Davonne Parks

Your Role At Home Is Valuable

Schoolroom Before & After {Plus How You Can Set Up An Awesome Learning Space For Your Kids}

Well, this is embarrassing:

Our classroom – the space where my kids are supposed to actually learn – recently looked like the above photo. Clearly, we needed to do something about this before the upcoming school year.

So my kids and I purged. Normally, I like to rip the bandaid off and just get the job done, but we were so worn out from our gigantic office renovation that just thinking about spending full days decluttering made us want to cry. So we went up to the schoolroom for an hour or two several different times before moving on to something more enjoyable.

It took a few weeks, but slowly and surely, we chose things to get rid of. Anything they’ve grown out of – gone. Beginning reader phonics sets – gone! Fun science supplies that were given to us but we haven’t touched in two years? Also gone!

Within a few weeks, we had a very large pile of items we weren’t keeping. Things on the left are for donation, items on the right are trash:

Whether you’re homeschooling or just need a place for your kids to put their backpacks and do their homework, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1) Get rid of a ton of stuff.

If you’re constantly moving around junk and it takes your kids hours and hours to clean their bedroom or school area, then you probably have too much stuff. Purge, purge, purge!

2) Group like items.

I talk about grouping like items more in this article about conquering kids’ clutter, but basically, if you have crayons in 5 different places and Legos all over the house, it’s difficult for your kids to find what they need and to clean up their own things. Solve this problem by grouping like items, purging the excess, and storing supplies you use often in easily accessible containers.

3) Make sure your system is easy to maintain.

If your kids use something for 10 minutes but it takes 2 hours to clean up, the item probably isn’t worth the hassle. Toss it.

Likewise, a complicated system of color coded beads or craft supplies is likely just going to get mixed up and will take hours to clean. Have a bead box and let the colors be mixed together. If your child really wants an item to be color coded, they’re welcome to color code the items on their own free time 😉

{A basket with school books & supplies all readily available makes schoolwork easy to get out and easy to put away each day. Win!}

4) Take a day off to declutter.

I know the idea of taking a day off just to declutter sounds scary, but hear me out on this one! Whatever time you lose by taking a day off of school, work, or other activities will quickly be gained back when you’re not searching for needed items.

When your kids are studying hard in their freshly organized space, you’ll know it was completely worth your effort.

 

Check these Articles Out for More Organization Tips:

 I’d love to hear: What’s the school or homework system like in your house? Do you have any tips to add to mine?

How to Manage Your Laundry In Just 15 Minutes A Day

Do you ever have laundry mountains in your home? If so, then you are not alone! This giant pile used to be the story of my basement:

{What was supposed to be a relaxing movie room, was most often used as a dumping grounds for clean clothes.}

For a long time, digging through an enormous laundry pile to find one clean outfit was a near-daily occurrence. But for the past year, our laundry has been under control (!!!). Let me repeat that: for the past year, our laundry situation has been under control.

The method I use is so simple that I haven’t written about it yet because it doesn’t feel revolutionary enough to warrant a full article. But, having a ridiculously simple laundry system is exactly why I cannot, in good conscious, keep this a secret for another minute.

Here’s the super easy way to stay caught up on laundry in just 15 minutes a day:

{While you’re reading about our laundry system, please excuse the fact that we’re wearing clothes instead of PJs like I mention in the instructions – I really wanted to share this article with you right away, so my kids were great sports and did the laundry several hours early to let me take some photos.}

1) In the evening, everyone puts on their PJs. The designated person then gathers all of the dirty laundry into one place.

2) The next designated person immediately carries laundry to the laundry room, dumps it in the washing machine, and starts it up.

3) Immediately before bedtime prayers, the clothes are moved over to the dryer and everything that shouldn’t be put in the dryer is hung on the line.

4) The next morning, laundry comes out of the dryer and off the line, then each person folds their own clothes….

5) … And puts their laundry away.

And that’s it! Like I said earlier, super simple. But it really works!

This method takes a total of about 15 minutes a day, which is less time than we used to spend just digging through piles and piles of laundry every morning, without any of the stress!

A few bonus tips:

1) Unless you’re the only person who wears clothes in your house, you should probably not be doing laundry alone!

2) I highly recommend having designated people for certain jobs. Otherwise, everyone tends to think that someone else is doing the job and it may not get done.

3) If you need to leave for work early in the morning, you could change the folding time to whatever works best for your schedule, like right after dinner or immediately before bed.

4) If you just can’t bear the thought of putting all of your laundry in the same load, you could modify the laundry system to do something like darks on Mondays, towels on Tuesdays, etc.

But really, the simplicity of just throwing everything in together each evening is what has made this a huge success in our house. I do wash things like jeans separately right after we buy them so they won’t bleed onto the lighter items, but other than that, it all goes in together, and my husband’s white undershirts are still white 🙂

Again, this system only takes a total of about 15 minutes a day, and getting ready for the day is so much less stressful because we nearly always have plenty of clean clothes in our drawers and closets.

And when we do fall behind on occasion? I use this method to catch back up again!

{With the laundry under control, our basement movie room is nearly always ready for family movie nights!}

I’d love to hear – what’s the laundry situation like in your house? Do you think this method would work for your family or have you found another system that fits your needs better?

How to Organize Your Recipes in Less than One Hour

Recipes help link people together, drawing us closer to our roots. They bridge a gap between generations past and generations to come. The food tells a story.

But, what happens when we can’t find that story? What should we do when the recipes are lost and we desperately wish to locate them so we can prepare a meal? The answer is simpler than you might think – we get proactive, and we organize the recipes before we actually need them.

Today I want to help you organize your recipes – your food memories – into a binder, and the system I’m sharing with you is the exact system I’ve used in my own kitchen for years. Plus, in addition to only taking an hour from start to finish, this recipe binder system is also very easy to maintain long-term!

How to Organize Your Recipes in Less Than One Hour

1) Gather your supplies.

  • Recipes
  • Recipe binder (any three-ring binder would work)
  • Pen or sharpie
  • Three hole puncher or a large package of sheet protectors
  • Tabbed binder dividers or heavy paper (I used 12 x 12 heavy paper and cut it to fit)
  • Scissors
  • Tape

2) Place all of your loose-leave recipes into one pile.

This includes printed recipes, hand-written recipes, and any recipes that have been cut from a packaged food item (ex: cereal box or cookie package).

3) Pile the recipes into the categories you want to create.

Your categories might need to be different than mine, but to help get you started, here are the categories I created for my binder:

  • Breakfast
  • Breads/Muffins
  • Main Dishes/Side Dishes
  • Beverages
  • Desserts
  • Apple/Canning Recipes
  • Recipes to Convert (family recipes we love that aren’t gluten free & dairy free)
  • Non-Edible Recipes (homemade lip gloss, body scrub, play dough, etc.)

4) As you organize, quickly throw away unneeded recipes.

This includes any recipes your family has tried and didn’t really like, recipes you printed but are no longer very interested in making, and any duplicate recipes that you’ve accidentally printed or copied more than once.

5) Condense recipe pages.

{Mmmm, the Wilton Chocolate Buttercream in the bottom photo is so amazing! And those GF donuts in the top photo were a huge hit on my daughter’s 5th birthday!}

Get your recipes onto as few pages as possible. For example, if you printed a recipe that takes up 1 page, plus 3 lines on a second sheet of paper, simply cut out those 3 lines from the second page and tape or glue them to the bottom of the first page.

6) Add your smaller recipe cards.

{One of my girls has been wanting to make those petite pecan pies together – sometimes we just need to set aside the urgent and do the most important. #PreachingToMyself}

Make sure you include hand-written recipes as well as recipes you’ve cut from magazines or food packages.

I just stacked mine so they’d be ready to go in the binder with everything else. You could tape your smaller recipe cards to an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper if you’d rather, so they can easily slide into sheet protectors.

7) Prepare the recipes for your binder.

{One of my kids regularly makes these ridiculously easy Gluten Free Dutch Babies. Such a fun Saturday treat!}

Use a three-hole-puncher to punch holes directly on your recipe (what I did), or place your recipes into sheet protectors (the better option). Make sure to keep the recipes in their respective categories while you’re doing this!

8 ) Organize the recipes within each category.

{These Quick & Easy Banana Oat Muffins take 5 minutes to prepare and are delicious. They also freeze well and can be thawed in the microwave.}

For my recipes, I decided that instead of alphabetizing everything, I’d just put recipes in order based on how often they’re used, so the recipes I turn to regularly are always right on top.

Alphabetizing would be fine too though, if your brain works better that way!

9) Create your category labels.


There are three ways to do this:

  1. Use tabbed pages to create labels for your recipe categories. Simply write your recipe category on the page in sharpie, then again on the tab.
  2. Make tabs by cutting squares out of heavy paper, then taping the squares to the edge of the main recipe category page in your binder.
  3. Cut 12 x 12 paper down to the size and shape you want.

10) Reassemble your recipe book.

{The Best Gluten Free Pizza Crust + Sauce was the first successful GF pizza night at my house. In fact, my gluten-eating daughter said she’s pretty sure it’s the best pizza she’s ever had. Not best GF pizza. Just best pizza. If you’re gluten free, or if you love somebody who is, make this crust.}

This step should go really fast since the hard part is already finished! Simply put the pages in your binder. You can categorize your recipe categories alphabetically, or in the order you’d eat them throughout the day (breakfasts first, main dishes later, desserts after that, etc.).

The order of the categories is fairly unimportant, as you’ll quickly get used to whichever order you chose!

11) Put everything away.


Throw away extra papers, put away any additional supplies you still have out, and place your binder with your recipe books. If you want to label your binder, this would be a good time to do so.

Bonus: Maintenance Plan


Here’s how I keep my recipes organized: When I print a new recipe, I just put it in the front pocket of my binder. As that pocket starts to get full, I grab my three-hole-puncher and quickly file the recipes into the correct tabs. This takes about 5 minutes every few months. Easy!

If you’re using sheet protectors, just keep extra sheets in the back of your binder so you can quickly slip in new recipes. Even easier!

Sometimes we over-complicate organization. We think we need a ton of hours, or a picture-perfect finished project, but usually we just need strong determination and a sturdy trash can.

And don’t stress if your methods aren’t very pretty. Whether you’re working with a recipe binder, a closet, a living room, or anything else, if you ever want to beautify your space, you’ve already done the hardest part by giving yourself a clean slate to work with.

I’d love to hear – what is your favorite food to make, and what memory does it evoke in your mind?

{Linking up at All Kinds of Things.}

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5 Kitchen Tools You Don’t Want To Be Without

We chop, stir, scrape, and pour. Sometimes with love. And sometimes out of sheer necessity. But always, to nourish souls and bodies.

And while we all have different styles and needs in the way we cook, today I want to share with you 5 fabulous tools that have personally made my life a little easier by saving me a ton of time and frustration in the kitchen.

Take a peek at what I love, then tell me in the comments what kitchen tools you would never want to be without!

1) Crock-pot

crockpot

I was slow getting on board with the whole crock-pot phenomenon, but I am a converted believer. It only takes 5 minutes to dump a frozen meat & some veggies into the crock-pot, then at dinner time, everything is ready to go. Magical.

I haven’t been using mine as often as I should, but I’m working to change that because putting dinner in the crock-pot at breakfast time makes me feel happy all day long.

 

2) Kitchen Shears

kitchenshear

Can you believe that I didn’t own a pair of kitchen shears until a few years ago?! Not owning a good pair of kitchen shears is practically a Kitchen Crime, and I know none of us want to be criminals. You can use shears to cut waffles, toast, pizza, lettuce, and pretty much anything else that isn’t bone. Huge time-saver.

 

3) A Good Knife

kitchenknife

Anything that a pair of kitchen shears won’t cut can be chopped with a good knife. I had no idea how much time I was wasting in the kitchen by trying to use a steak knife to chop onions and slice watermelon. Our $25 knife from Kroger has saved us so much more than $25 worth of annoyance.

 

4) Old Fashioned Cookbook

bettycrocker

Sometimes I don’t want to take the time to browse Pinterest. Or the Internet connection drops. Or my phone battery dies. Whatever the reason, there is still a time and a place for a good old-fashioned cookbook.

I absolutely love my Betty Crocker crocker cookbook (although I know some people are partial to their Better Homes & Gardens one). Whether you’re a Betty or a Better Homes girl, I recommend getting your hands on an older version if at all possible. The simplicity of ingredients can’t be beat, not only for health reasons, but also because you’re more likely to have everything you need on hand.

 

5) Brillo Pads

brillopad2

Friends. I have a situation about standing at the sink, scrubbing dishes. It’s hard! And I still sometimes wish I’m doing something that feels more important. Now I can do both – scrub dishes and still have time for the most important. Brillo pads are my kitchen BFF.

 

“Our kitchens are where we pour love into the foods we make, reconnect as a family, entertain guests, sit and linger over coffee with friends, and where many childhood memories are made.” – Davonne Parks, Chaos to Clutter-Free

kitchenlove

I’d love to hear – what tools save you time & effort in your own kitchen?

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