Day 7 - 20 Days to Organise & Clean your home Challenge

I am participating in the The Organised Housewife's 20 Days to Organise & Clean your home Challenge. If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late to start! Just follow this link to subscribe.

It is Tuesday night and I have just completed today's (Day 7) challenge focus area which was the FRIDGE. You can find all the information you need know about Day 7's challenge here.

CLEAN the fridge

As you can see from the before photo my fridge needed a big clean out. It was dirty, cluttered and I was struggling to find old items and fit in new ones. I started out by taking everything out and separating it all into two piles - keep and throw away. Above is my throw away pile and is comprised of items past their used by date or fresh items no longer very fresh! I was really disappointed to see how much food I was throwing away and I am hoping that by doing weekly meal planning I can prevent wastage like this.

I then washed all of the shelves and vegie crispers, and wiped down the inside of the fridge before returning the shelves back into place. I tried to place like items, such as jars of curry paste, together to make it easier to find things in the future. I'd also like to try The Organised Housewife's method of storing cut vegetables in Tupperware instead of the vegie crispers in the hope of them lasting that bit longer.

DE-CLUTTER cookbooks.

I really like cookbooks but am finding myself referring to them less and less as I use the internet to access recipes. All I have to do is find a recipe I like and then just take my laptop into the kitchen with me and follow the recipe straight from screen.

So I sorted through my collection and put all of the magazines out for recycling, found a new home for all of my Weight Watchers information and cookbooks, and put some books aside for donation. While the remaining books look tidy, I know I probably need to reduce this number further. I am going to track which books I use over the next few months and then do a further cull.

ORGANISE meal planning

I began meal planning a couple of months ago and now sit down every Sunday night and plan a week of meals before I do the grocery shopping on Monday. This is my plan for this week:

Monday: Satay chicken with vegies on rice
Tuesday: Crispy chicken soft tacos
Wednesday: Thai pumpkin soup and toast
Thursday: Beef ravioli with a tomato and herb sauce and garlic bread
Friday: Homemade beef burgers with caremlised onion and salad
Saturday: Basil pesto pasta with chicken, pine nutes and parmesan
Sunday: Left overs

NEW HABIT meal plan once a week, fortnight of month

As I already meal plan weekly, I'm going to give doing it fortnightly a try and see how I go!

5 MINUTES ONLY wipe over kitchen appliances

 

I finished off today's challenge with a quick wipe over of the appliances that remain on my benchtop using a damp Norwex Antibacterial Envirocloth. Probably not as shiny as if I had used a stainless steel product but they still look pretty good :)

 

Tomorrow's focus area is a room of your choice e.g. toy room, craft room, spare bedroom, extra living room etc. Just like last week, I'm having two days off challenges while I head off to work, but I will be back and ready to roll on Friday! Our house is quite small so most of our rooms have dual purposes. Our lounge room is also where all of the boy's toys are kept so the toy section of this room is what I've chosen for Friday.

 

Mel xx