://humbleneighborhood.com/keep-it-simple-sweetheart/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:39:41 +0000 Maia http://humbleneighborhood.com/?p=102  

Good health isn’t only about what kind of food we put in our bodies. You can be nourishing your body with lots of healthy food, but if other areas of your life are out of whack, you’re not going to be as healthy as you could be.
 
Simplify Your Life
How many times have you made this resolution: this year I’m going to get healthy? Oftentimes, a close second is: I’m going to get organized! Getting “organized” is a pretty tall order—and it may not really be want you want. You may simply want to simplify your life. Sure, you can go through the process to organize all your stuff…or you can streamline and simplify your life. Less is more, as they say, and the less stuff you have the more easily you’ll be able to manage it.
 
Healthy Solution
People tell me all the time that I’m organized. It’s true; I do have somewhat of a natural penchant for organization. I can file and color-code and alphabetize with the best of ’em. But my true goal is just to make things simple. Here’s my favorite personal anecdote about learning to keep it simple… When making my bed, I would always make certain the tag on the comforter always ended up in the bottom right corner of the bed. Same with the throw pillows—tags neatly on the backside and in the bottom right corner. True, this accounted for mere seconds of my day, but it was still something I thought about and spent energy on. I don’t know what came over me one day, but I had a mad desire to just not worry about those ridiculous tags—and so I cut them off. It may be a little silly, but frankly, it is a much more joyful experience making the bed these days. The moral of the story? Before you take on the huge project of organizing your life, start by finding one or two easy ways just to make things simple.
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