Cynthia Ewer's Blog, page 22
May 22, 2019
Summer Cooking Tips: Cool Off in the Kitchen!
Who can imagine summer without summer food?
Steaming corn-on-the-cob, each kernel bursting with sweet flavor.
Burgers and barbecue. Ice cream sundaes.
The crisp red smile of a watermelon wedge, dripping with sweet juice.
There's a darker side to summer meals. Food budgets groan under the strain of substituting quick-cook steaks and chicken breasts for thrifty stove-top casseroles. Read More >>
Printables:
food_menu_planner_weekly...
May 11, 2019
School's Out! Summer Survival for Busy Families
They're here! Tumbling from the school bus, fresh from Field Day, with papers and projects and petrified sandwiches spilling in their wake: your children.
Summer vacation is wonderful, no doubt about it.
Damp heads and wet bathing suits, backyard tents and fireflies in canning jars.
"Look, Mom!" rings out a hundred times a day, from the top of the pool slide to the bug-dotted bottom of an upturned rock. Read More >>
Printables: se...
May 7, 2019
Summer Cleaning Chore Checklist
Summer's here, hot, high and sweaty. Vacations beckon. The garden takes on a life of its own.
Busy families don't have much time for home chores these months. School's out, travel's in and it's easy to let life slide on the home front.
Still, summer will run more smoothly if you keep tabs on these important areas in the Summer Cleaning Chore Checklist.
Our summer cleaning chore checklist list tackles hot-weather issues, summer health and safety. &nb...
April 29, 2019
Conquer Chaos in the Laundry Room
Nothing can streamline an organized home like a well-crafted set of household systems, and today, we focus on laundry and clothing systems.
What do they do? How do you develop them? What benefits will establishing laundry and clothing systems give to you and your family?
Chances are, you already have these systems in place. After all, a system is just a set of organized items, decisions or actions, designed to work together to achieve a common end. &nb...
April 24, 2019
Power Tools For An Organized Home
Who among us hasn't squandered a happy afternoon in a store specializing in organizing products?
Drifting from aisle to aisle, we make a mental list: this for the bathroom clutter, that for the computer desk.
All is bliss until we consider the bottom line. Specialty organizers can be costly! Someday, we vow, we'll get organized at home, but for now, budget realities step firmly on organizer dreams.
Stop the presses! Over the years, these top tools have...
April 20, 2019
Travel Tips: Get Organized For Family Vacations
Memorial Day is on the horizon, and the school year is winding down. It's time to think "road trip" as summer begins.
Family vacation travel can be enriching, enjoyable and exciting--but only if you're organized.
The family that fails to plan for summer travel can end up frazzled, frustrated and longing for the quiet comfort of home.
This year, get ready! Whether it's car trips, plane travel or close-to-home "stay-cation" trips, we've assembled Organiz...
April 16, 2019
Declutter 101: Where Do I Start?
Ready to cut clutter on the homefront--but not sure where to start?
Standing amid the stacks and piles, it can be hard to find a good spot to dive in and begin. Too often, de-clutter efforts fizzle along with the light of day.
This time, resolve to succeed! To get your organized journey off to a good start, try these clutter-cutting start points. They will help free a strangled household from the clutter monster.
April 6, 2019
Today's Challenge: Get Frugal, Get Organized
Here's a little challenge, now that it's yard sale season: try to find a yard sale without a stock of organizing products for sale.
Too often, we start a get-organized effort where we should finish it: at the store. Buying organizing products before we've done the heavy lifting of setting up activity centers, sorting and purging our stuff, and deciding where to pare down leads to that paradoxical result: organizer clutter. Read More >>
April 5, 2019
Today's Challenge: Keep Clutter From Coming Back
Getting a grip on clutter is only the first step. How do you keep it from coming back?
This week in the Cleaning Challenge, we've considered cleaning routines that work to keep dirt at bay. Clutter, too, needs to be addressed with habits and routines designed to prevent it from gaining a foothold in an organized home.
Today in the Cleaning Challenge, try these ideas to stop clutter at the door, and keep it from coming back:
April 4, 2019
Today's Challenge: Minimum Maintenance
In yesterday's Cleaning Challenge, we took a look at household routines: those things we do daily, weekly, monthly and seasonally to keep the household clean and organized.
As with so many things in life, your mileage may vary! Household needs and composition mean that every home has a different set of routines. A two-career couple with an empty nest will have far different routines than, say, a family with pre-school children.
But there's one routine ev...
