Want to make a random or not so random collection on a countertop or other flat surface look pulled together instantly?
Put ‘em on a tray.
Photo Credit – Cornelius Photography
Yep. Sometimes it’s as easy as that.
Photo Credit – Cornelius Photography
What would have originally just looked like randomness is instantly pulled together to create a cohesive look.
What do you have out that would look better on a tray?
I’ve been working in a lot of kitchens recently, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on expiration dates with the entire class.
Expiration dates are…tricky.
First and foremost, know that expiration dates on food are NOT regulated.
Also known as – We the food manufacturers are pulling dates out of our collective asses as a “favor” to the consumer and will put them in random places you can’t find on the packaging, if we bother to give you a date at all.
Pro tip: when cleaning out your pantry, pair like with like and THEN check for dates. It goes a little quicker because similar foods tend to have the dates in similar places. If it’s dated anyway.
So since it’s all pretty arbitrary and there’s a bit of semantics at play, let’s first take a look at the different types of dates you’ll find: sell by, best by, and expires on.
Sell by – This is for the store. Sell this item by said date and then take it off the shelves. If it’s been properly handled by you after purchase, it should last at least another day to few days depending on the food.
Best by – This one is when it will taste the best, but it won’t necessarily kill you if you eat it afterwards.
Expires on – this is theoretically when it starts to spoil and you most likely won’t want to eat it afterwards.
But remember…these dates are arbitrarily chosen by the manufacturer. Because of this, there are a few factors on their end that they’re considering but don’t want you to:
Here are my rules of thumb:
If you find yourself tossing a bunch of old foods then it’s time to reevaluate your meal habits. Plan more. Purchase only what you need for the week. Eat up what you already have first. This saves you money and waste.
My challenge to you – clean out the pantry, fridge and freezer this weekend and report back when you’re finished. How many bags did you toss? What was the oldest expiration date you came across? My current client records thus far are 6 giant carpenter bags of foods and an expiration date of 1992. (Not the same home, BTW.)
Disclaimer: this is all purely based on the dates and assumes that everything has been handled and stored properly after purchase. If it hasn’t, all bets are off.
Photo Credit – Tracy Davis
For the last month and a half, I’ve been rehearsing and then performing as a lady’s maid to the Marquise de Berkenfeld in THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT in the Fort Worth Opera‘s 2013 Opera Festival.
If there’s anything that HAS to be organized, it’s an entertainment production and especially one of this scale. As an audience member, you may think you have an inkling. After all, there’s a huge cast, costumes, tons of props so that has to happen somehow.
You only get a sliver of it.
Take a peek behind the curtain and you’d be amazed. You’ve got the stage manager and their staff. Prop management and staff. Costumes and their staff. Wigs and make-up and their staff. Lights and sound and their staff. Maestro and the orchestra. Etc. etc. Not to mention all the stuff that comes with each of those people and departments. There are about a kajillion moving parts to make this happen to give you a couple of hours of entertainment.
If one thing goes wrong, it can set off a domino-like tail spin that can be not only problematic, it can even cause physical harm.
Talk about organizing for your life.
Everyone HAS to be on the same page. Backstage can be quite hectic, but it’s a very specific and controlled chaos.
How so?
Impeccable organization.
IMPECCABLE.
Seriously. It’s organizing porn back there.
Buddha Buddy hanging out a prop table in rehearsals. Don’t think he appeared in the show. Don’t recall seeing him after rehearsals. Love him all the same.
Photo Credit – Tracy Davis
Everyone has a specific role and they do it. For instance: at one point in the top of Act II, there’s a person off-stage to make a quick switch of taking a boot out of my hands and handing me a dressing gown. If that person missed, I would miss my next cue, the next gag and then throw off the whole rhythm of the scene.
NOT entertaining.
Everything has a specific place where it lives and that home is labeled.
It’s glorious. You can see what’s there and what’s missing.
So how do you turn your chaotic home into controlled chaos? Take a few tips from our backstage:
Now, this could be a major change and culture shock for your family. As with making any major change in the way you do things, it’ll take time for everyone to adjust. Be patient and offer daily, GENTLE reminders until it sticks. Over time, you won’t need to be as hard core with the labeling and other tips but but it’s good and necessary until these things become habit.
Where in your home can you simplify? Where can you create a smoother running machine?
My newest post for She Owns It is up! Enjoy
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In Steel Magnolias, Olympia Dukakis as Clairee Belcher says, “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.”
My Sunshines, the only thing separating you from the cluttered masses is the ability to light a fire under your tookus and take action.
Yes, darling, it is indeed that simple.
Or is it?
My clients will tell you that by and large, I’m pretty even keel. I’ve seen the dirty secrets. I hear the nasty stories. No matter what I see and hear, it’s met with zero judgment. I make jokes and tell stories to lighten moods. In pantries, finding the oldest expiration date is a contest. When my clients don’t do their homework, it’s no big deal. There’s never any punishment. Hell, I even stop doling out the homework assignments when I can tell my client will never do them anyway. I’d rather do that and prevent the guilt-tripping and mental-beration that always comes with the “missed” homework assignments.
However, there’s one thing that will bring on a touch of redheaded rant every. single. time.
And really, I get so bothered by this because it’s the mistake everyone makes no matter what I say, assign as homework, etc. And it’s the single thing you can do to make yourself feel better instantly.
INSTANTLY.
In a process that you wish was done yesterday, feels like it can take for-ev-ah, and there can be quite a while before you get to the final payout, don’t you want to feel something instantly???
INSTANTLY!?!?
So here it is:
When you start to get a pile of donations going…
Yes, that needs an all-caps, bright red moment. I just wish I could have made the words a bit bigger.
Get the piles of donations out of the freakin house!!!!! I don’t care about the B.S. excuse that other things will have to go too. I know. And you’ll make another trip when it happens. And you’ll keep making trips until you’re done. And you’ll make regular trips after that to make sure that a whole hot mess of clutter doesn’t eat your house again.
Here’s the thing. The whole point of the work is to clear out the clutter and create space. So that pile that you’re staring at? That you keep telling yourself you’re donating so it doesn’t really exist? It does exist and it’s still clutter until it’s gone. Your brain can’t tell the difference. Every time you see the pile(s), you take extra mental energy to tell yourself that it isn’t “really” there. However, the body knows you’re lying so it continues to create the anxiety and other negative emotions associated with too much clutter. That’s just how the body operates.
So stop it. Suck it up and drop off your donations. Make friends with the workers there. Many of my clients say they’re embarrassed that they know the people’s names. I, however, think it’s fabulous. Whoever benefits from your unused goods does to. When you start the process of letting go of clutter, commit to a minimum of at least one weekly trip (more if you need it) to the donation drop of your choosing. It’ll be fabulous energy and karma for everyone involved.
Know what else will be fabulous? All that space you’ll create in your home, head and body when you actually get the stuff out of your house and drop it off.
This just goes to show that you can go from hives to happy in just one hour. You only need to be ready to let go and make some quick decisions.
My client called me that morning. “Are you coming over today?”
“Hell yeah, I am.”
Hesitant…”OK. I’m nervous about this closet. I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it.”
Who can blame her?
I told her not to worry about it and that I’d see her in a few hours.
As we open the door and she looks freaked, I look at her and say, “Alright. So here’s how this shit is going down.”
She laughed and asked if she could film me saying that. Even offered to put it up on my website.
“Not without makeup you don’t.”
So here’s how it went down:
We started in the front at the top of the pile that lead to the floor. I’d hand her an object and she put it in a pile for one of 5 categories:
Once I hit floor working on the front half of the pile, I moved my way down the back half of the pile. From there, I moved onto the shelves. I cleared off the eye level shelf, then the shelves above, then the shelves below. I worked one shelf at a time until it was cleared before moving on to the next shelf, continuing to hand her items one at a time while she made decisions.
For our next trick, we vacuumed. We’d have wiped down the shelves but didn’t need to since they’re wire.
Lastly, we put the remaining items back. The top shelves house rarely used items and the most used items are at eye level. Really heavy items as well as items for the little people are easy to grab at the bottom.
Voila!
After I left, my client moved in a few more items now that she had a properly working closet again:
Total hands on time?
ONE HOUR!
Yep Sushines, only one hour to go from hives to happy. And she was seriously happy. She just stared into the fresh closet and said over and over, “I’m so happy.”
I am too.
Is your closet a hot mess? Email me at heyred@melindamassie.com for help.
I owe you an apology. I’ve been completely remiss in not sharing this tip with you. For me it happens so naturally that it didn’t even occur to me until the other day that many of you may not do this.
When you make bulk purchases, do you remove the individual items from the box or bag they’re in? Example – taking the cans of chili out of the bulk box. Taking the 4-pack of Kleenex out of the plastic.
No???
Well cut that out right this instant!
I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, you just can’t organize the box o stuff as efficiently as you can organize the individual pieces. Also, in the case of boxes of canned goods in the pantry as an example, you can’t really see how much or little you have of something. This creates more hassle than it’s worth when meal planning and shopping because you’re never really sure of what you have.
Bonus benefit? It looks much neater. In one of the pantries I worked on last week, my client told me that when her husband came home he opened up the doors to the pantry and said, “Wow! Looks great! No more boxes, huh?” Plus, as we were working together and she sees the growing pile of boxes on the floor she realized that they were really taking up a lot of space.
When you purchase in bulk, the items are packaged for efficient store display, not efficient home organization. Remove everything from its bulk packaging and organize the items individually in the most efficient manner for your space.
I hope you’re not hungry because today I’m combining two of my fave pleasures – food and organizing.
Imagine a lasagna fresh out of the oven. Perhaps, like me, you are impatient and cut into it too soon. That beautiful, smooth layer of cheese on top gives way to layers desperate to fall apart. As we persist on getting the lasagna on our plate, it just splays out into a rich, hot mess.
Many people’s homes are like this, too.
Upon first entrance, it seems lovely. Beautiful. You might even go so far as to think they’re organized.
Then you dig in.
Drawers explode upon opening. The drawers may not open at all from being over-stuffed with things. Open a closet too quickly, and the contents may fall into a hot mess on top of you. Cabinets seem to have been arranged by a group of evil circus clowns on a drunken bender.
We won’t even mention the “spare room of doom.”
Jessie Sholl is one of my favorite authors on hoarding. For my clients that grew up in a hoarded home, her book Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding is required reading. Needless to say, I was HONORED to speak to her about the emotional ties to clutter. I was especially excited to see so many other fabulous colleagues included in this article. What I love most about this article is that, while the majority of articles out there only address the things, this one discusses the “why.” When you know the “why” you can address it and truly let go of your clutter for good.
And I got to recommend one of my favorite tips for things with negative juju, the cleanse by fire. Love it! Please check out our article in the April edition of Experience Life magazine. Print copies available at Barnes & Noble. (I loved the entire edition.)
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Vida Ghaffari makes her living in the public eye. The hard-working actress has appeared in a number of TV shows and independent films, including 2012’s Cross My Heart, and also has made a name for herself as a television entertainment reporter. Until recently, though, the camera-friendly celebrity was hiding something behind the scenes.
My March She Owns It post is up and this is my favorite yet. If you know ahead of time what will suck, it’s easier to work through. It’ll probably still suck, but it’ll at least suck less. Enjoy!
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You’ll find TONS of articles out there about getting organized and the vast majority – mine included – make it sound so “la, la, la,” easy-breezy and such. For the most part, it is.
Then there’s the other part.
This is the part we gloss over, hoping you’ll continue to read our articles and buy our services. Truth is, however, that it isn’t always so easy-breezy.
Some parts just suck.
In my past life as an event planner, I worked for…
