The Lilybugs Children’s Consignment Sale is right around the corner! Woohoo!
Lilybugs is a quality children’s consignment sale held twice yearly—spring/summer and fall/winter—offering the best in high quality gently used children’s clothing and shoes, maternity clothing, baby equipment, children’s furniture, outdoor toys, books, software, videos, and lots and lots of toys!
This week’s mission is to plan your meals.
Do you have leftovers that need to get used up? Anything that’s been in the freezer for a while? What’s in the fridge that’s close to its expiration date? Plan to use up these items with this week’s menu.
Take 10 minutes today to make a list of your meals for the week. Be sure to select your meals according to the activities that are scheduled each day. You certainly don’t want to plan a complex, preparation-intense meal on the day that you’ll get home from work at 5:30pm and need to be at your son’s baseball game at 6:00pm! Sandwiches, anyone?
Once you’ve completed your menu plan, highlight anything that needs to get pulled out of the freezer the night before. Then, post your schedule of meals on the fridge as a reminder. Hey, who knows… your teenage daughter might even get the meal started for you now that she knows what you’ve got planned! (Yes, I know… wishful thinking…)
In any case, you’ll be grateful that you spent 10 minutes at the start of the week to plan out your meals. Not only will you eliminate the stress that comes with planning a meal after a long, hard day, but you’ll save money by eliminating last-minute fast food excursions, and you’ll stay healthy by eating more well-rounded meals!
You know how it is… after a long tiring day, it’s tough to prepare a meal, let alone decide what to make. With a plan in place, the decisions will have already been made for you, and all you’ll need to do is prepare and enjoy!
So, do you already have a menu plan for this week? I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below to share your current menu plan.
Courtesy of Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet, owner of LivingOrder:
People hear that I am a Professional Organizer and they read some of my writing, and they often assume that my home and office must be “perfect.” Let me assure you, with two kids, two parakeets, a dog, a husband, and two companies, it is far from perfect—but my life works for me. And I would not want to aspire to perfection, as it is an unattainable and futile goal.
Instead we teach people to aspire to be NEATER*:
- Not perfect, but…
- Effective—your systems work well for you and your family
- Always improving—you look for how to do things smarter, faster, and better
- True to your style—you work with your own preferences, not someone else’s standards
- Efficient—your systems minimize waste of time and energy
- Ready for anything—you are well-prepared with what you need for life and work
Our definition of what it means to be organized is realistic and defined—it does not mean your house has to look like Real Simple magazine and that you have to become Martha Stewart.
So, is it possible to be TOO organized? Absolutely. Just as in business endeavors, when setting up any organizing system you want to ask yourself about the Return On Investment (ROI). Is the time, money, or energy you are investing in this process going to pay off by offering you more time, money, and energy in return? If the answer is no, you need to think very hard about whether you should bother.
One example of this that we run into fairly often: People think it might look neat to have all matching plastic containers in their pantries that all nest nicely together and present a picture-perfect shelf. But for the ROI of simply having a pretty pantry, you have to spend a lot of time transferring every new food item from its original store packaging into the containers. It’s just not worth the time (especially if your kids go through cereal like mine do! We’d hardly be able to transfer the contents to the container before it would be eaten up). This example also plays into a common myth that if something looks really neat it must be organized and must be better. Maybe not!
Another thing we see is people creating folders by vendor for their common household bills, such as the phone company, the electric company, and the cable company. What we typically recommend instead (if you even want to keep the paid bills) is to file the bills by month in an accordion folder. The time it takes to parse each bill out into the proper vendor folder rarely pays off. In the unlikely event that you need to find something, you can invest the time on the other side of that problem instead of consistently investing it up front.
We like to work on the “Good Enough” principle, meaning that the level of organization is appropriate to provide a return that is worth the investment. Is there something you could cut out today that would be “Good Enough,” and actually gain some time back in the process?
*NEATER acronym © 2005-2007, LivingOrder, Inc.
I received my cheque from the GCC MOPS Consignment Sale today! My profit was just over $210.00… enough to cover what I spent on Amanda’s summer wardrobe, with about $50.00 left over to pamper myself!
I tell you… it still amazes me how much more space we have in our garage now that so many of the baby items and outgrown clothes are gone! I am DEFINITELY going to consign again in the fall! It’s such a great way to make some extra cash AND get rid of gently used children’s items! If you’ve never consigned before, you should definitely give it a try.
Join me for our fall sale in September… you won’t regret it!
Update: The MOPS Sale has adopted a new name… Lilybugs Children’s Consignment Sale! Visit www.lilybugskids.com for current sale information.
The Grace Christian Center Mothers of Preschoolers (GCC MOPS) Children’s Consignment Sale is right around the corner!
Stop by on Saturday, March 15th between 8:30am and 2:00pm to find some great deals on gently used children’s items including outdoor play equipment, cribs, strollers, toys, clothing, and more! For more details, visit www.gccmopsconsignment.com. Hope to see you there!
Update: The MOPS Sale has adopted a new name… Lilybugs! Visit www.lilybugskids.com for current sale information.
