How To Plan For Your First Whole 30 Challenge

Perhaps a better title for this post might be "How We Planned For Our First Whole 30 Challenge".  Every family is different, and every meal planner is different, so it may not look the same for you.

1. Know the program.  The first thing I did was read all over the Whole30 website to really nail down the rules of what's allowed and what isn't.  I started at the link listed, but I read several other posts about the different categories that are eliminated and why, the basic pantry/perishable lists, and the frequently asked questions.  My favorite was the Whole30 Timeline post, which I have a feeling I'll be referring to often.

2. List the meals you already eat that might work.  Once I felt like I had an idea of where we were headed, I got out my kitchen binder.  I made a list (of course!) of all of the recipes we eat regularly that fit with the Whole 30 rules.  I also included things that could be easily modified by eliminating one ingredient (a tablespoon of honey in a sauce) or could have substitutes (switching from half and half to coconut milk in a creamy vegetable soup).

I organized my list into breakfast, soups, and entrees.  Spoiler alert: Breakfast was pretty much "eggs and...."

3. Find new recipes to try.  Which brings me to my final step: search the Internet.  I didn't start here, because I wanted to go with the foods that we already eat first.  Then we can start experimenting.  If we start out trying new meals, and end up with three duds in a row, it's going to be really discouraging.  I've been enjoying the Whole30Recipes Instagram account, and I've copied a few recipes from there to try, and I set up a Whole 30 Planning board on my Pinterest.

Bonus Step #1: Don't forget to budget!  It's really easy to jump into this, find all these recipes that sound delicious, and buy all the things.  Realistically, we can't afford to eat meat at every meal, so I'm planning on as many vegetarian meals as I can, or meals that use meat as a topping rather than the main deal.  I'd like to buy coconut aminos as a soy sauce replacement and nutritional yeast because I've heard that's good when you're missing cheese, but those aren't things we normally purchase, and I don't have the time or money to find a good source.

Bonus Step #2: What about the kids?  Jesse and I want to do this for us.  But aside from the girls' gluten sensitivity, the kids are doing fine with eating a mostly real food diet.  And let's face it, I'm a lot better about what I feed them than about what I feed myself.

So the kids are getting what I've termed a Whole 30 Plus diet for this month.  They'll be eating most of the same things we will, but they also get the following:

• Gluten free pasta
• Rice
• Beans
• Oats
• Bread or tortillas
• Peanut butter
• Milk
• Yogurt
• Sugar only in granola and muffins and homemade breakfasts and snacks (i.e. no cookies, ice cream, etc.)

They don't have food problems that they need to fix, and they're growing, and sometimes, they just want more food, you know?  The one thing they're not having that they might be sad about is cheese.  But cheese may tempt me more than anything else on that list.  No lie.  And they'll be sad about the lack of sugar, but that's something I've been working on anyways.

The photos in this post are a sneak peek at some of the food we'll be eating this month.  I ended up going with a "semi-freezer cooking" approach, which is what I normally do for food, since we grocery shop every other week.  So yesterday I prepped part or all of 14 meals!  This is huge for me to actually get food on the table, especially on busy days.

I did a lot of research going into this challenge.  I looked at the Whole 30 rules, I looked at all the meals we normally eat and enjoy, and then I looked for some new recipes that still fit with the flavors we like.  After all that I kept the budget and the kids in mind.  It took a lot of work, honestly, but I'm really excited to see how it all turns out!

Why We Want To Do A Whole 30 Challenge

As I mentioned in my Weekly Goals post, we are planning on doing a Whole 30 Challenge for the month of March.  (If you don't know what that is, head here).  But why?

Jesse and I are tired of being overweight and tired.  We do reasonably well with eating mostly real food for our meals.  Snacks are a completely different story, and we tend to splurge on extra food more often than we need to.  By doing a challenge like this with very strict rules, we're hoping to reset some of those habits.

I haven't had so much success with less strict options.  I've been tracking my calorie intake on the My Fitness Pal app for almost 2 years.  I also gained about 20 pounds last year (below is a part of that).  It's really easy to fudge the numbers, or to know that you're making bad choices and make them anyways, because it's "just a little bit" or "I deserve it".

This is my weight tracker from My Fitness Pal.  Ignore the big dip in the middle - our scale went wonky for a day as the batteries died.  But you can see the steady upward trend over the past 6 months.

I use food as a reward all the time.  That's a mindset I'm really fighting against.  When I have to do one of those adult things I hate, like make phone calls or clean the toilets, I tend to make myself feel better by rationalizing that I can have a treat when I'm done.  When I'm stressed, or sad, or bored, I turn to food at those times too.

So why now?  When I'm right in the middle of working on my gluten-free muffins cookbook, which contains many ingredients I can't have during the challenge.  When we have a child's birthday that we still haven't figured out how to work around, other than making cake for the kids and just not eating it.  When I'm not completely sure we can afford to buy the food we need, or the time to make it, or find recipes that the kids can eat too, or...

There are lots of reasons why this isn't a good month.  But really, any month is going to have challenges.  There are going to be things like birthdays, or projects, or picky eaters.  So we may as well jump in and do it.

We tried eating a modified paleo diet at one point.  We still included oats, rice, and beans, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting.  Jesse and I both really liked it, and we developed some good habits then.  I'm hopeful we can do that again.

If you're still reading my rambling, gold star for you!  I'll be sharing more of our meal plans, thoughts, and results as we go through this process.

Quick Tip: Track Your Water Drinking With Ponytail Holders

I first saw this tip in a magazine (I think Weight Watchers? but I'm not sure).  Whenever you drink a cup or bottle or water, put a rubber band or ponytail holder around it.  Then you can easily see how many cups you've finished throughout the day.

I go back and forth between doing this and tracking the cups in the Fitbit app.  Neither is completely a habit for me yet, and I can't decide which one is easier.  But I figured I'd post this tip anyways, because it might work really well for you!

Quick Tip: Save Your Breadcrumbs

Here's a quick tip for my fellow bread-baking friends:  When you cut a loaf of bread into slices (or croutons, in the case of this picture), save the crumbs in a freezer bag.  You can also blend up the heel ends of store-bought bread, which in our house are known as the "butts", and add those to the bag as well.  Save your crumbs, and you won't need to buy bread crumbs next time you need them!

Quick Tip: Use Up The Last Of The Dish Soap

When the dish soap is just about gone, don't throw the bottle away!  Instead, the next time you do the dishes, run the water through the (nearly) empty dish soap bottle first, and throw the lid in the water too.  There's usually enough soap coating the inside of the bottle and lid to fill your sink with suds for one more load.  Plus, then your dish soap bottle is rinsed out and ready to be recycled!

Plastic Containers vs. Glass Containers

Am I the only one who likes peeking into other bloggers' kitchen cupboards?  It's like an up close and personal look at how you do food.  I also like seeing your house in an organized (or real life) state.  Really I just sound creepy now, but hopefully I'm not the only one who does this!

I've slowly been switching my food storage over from plastic to glass.  There are many posts about why plastic is bad and glass is good from a food safety perspective.  Glass also has other benefits too.

So the picture at the top of this post is where I am today.  I have a lot of glass jars and pyrex containers, but I also still have a fair amount of plastic containers.  The problem for me is that the size of container I use most is the individual portion square type, and most of those are plastic.  See that one with the green lid?  That's my only glass rectangle for leftovers.  Otherwise it's tiny bowls or big bowls.

So over the past week, I challenged myself to only use glass for food storage.  What that meant is that sometimes I had a small portion of leftovers in a large bowl.  It's not the most efficient use of space, but it did help me to see what I need more of.  I also realized that some of my baby glass bowls are currently hijacked in the freezer with chopped jalapenos, and it might be better to dump those all in one jar and use the bowls for other things.

I've already been doing a good job of saving things like homemade broth in jars, and I have a stash of baby food jars that I use when I make my own (although we're almost out of that stage already!).

If something is going to get reheated, that gets first dibs on a glass container.  If it's a bread product, or something that's going to be dumped out into another dish, it's not as big of a deal right now.  For now, for the transition, this works, at least when I'm intentional about it.

My big dilemma is freezer ziplocs.  And I don't know if that's an easy thing I'm willing to give up right now, because I use them a lot.  I use them for my freezer meals, for applesauce, for chopped veggies.  Basically for whatever I want to freeze that I don't have a container for.  And I don't know a good way to do my freezer meals not in a bag.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

What about you?  Do you use plastic, glass, or a mixture of both like me?

My One Tip For Making Cooking From Scratch Easier

I make a lot of food from scratch.  It takes time, and energy, and it's not always the most fun thing to do (although I found a way to make the time more enjoyable!).  But there's one thing that always makes cooking from scratch easier.  

I do the dishes first.  

Here's before:

The counter has remnants of the first half of the day, and there's not a ton of workable space.  But with the dishes done?  Lots of room:

You'll notice there are still a few dirty dishes in the second photo.  That's because cups, bowls, plates, and silverware are done by the boys after dinner.  So I just did my dishes.  Most of theirs stay in one half of the double sink.

I first got the idea of having a completely clear counter from Crystal at Money Saving Mom.  And I loved it!  I'm a big fan of cleared off flat surfaces.  I think they look so much nicer, and they help keep me calm.  That's why I make sure to do all the dishes and have this counter cleared off 99% of the time before I go to bed.

Everything is easier with a clear counter.  You have space for all your ingredients and pans and bowls and a helper or two.  And when you're done, all that's left are a few dirty dishes.

I Like Periscope!

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed an orange bowl popping up on the side of some of my food and kitchen pictures.  That's because lately, when I'm in the kitchen, I've been plopping my phone in there and turning on "one of the ladies", as Hannah calls them, on Periscope.  (That's a speaker trick I found on Pinterest, by the way)

I'm in the kitchen a lot, people.

Behind homeschooling, making food is how I spend a big chunk of my day.  So why not make it more fun?  While I'm chopping veggies, mixing up a batch of muffins, or doing a load of dishes, I can listen to one of my favorite bloggers talk about something I'm really interested in.  I usually spend about an hour before lunch, and at least an hour before dinner, working on food of some sort.

The reason I was hesitant about Periscope in the first place is because my house is loud.  Four kids are noisy.  There's no way around that.  But the two times I'm most often in the kitchen are usually times when the kids are either outside, or have just gotten done with a chunk of school and want to play.

Lately Hannah has been my kitchen helper, but she mostly just likes to hang out in the same room as me, and she doesn't do more than try to ask me questions occasionally or help dump ingredients into a bowl and ask to hold something.  Elizabeth crawls in and out of the room, but again, she's not too loud on her own either.

So it works.  I get food prep done, and I enjoy it a lot more because I'm engaging my brain.  I'm learning more about budgeting, natural living, books, food, making money from home, and who knows what else.

So who do I listen to?  These are my favorites (the links take you to their blogs, and their Periscope handles are in parentheses):

• Crystal Paine (moneysavingmom)
• Stacy Myers (stacymakescents)
• Ruth Soukup (ruthsoukup)
• Erin Odom (humbledhome)
• Tiffany Terczak (dontwastethecrumbs)

I follow a few more bloggers I like, but they haven't actually done any scopes yet.  Even if they did, I don't know if I would add more to what I'm listening to right now.  Crystal is doing two scopes a day right now for her book launch, and both Tiffany and Ruth are running 31 Day challenges in October, so they're scoping every single day (except Sundays, I think).  So I have plenty to listen to, but I don't want to add more unless some of the current ones slow down.

Of course, the obvious question then, is are you on Periscope?  Is there anyone I absolutely have to add to my list?

Extra Fun Homeschool Activities for Jonah's Birthday

Even though it was Jonah's birthday on Wednesday, we still had school.  But instead of all of our normal things, we did some extra fun activities.

We did a Dinosaur Dig!  We've been learning a bit about archaeology in history, and this week was Letter D for letter of the week.  So I printed off and laminated the dinosaur silhouettes in this post, and made the clay recipe linked there as well.  I should have made my clay dinosaurs thicker, because they kind of broke into more pieces than the three to four I had cut them into.  It was still a fun activity for the boys though!

We played Kitchen. I got the idea from this list of A-Z Sensory Play Ideas, and we did this for the first time last year for our Letter K letter of the week.  Ever since, Jonah asks to do this all the time.  I usually say no, because I don't want to use up all of my food supplies, but every now and then I let the boys go crazy, and it usually ends up that they "cook" for 40 minutes or so.

These are obviously not everyday activities, because they took extra prep work and made extra messes, but every once in awhile, it's fun to have a day like that.

Jonah's Blue Lego Ninja Birthday Cake

I like to let my kids request what they want their birthday cakes to look like, and then I try to make it happen.  It doesn't always work out, but they seem to enjoy it anyways, and I like the challenge.

I was proud because this year I actually got the colors to turn out right!  That does not always happen.  In case you do not have young boys in your house, this is Jay the Lego Ninja:

I think I got pretty close.

Also, here's a tip for you.  When making round cakes, first spray the cake pan with nonstick spray and line with wax paper.  Use a sharp knife to cut around the edges, so that the wax paper is only on the bottom.  Pour batter in and cook as normal.  After cooling 10-20 minutes, run a knife around the edge of the cake, flip it out, and peel the wax paper off.  Comes out clean every time!  My mom taught me that one...

How Pancakes Reminded Me About Being Frugal

It was the day before our big twice-monthly shopping trip, and I was supposed to make pancakes for dinner.  Our usual gluten-free pancake recipe calls for 3 cups of oats.  I started measuring, and got to about 1 and 2/3 cups before I ran out.  In the past, I would have run to the store quickly for that one ingredient.  But I knew there had to be something else I could use.

So I grabbed the Rice Krispies off the shelf, measured out the missing amount, and mixed the whole thing up with my immersion blender.  It looked fairly close to normal, so I kept going.

The Rice Krispie pancakes did not flip well at all.  They definitely weren't pretty to look at.  They actually tasted fine, although Jonah didn't appreciate that the banana flavor came out more than usual.

But they taught me that we almost always have something we can use to make do.  I need to remember this more often.  To look at what we have before I go look for something new.  To see what I can substitute to save money and a trip to the store (and not just for food necessarily).

We're trying to pay off debt, mostly school loans.  And it's slow going.  But these little things do help, slowly but surely, to add up to bigger things.

Iron Craft Challenge #16: State Fair

The challenge this time around was to create something you could enter in one of the Minnesota State Fair categories.  I picked needlework for my category, and I embroidered a large cloth for a kitchen towel for my brother and his fiancee for the bridal shower my mom and I threw last weekend.  

I've seen so many embroidered towels on Pinterest, and it's been one of those projects I've wanted to do for awhile, but I hadn't found the right towels and I hadn't found a design I wanted to do.

So for this one, I picked colors I liked, made up a pretty looking font on some scratch paper, and traced it along with their wedding date.  The whole thing actually didn't take that long to do, and it gave me hopes for future embroidered towels for my own kitchen...

As a side note, this shower was the first time baby Elizabeth got to meet my Grandma, who she was named after.  It was really awesome for me (Elizabeth missed her nap, so she was not as impressed)...

How Freezer Cooking Makes For A Relaxing Return From Vacation

When you get back from vacation, the last thing you want to do is spend a ton of time in the kitchen prepping for a meal, am I right?  I know that's the case for me.  So before we headed to my parents' house for a few days this week, I made sure I had a few things ready in the freezer.

First up, I made pizza crusts.  We had chicken bacon ranch pizza planned for dinner yesterday, the day we were driving back, and I wasn't sure if we would get home around lunch time or right before dinner.  By having the pizza crusts ready to go and the chicken already cooked from last week, I was able to pull out the ingredients and have dinner on the table in about half an hour (and that includes cooking time!)

By the way, look for a frozen pizza tutorial from me sometime soon!  I'm pretty excited about that one...

I had some extra muffins in the freezer from the last batch that didn't get eaten.  I've also started making a double batch of oatmeal pancakes each time we have them, because they're so handy to pull out of the freezer in place of bread for Hannah!  So we had a mixture of those items for breakfast this morning.  Easy!

And finally, for lunch today we had bean burgers from the freezer (are you sensing a pattern here?) and sweet potato fries.  Because the burgers were already made up, this meal came together quickly too.

All this left me time yesterday and this morning to unpack, throw a load of laundry in, and get everything back to normal.  That's a relaxing return from a vacation!

Bob's Red Mill Flour Review

Earlier this month, I got 2 big boxes of happiness delivered to my door.  Okay, not really, but I did get 2 big boxes of baking goods, and for me, baking = happiness, so it's kind of the same thing.  

First things first.  Here's a bit of information about Bob's Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour:

• Bob’s Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour is unbleached and unbromated white flour that is milled from premium wheat grown right here in the United States. 
• A favorite among professional bakers, this versatile flour is great for baking bread, cookies, cakes, muffins, quick breads, pie crusts, pizza crusts, and more. 
• Bob’s Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour is Certified Organic, non-GMO, and does not contain any fillers, additives, or preservatives. 

Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods is a miller of stone-ground whole grains and a leader in nutritious, organic and gluten-free foods. Their mission to promote “whole grains for every meal of the day” is backed by a diverse line featuring over 400 products including whole grains, flours, cereals, baking mixes, beans, seeds and more. Bob’s Red Mill is based in Milwaukie, Oregon and is proud to be an employee-owned company.  Side note: I lived in Milwaukie, Oregon, when I was about 5 years old.  Cool for me to know that Bob's Red Mill is based there!

The big event coming up was Matthew's fourth birthday, so of course, the first thing I baked was a cake, using some of the Bob's Red Mill 100% Stone Ground Whole Wheat Pastry Organic Flour and some Bob's Red Mill Organic All-Purpose Flour.

In the past, I've just stuck with all-purpose flour for cakes, because it makes the fluffiest cakes, and that's just been easy.  Whole wheat flour tends to be denser, and this was, a little bit, but not as much as I expected.  The cake was still very moist and delicious. 

I also made some puppy chow so Hannah could have a gluten-free treat.  Bob's Red Mill does have a line of gluten-free flours and products, but we didn't get any of those this time around, so I just stuck with what we had on hand.

I'm so happy that everyone enjoyed the birthday cake, because it means I can continue to use the wheat flour in my recipe.

Matthew also requested pizza for his birthday dinner, so I tried some of the same wheat flour for the crust.  I used half Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Organic Flour as well, and it tasted great and rose just as well as it always does.  Another success!

Finally, I put the Bob's Red Mill 100% Stone Ground Whole Wheat Pastry Organic Flour to the test in my favorite sandwich bread recipe, which normally calls for half all-purpose and half whole wheat.  I wanted to see how it would turn out with all whole wheat.

The picture got lost somewhere (yay technology!), but it turned out great! We will definitely be doing that again!

Overall, I was really pleased with the quality and texture of all of the baked goods we made with these products.  If you want to try some of these flours for yourself, go here to get a coupon!

Disclosure: I received Bob's Red Mill products and coupons from Moms Meet in exchange for this blog post.  All opinions are my own.

How To Clean Greasy Residue Off Of Pans

Let me preface this by saying that there are two groups of people who will read this post.  First, the people who think this is a great trick and want to try it immediately.  Second, those who wonder why I would even care about cleaning the bottoms of my pans in the first place.  To you, I say, because they look so pretty when they're nice and clean.  You can continue to think I'm crazy.  I'm okay with that...

I was doing dishes last night, and noticed the bottom of my muffin pans are seriously gross.  Greasy residue all over gross.  I tried scratching a bit with my fingernail and it came off, but who wants to do that? Not me. 

But I had an idea.  Baking soda to the rescue!  I dumped some on there and let it sit for a minute.

And then I grabbed one of those random sample toothbrushes that don't seem like they quite clean your teeth very well, and I got to scrubbing.

Just a few minutes later, the bottom of the pan was clean!  The toothbrush was not...If shiny pretty pans make you happy, try this trick today!

Week 1 Of Catching Up Month

If you remember from last week, I labeled March as Catching Up Month, and I had a nice long list of things I wanted to get done. I was able to cross a few things off this week (and did a few that didn't make the list, but that I had been wanting to get done also).

I cleaned out my coupon box of expired coupons from January and February.

I three-hole-punched my new organ music and added it to my organ binder.

I read Insurgent and Allegiant by Veronica Roth.  I understand why Allegiant ended the way it did, but I was disappointed in what happened.

I ordered a big bag of Great Northern Original Popcorn on Amazon, something I had been wanting to price check for awhile.  It was 12.5 pounds for $15 and change (now it's $16.95).  We go through popcorn like crazy, so this was a pretty good deal.

I wiped down our kitchen island, counters, and spice rack, as well as clearing off and wiping off the dining room table. Here's the island all nice and empty.  It's really huge when there's nothing on it...

Behind it you can see a lot of the stuff that usually goes on the island.  Some of it went back, but I actually put some of it away elsewhere, so now I have more space, which is always handy.

I still have a bunch left on my list, but I feel like I made good progress this week.  What have you been catching up on?

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links.

Getting The Kitchen Ready For Vacation

We have been gone visiting family for the past 5 days.  I should have a Menu Plan post up some time tomorrow, but for now, here are some tips for getting your kitchen ready for a vacation.

One of the things I always try to do before leaving for several days is use up or store the perishable food items we have.  In this case, it was a 32oz. container of yogurt, 4 carrots and 4 apples, 2 tortillas, a bit of feta, and a few other random things.

First I made yogurt cubes (the white things in the bag in the picture above).  I spooned yogurt into ice cube trays and stuck them in the freezer for a few hours.  Then I put them in a bag, and now I can add them to smoothies.  I've done this before with muffin tins, but the ice cube size is a lot easier for the blender to handle.

I also made juice the morning we left with the leftover apples and carrots, and then made a big batch of Morning Glory Muffins from the juice pulp.  These will make a great easy breakfast/snack for the first day or so we're back.  We have some noodles and a jar of alfredo sauce on the shelf, and broccoli and mushrooms in the freezer, so we'll have an easy dinner tonight that is already nearly ready to go.

Lunch the day we left included cheese tortillas, the last of a can of pineapple, and some baby carrots with hummus that were in the fridge.  It was kind of a random assortment of stuff, but it was what needed to be eaten. 

And, after all that fun, I got to do the dishes and take out the garbage.  Here's what my fridge looked like when we left:

Very empty!  But at least I get to come home to a clean kitchen, with enough ready to eat until we can get to shopping again!  How do you plan for a vacation?

Iron Craft Challenge 1: Cotton

I thought about putting "participate in Iron Craft 2013" on my goals list, but with 2 blog challenges and several other projects already on there, I wasn't sure if that was realistic.  Still, I do want to try to do these challenges.  I was not that great at it last year, although I do enjoy looking at all of the other crafters' projects.

The theme for this first challenge was cotton.  Sometime last year, I bought a few rolls of cotton yarn to make some dishcloths.  I made two each of two colors, but for some reason I never finished this color.  Time to fix that!

I am no expert knitter, so these are simple 40x60 and 30x44 stitched cloths on #7 needles.  I like the size of the bigger one better, but the skein of yarn only had enough to just make these, with about six inches of yarn to spare.  These homemade rags do the job, and the ridges from the knitting actually make these better scrubbers than my store-bought dish rags.  Yay homemade!

Project Simplify For Fall: Kitchen

One of my favorite blog families (because there are several sites within this one, and I read pretty much all of them), Life Your Way, is hosting a "Simplify for Fall" challenge this week.  While some of these areas either don't apply to me (or I just finished recently, like clothes), there was one that immediately stood out to me: kitchen.  There are several little things in the kitchen that have been bugging me, as well as a few quick cooking projects I wanted to get done.  So yesterday, I started the kitchen challenge.  And it's a work in progress...

One thing you should know about our kitchen - there is not much counter space at all.  So to help with that, we got this microwave cart.  It has been pretty much this cluttered since we moved in (end of June), because it's really easy to just set things here "for a minute", (toothbrush holder anyone?) and then they get stuck.  It bugged me, so I finally did something about it.  Here's before...

 ...and after!

It's not perfect, but it's better.  Things that didn't belong were put away.  The cookbooks still look a little crazy, because I'm searching for bookends to hold them up (they'll move to the top of the fridge) so I can have them all upright instead of in a big stack.  And our blue snack tub on the microwave looks a little crazy, but only because of the package of Teddy Bear Crackers that my boys love.

Another one that bugs me is this little spot of counter.  I had dreams of putting my coffeemaker here, but there's not a plug near enough. This would be the perfect fit for it too.  Since that didn't work out, I put my utensil holder here.  I thought this big jar would work better than it does, because I can't put shorter items in here, or they get lost, so those still clog up a drawer.  So I might have to break down and get one of these fancy Pampered Chef ones, which I like because they hold a lot, but don't like, because they're plastic and huge.  I also don't love our bottles of vitamins clogging up the counter.  I put away the allergy medication and one extra bottle of vitamins, but we still have 3 bottles there.  I don't know where else to put them where we will still remember to take them.  So this is still a problem area for me...

While I was working on those two spots, I cooked up some mushrooms, which I put in the freezer for future meals...

...and made a pot of Veggie Lentil Soup for future lunches (I freeze this in individual portions, which are easy to grab for a quick and healthy lunch).

Here's one area that doesn't need work! My meal plan. I plan everything on a piece of notebook paper, with more specifics about what goes in what recipe and also my grocery list, and once it's done, it goes on the markerboard.  Then I just erase the items as we eat them, so we always know what's coming next.  Dinners are assigned to specific days, but lunches are not.  The stars by the dinner items mean I need to prep something ahead of time (like cooking up beans for the Enchiladas or making English Muffins for breakfast sandwiches).  The items in red are extras that I want to make this week.  I'm really loving my menu planning system right now.

While we're over by the fridge, take a look on top:

Again, more items without a home.  Behind those few things in front are all of my husband's tools.  They landed there for easy access when we moved in and never left.  To the hall closet with them!  Once I get my bookends, the cookbooks will go up here, and the pitcher will probably move down below on the microwave cart.

Here's after:

Much cleaner!

And finally, to the left of the refrigerator, we have our donations box, along with our paper and plastic bags.  I save the paper ones for wrapping packages to mail, and the plastic ones for our little garbage can in the bathroom.  Before:

And after:

I gathered the bags neatly, and put up a 3M Command hook for the plastic bags to hang from.

So while things in the kitchen still aren't perfect, I did fix a few things that had been bothering me for quite some time!  As for the rest of the Project Simplify list, I have a few other things to take care of this week, mostly under the "Paper Clutter & Budgets" category, but that's for another day.