How I Display and Save Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards. I love the tradition of addressing cards to loved ones. I love the excitement of finding cards in the mailbox. And I love seeing our cards over and over throughout the year - and through the years!  

As we receive cards throughout the Christmas season, they are put up along the windows in our kitchen and family room.  

When we take down our decorations, the cards are moved to a cardholder that is up in our house year round. This is honestly the only part that I enjoy about taking down Christmas decorations! 

(I got this Branch Cardholder several years ago from Pottery Barn. It's currently unavailable, but I'm sure you can find similar ones on Etsy.)

The cards that come off the cardholder are put into a book and tucked away with our Christmas decorations. I love having these memories to look back on each year. ❤️ (I found this cardholder on Etsy.)

I also save our family's cards each year and use them as part of our holiday decor. I put our cards (and pictures with Santa!) in silver and gold frames and decorate the shelves in our family room with them. They're so fun for all of us to look back on when we pull them out with our decorations each year.

xoxo

Erin

Our Costco Staples

We go to Costco once a week for certain staples. This is the list I use when taking inventory of what we have and what I need to buy.

I've always kept this list as a file in Google Drive so that I have easy access to it. But I decided to move it over here so I can make it accessible to anyone else who might be interested. 😊

There are plenty of other items we get there - they're just not our staples. (For example, we'll often include salmon or trout as part of our meal plan, but it's not something I pick up every week. These items are included at the bottom under "Meal Planning Favorites.")

Produce

• Asparagus
• Avocados
• Blueberries
• Disney Gala Apples
• Strawberries

Snacks

• Kirkland Apple Sauce Pouches
• Mott's Organic Applesauce Cups
• Peanut Butter Pretzels
• Snack Bags: Cheez-Its, Goldfish, Skinny Pop, Pirate's Booty
• Stacy's Pita Chips
• Pretzel Crisps
• Ritz Crackers
• Graham Crackers
• Cashews
• Almonds

Dairy

• Milk
• Eggs
• Butter
• Stonyfield Yogurt Pouches
• Oatmilk

Home

• Dishwasher Pods
• Paper Towels
• Tissues
• Clorox Wipes
• Hand Wipes
• Oxyclean
• Laundry Detergent
• Bleach

Frozen

• Chicken Nuggets
• Organic Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

Bread and Pasta

• King's Hawaiian Rolls
• Banza Chickpea Pasta
• Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese Variety Pack

Other

• Honey
• Avocado Oil Spray

👉And don't forget to get gas!  👈

Meal Planning Favorites (but not staples)

• Tikka Masala Sauce and Naan
• Salmon
• Trout
• Beef Brisket

5 Ideas for Back to School Organization

It's hard to believe August is here, and the summer is winding down. The end of this summer is particularly bittersweet for us because our oldest is starting kindergarten this year!

I am so excited for her and for the beginning of this new adventure for all of us. But I know our world is about to be turned upside-down for the next few months as we settle into elementary school.

I'm hoping some of the systems and routines we started in preschool will help us have a relatively smooth start to the year so that we can really take in and enjoy all that is in store!

Morning Routine

1. Plan breakfasts and lunches for the week.

We include breakfast and lunch in our weekly meal plan. 

Our breakfast and lunch plans are not as detailed as our dinner plans - just more of a jumping off point to keep us from repeating the same foods every day for breakfast and lunch. Going into the morning knowing what's for breakfast and lunch saves a lot of time and frees a lot of mental space.

I know some people really like to prepare school lunches the night before, and that's great if that system works best for you. I personally prefer like making lunches in the morning, but do whatever helps your morning run the most smoothly!

2. Create a morning checklist.

After breakfast, I tell my kids to go upstairs and do their list. 

My oldest is able to do this independently. My 3-year-old still needs some help, so I go with him to assist as needed.

We started this routine toward the end of preschool, and continued it through the summer. It has made such a huge difference in getting out of our house in the mornings. A lot less yelling, and a lot less stress, to say the least!

3. Plan outfits for the week.

On Sundays, I pick out my kids' outfits for the week. 

(I'm trying to be better about doing this for myself, too!) My oldest will have a uniform at her new school, so that really simplifies this step!

Paper Organization

4. Establish a system for the stream of papers.

Once school starts, the stream of papers coming into the house is endless. Having a system in place for managing these papers has been very helpful for me. 

I currently have two "inbox" trays. One is for papers that need to be filed and the other is for papers that need action (e.g. papers that need to be signed and returned to school).

With two preschoolers, however, the majority of papers that come home are the kids' work. I go into detail about our system for these papers in this post on how I display and organize my kids' schoolwork.

Closets and Clothes

5. Clean out the closets!

This is a great time to clean out closets! I assess what my kids already have, what they need, what can be donated, sold, etc. Anything that I'm saving for the baby goes in a bin in the attic.

I do this sort of closet inventory about four times a year. I was recently talking to a friend about this, and she told me I'm a "wardrobe shopper." This works well for me because I really only need to think about clothes for the kids a few times a year. However, this might be why I don't actually have any clothes myself...haha. Anyway, I'm getting off topic! That can be a blog post for another time!

I hope some of these ideas were helpful for you and your family.

Enjoy these final weeks of summer!

xoxo

Erin

How We Organize Manuals and Warranties

I know many people would prefer to be digital with this, and I completely appreciate that. You do what works best for you and your family! Keeping hard copies is just my personal preference.

If it were left up to my husband, he would toss the manuals altogether and just look them up online if he ever needed them. I'm slowly proving their worth to him, though, as our box of manuals has come in handy a few times recently! Just the other day, he had to buy oil for our lawnmower and wasn't sure what type to buy. I had the manual out before he even got down to the garage to figure out the model number!

Moving on to how we actually organize these papers...

I would say our manuals and warranties are "semi-organized." 

They're organized because they all have a place. They live in one of two places, depending on the category of item they are for:

1. items that would come with us if we moved (strollers, tvs, lawnmower, etc.)

2. items that would remain with the house if we moved (hot water heater, dishwasher, etc.)

All the manuals and warranties for the items that would remain with the house are included in our house binder, which I go into more detail about in this post (Papers Specifically Related to Our House).

The manuals and warranties for the items that would come with us are in this file box. 

They're "semi-organized" because there is not much order to the box of manuals. The ones that fit in page protectors are in this binder. 

They're not in any specific order in the binder, simply because I didn't feel like it was necessary. As it is, I can easily flip though the pages to find the manual I need.

I did put sticky notes on the ones where it's not immediately clear what they're for.

The manuals that don't fit in page protectors are just in the box. Also, if the product came with extra parts, I put those in a bag with the manual.

I read somewhere once that paper management is the number one reason people hire professional organizers. I can understand why, as the steady stream of papers quickly pile up. 

I know I've said it before, but having a system for papers really simplifies so much - you know what to do with them as they come in and where to find them later on. And I find a pile of papers that are waiting to be filed a lot less stressful than a pile of papers with nowhere to go. 

Happy filing! 💛

xoxo

Erin

How I Get My Kids to Actually Play With Their Toys (A Toy Rotation for Big Kids)

When my oldest (who is now 5½) was a baby, I had a toy rotation down pat. Then we had our second (who is now 3½), and with him came more toys. Between the two of them, there have been eight birthdays. We’ve celebrated five Christmases and Hanukkahs with kids - and many visits from grandparents. As the kids have grown, so has the toy inventory, and the toy rotation became a distant memory.

Not really distant, though. For a long time I was racking my brain trying to think of how to make a toy rotation work for big kids.

I think having just a few toys out for babies is fantastic. Limiting their choices keeps them from becoming overwhelmed. The same is true for big kids (and adults!), however, having just a few toys out at a time wasn’t practical for my older kids.

Still it drove me crazy that they had a playroom full of toys they would not play with. And I knew this was because there were too many choices - even though I feel like we don’t have a lot of toys, it was still a lot for them to see, and they weren’t processing what was actually there.

Then one day after subbing in my daughter's preschool class, it hit me: CENTERS! That night I took all the toys in the playroom and piled them on the rug. I went through and categorized them into five centers:

• Rug Toys
• Puzzle Center
• Building Center
• House Center
• Craft Center

This has worked so well for us! During center time I choose a center, and they immediately start playing because their choice is limited and not overwhelming. They're only focused on that one center. 

(I’ve actually found that after directing them to one center, they often pull toys to play with from other centers to complement what they are playing.)

Before I share our centers, I want to note two things:

First, you don’t need a playroom to create centers! This can be done wherever you keep toys - shelves in a closet, different areas throughout the house, etc. Make your home work for you!

And second, my kids do have some toys in their rooms. Not a lot, but things they like to play with by themselves. For example, my daughter keeps her Barbies in her room, and my son keeps his Transformers in his room.

Ok, let’s get to it! Here's a little tour of the centers in our playroom...

I already had three cube shelving units along the wall in the playroom, so I designated one for Rug Toys, one as the Puzzle Center, and one as the Building Center. These three centers are where the toy rotation comes into play. I put one item in each cube. Any extras go in one of these bins and are rotated out every so often. (There is no set schedule. Just when we’re feeling it! The Puzzle Center gets rotated out the most frequently.)

House Center is pretty much just the toy kitchen, a doll crib, and a doll stroller. The doctor’s kit is also there because, in my head, this is the Dramatic Play Center. 

The magnet board was already hanging on that wall, so it’s there if they want to play with it at this center, although I rotate the magnet sets in and out of Rug Toys.

Craft Center is simply our craft table. A lot of times we do crafts together, not during their center time. But sometimes my daughter will do something here as a center. (My son isn't quite old enough yet to enjoy crafting independently.)

My two favorite things about this system:

1. I only have to focus on rotating a specific category of toys.

2. They play with their toys!

xoxo

Erin

How We Organize Our Important Documents

Amazon affiliate links used.

Hurricane Hugo hit Charleston when I was almost five. My family rarely evacuated for hurricanes (and still doesn't!), but my dad was away, and my mom made a last minute decision to head inland to my great-aunt's house for this one! I remember her carrying boxes of photo albums and important papers to the car just as the rain started. 

Fast forward 32 years, and packing up photo albums isn't something my family does during hurricane season. One of the benefits of living in a digital world is that pretty much everything is replaceable. We personally don't have any sentimental letters or photos that aren't also digital. 

We do keep all our important documents in this fireproof and waterproof safe, however, because while replaceable, these are items we don't want lost or somehow finding their way out of our house.

The dimensions are not quite large enough for a file folder to lie flat, which is fine because most of the items are smaller than an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper anyway. But I didn't want everything just tossed in, so I found these clear zipper envelopes at Home Depot, and they work perfectly!

We keep personal identification, home, and vehicle information in our safe:

• Birth Certificates
• Social Security Cards
• Passports
• Marriage License
• Property Deed
• Car Titles

We also keep documents that would be helpful for our family to easily access if something were to happen to one or both of us:

• Will
• List of all financial accounts with usernames and passwords

I'm working on getting digital files (mainly photos) backed up on an external hard drive that will also go in the safe. And it's a good idea to keep an inventory of household possessions, so that's on the to-do list, as well!

Nice and tidy!

xoxo

Erin

How We Organize Papers Specifically Related To Our House

I recently read an article that mentioned how a lawnmower gets a lot of use but not a lot of love - so it's a good idea to send it out for an annual tuneup. I would say that we use ours on a weekly basis for a good eight months out of the year, so I'm planning to schedule a tuneup this week!

Anyway, I added "schedule a lawnmower tune up" to our April to do list, and that got me thinking about annual maintenance for the major appliances in our house. I got out our "House" binder to go through the user manuals for these appliances, and I thought I would share how we organize papers specifically related to our house. 

(I'm planning to do a longer post soon about how we organize all of our papers, but this is a closer look at this one specific area.)

This binder is divided into three sections:

1. The Property

We have a copy of our lot survey and a copy of our floorpan in this section. We also save paint colors here.

2. Receipts
This section includes receipts for any work we've had done to the house (plumbers, electricians, etc.). It also includes receipts for any repairs/maintenance we've had done to the appliances that are "part of the house." (More on this below!)

3. Manuals, Warranties, Etc.

When deciding what would go in this binder, I asked myself: What appliances are part of the house? (Or another way of looking at it is: If we were ever to sell the house, what papers would be useful to pass on to the new owners?) This question really helped me determine what manuals, warranties, etc. to file here. (We have all other manuals saved in a separate place.) Included are the papers for our hot water heater, air conditioner, stove, oven, gas fireplace, etc. We had plantation shutters installed on some of the windows, so the warranty information for those are in this section. Also the papers that came with new light fixtures we installed are here...and so on.

That's our House binder! I know there are a million different ways to organize papers, and this is just the way that works well for us.

Having a system for papers really simplifies so much - you know what to do with them as they come in and where to find them later on. 

So I highly recommend finding a system for papers that works for you. And maybe think about giving your lawnmower some love this spring. 🙃

xoxo

Erin