Hi all! Since I have been spending most of my summer cleaning out and reorganizing everything from closets, to the pantry and even the freezer, I wanted to share some tips that have been helpful to me. Enjoy!
1. Sweet Spatula:
If you are like me and love kitchen utensils, especially spatulas this tip is for you. I have lots of fun, colorful and useful spatulas that are in a crock next to my stove (see below) that I use each and every day.
The only problem was that even though I would wash my spatulas by hand (dishwasher cycles just weren’t getting them clean enough and rotting the wooden handles), they still had a “scent” to them. I use onions and garlic to start almost every meal in our house and I noticed that my spatulas had that same slight smell to them after washing.
It didn’t really bother me until I was making banana bread one afternoon and was stirring and scraping with my regular spatulas. I was a little grossed out and didn’t want an onion or garlic taste in my bread. Gross.
The solution? A sweet spatula!
This spatula (above) is used just for sweet dishes and even has a separate home (in the drawer, away from the savory spatulas). I opted for the smiley face so it would be easier for me (and Mike) to remember which ones were which– if I had just picked a different color, forget it, I would never remember. The smiley has been great so far!
2. Productive Pantry:
In my pantry I have quite a few airtight containers that I use to keep my staples (like pancake mix, grits, rice, cereal, panko, etc) nice and fresh.
My suggestion, if you do this in your pantry as well, would be to make sure you cut the cooking instructions and cooking ratios off of the original box and tape on the side of the container or place inside. This saves you from a last minute Google session when you don’t know the ratio of grits to water when hungry mouths are waiting!
3. Frozen Buns:
With just the two of us in our household, there are many times that we have leftover hamburger or hotdog buns. For a while I didn’t know what to do with them and they would just get moldy and have to be thrown away. What a waste 
.
Then, I decided to start freezing the ones that we didn’t use for the meal or didn’t need for leftovers the next day. That worked great, until I found another loophole. They were all frozen together and I would have to thaw all of them just to get to one (or two)!
The solution? Separate your buns (ha, ha) before freezing. That way, you will have single servings of buns whenever you need them. You won’t have to wait until they thaw to pull them apart. Score!
4. Clean Koozies:
Along with our friends, we love koozies. We don’t go anywhere without them and have stashes of them in every car, beach chair and tote bag we own.
The only problem is that by the end of a weekend, especially a beach weekend they are usually wet, sandy and all kinds of germy. I just throw our koozies in with a load of towels (wash and dry) and they come out sparkling, sanitary and looking brand new.
Everybody loves clean koozies!
5. Ring Round-up:
I don’t know if it is because I work around kids all day and just want to take everything off when I get home or not, but I am one of those people. The first thing I do when I get home from work is take my jewelry off (Mike also does this with his wedding ring).
When it comes to my regular jewelry I have a couple of jewelry boxes that the different pieces go in, but when it comes to our wedding rings, we have a specific spot so we always know where they are. I was surprised to find out how many people don’t have a specific spot for their rings, and are constantly looking for them. I would go into panic mode!
If you have a place that you always put your keys (if you don’t, you should have one of those too), why not your rings?
We have a dish on our bedroom dresser that we bought on our honeymoon (above) and a dish next to the sink (below) since those are two places we take our rings off. If our rings are not in one, they are in the other. Period.
Such a stress reliever!
All of these tips work for us, I hope they can help you, too!
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