Sorted Spruce Organizing Solutions

Pantry 101

Zones
Set up your pantry in zones that make sense for your daily routines. In this pantry the zones were
Dinner
Backstock Condiments
Baking
Breakfast
Snacks
Treats

Goals
The goal for a pantry should be to easily see what you have to simply the cooking/prep and doing inventory for groceries. Get rid of packaging where you can’t see the actual amount you have. Be realistic about canisters - decanting items requires maintenance.

Backstock
If you shop in bulk, consider a backstock area in your home. In this kitchen, there was a backstock area in the basement, but items weren’t being accounted for and expiring. If this is happening to you, consider using the back of the cupboard for backstock, or the highest shelf for backstock.

Happy Organizing

This January, set yourself up with a gift idea list and a create placeholders in your December calendar to take off some of that pressure next holiday season.

More details on these strategies on the Sorted Spruce Blog

www.sortedspruce.ca/blog

Another great season coaching and sponsoring

Happy Client ♥️

An untidy home is a sign of life and living. But when it’s time to reset our space we can only do so if

1. We have a foundation of organization in our home. Meaning our items have a thoughtful home where they can be put away. And…

2. We have the skill of noticing what is out of place

Organizing and Noticing are learnable skills we can work on for ourselves and our kids.

For a while we had gotten into a loop of my son needing to be given step by steps instructions of what was needed to be tidy. If we said “clean up your books, your toys, your stuffed animals” he could independently do those things because he knew where things belonged but he was missing the critical skill of walking into a space in our home and noticing what was out of place. So now, we give him a zone and it’s his job to think critically about what needs to be reset.

Post Holiday season got you surrounded by empty product boxes? Whether you or your partner are the box keepers, here are some easy steps to cut the box clutter

📦 Wrangle those boxes in a zone

📦 Pick an agreed upon date it has to go, and make it an event in your shared calendar

📦 Evict the box without a fight!

Let’s talk coffee ☕️ & tea 🫖 organization

For many this is a daily routine, so it deserves its own zone in your kitchen. In this zone you want to consider

☕️ gathering everything that you need for this daily activity. That includes mugs and travel mugs. No one wants to have to be running circles around the kitchen getting everything they need before their morning caffeine!! This also helps with managing inventory as you can see all your supplies in one spot.

☕️ walk through the motions of this routine to pick the best spot for your zone. Is there a plug for the coffee machine and tea kettle? Is the sing in reach for to fill up the tank? Is it easy to unload the mugs from the dishwasher to their shelf?

☕️ Do a declutter so you only organize what you want to keep. Use this coffee and tea zone as a limit to how many mugs is reasonable to keep and maintain the organization with the “one new mug in, one old mug out” rule.

☕️ keep less frequently used items up high. If you buy in bulk, you may want to have a small bin of your coffee pods or sugar packets very accessible and the back-stock up high for refills.

☕️ happy organizing 🫖

Let’s talk mental load when organizing. It can look like:

✨ decision fatigue
✨ decluttering guilt
✨ considering your values
✨ guilt over intentions for items

This mental load is bigger with more sentimental items. Starting easy with less sentimental categories is like warming up before you run a marathon!

Check out my organizing workbook on my website for more tips to get you started on your organizing project.

I’m looking forward to hearing Joshua Becker speak at the upcoming Professional Organizers in Canada conference this October.

Organizer friends - will I see you at the conference?