Overwhelmed with Organization

Have you ever wonder how others are so organized?  I wonder this all the time.  Every time I think that I am organized, I discover that I am not.  So, how do you organize your house?  I have always tried to give everything in my house its own home.  I know that it is a system that has worked really well for my family and in my life.  You see, in my mind everything is so disorganized and sometimes it takes me getting it organized to find the true purpose for everything.

I have never been a meal planner until the last year or so.  We sometimes would schedule two weeks worth of meals, but never on a consistent basis.  I know that getting my household organized is the key to making everything successful.  I just seem to be having a real issue trying to figure out how to accomplish this task.

I am thinking that I need to make a list of our frequently used meals and place it in the front of our Feingold Style Recipes cookbook that I made.  We are constantly trying new meals, but we have some that we make over and over, because we love them so much.  I really love my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook that I got for Christmas.  We have found so many recipes that we can adjust according to our special diet-Feingold.  I have found some different links for menu planners and I have heard great things about Flylady.  I am really looking forward to exploring these avenues more.  I have also heard others talk of freezing meals for a month.  I think this is great, but I am not sure how or when I would do this.  I think that I would like to try some of these ideas, but getting them started....seems to be the issue.   

I have also been trying to figure out how I will plan out our curriculum in a schedule.  I will admit, schedules scare me to death.  It isn't that I don't like them, because I do need some structure.  The problem is that I feel like I could never stick to a schedule and then I feel like I failed.  So, how do you give your children the structure that they need to make good habits, yet give yourself the freedom to not feel tied to the schedule.  I am just not sure how to complete this.  I have purchased 95% of what we will be using for our curriculum for homeschooling this year.  We are going to be taking a totally different approach this year and going towards the Charlotte Mason methods.  My children love to read and some of the children don't learn well in the traditional ways taught in the school system.  In order to give all of my children an education that fits well with each of them, I have decided that Charlotte Mason seems to fit what we are looking for.  A lot of CM is based on reading.  Reading in my house is not a chore or a task, but a love....for all!  We have begun and will continue reading books that are considered "living books".  We are trying to weed out all of our books which contain "twaddle".  According to Charlotte Mason, books that are living books fill children with the idea of how good writing should be.  I have really enjoyed getting to know what the Charlotte Mason philosophy is.  One resource that greatly helped me was The Charlotte Mason All Day Seminar.  The great books that I read, which also helped to give me a starting view of this approach were A Charlotte Mason Education & A Charlotte Mason Companion.  Both of these books were great resources for someone starting out with this new method.  I know that the Simply Charlotte Mason website has an online planner, but I haven't tried that yet.  I need to figure something out quickly, because time doesn't seem to be on my side lately.  I am good at organizing, but this seems to be getting the best of me.  How do I schedule all of the stuff for 4 kids and make it all work together?  I know that I can do this.....just not quite sure how...right at the moment!       

I have been very fortunate to find many of my books on Ebay at a huge discounted cost.  I am always out for a bargain.  I have also been able to utilize Ebay as a great place to sell many of my old books and homeschooling things.  This is another area that I need to get organized.  I seem to have so many things that I want to list and yet, my time seems so scattered to do this.

What about all the books that I have to read?  I have a ton of books that I have started and that I want to read, but I am just not sure where to fit in the time to get this done.

These are all the things that I can think of right now that need to be organized, but I am just not sure where to start and how to get everything situated.  Have you ever felt this overwhelmed?  Well, I guess the pressure of having a child in High School is enough to make you feel a little panicky!  If anyone has any suggestions of how to get all of these things organized, I would love to hear them!

Things taken for granted...

You would think that having sloppy joes wouldn't be a big deal. When we were still eating mostly packaged store bought ingredients...it was a quick meal.

The reality is that when you have an food allergy and you can't find any buns that do not contain things you are allergic to. This becomes somewhat of a complicated task. I had been struggling with wanting to make some hamburger buns, but I couldn't seem to find the time to dedicate to the task. Well, the other day I had enough and I was bound and determined that we were going to have sloppy joes. I spent quite a few afternoon hours on Sunday, working on my precious hamburger buns.

I was so proud of how they turned out and they were gone in a flash. Luckily, I took pictures!  Here is where you can find the recipe for the hamburger buns, which came from the Better Homes and Garden cookbook.  I absolutely love this cookbook!  We normally make sloppy joes that aren't tomato based.  We really love this recipe and have been using it for years.

Sloppy Joes

Brown the following ingredients.

2 lbs hamburger

1 medium size onion-chopped up

1 clove garlic

1 tsp basil

Cream of Mushroom Sauce

2 Cups milk(we use Rice Dream Rice Milk)

4 Tablespoons margarine(Earth Balance-soy free)

4 Tablespoons flour

1 small can mushrooms-pieces and stems

1 tsp salt

While hamburger is browning, in a separate sauce pan melt 4 Tablespoons butter/margarine over low heat.  After the butter has melted, add 4 Tablespoons of flour, until the flour is dissolved.  Add 2 Cups of milk and turn the heat back up to high.  Over high heat, whisk the mixture until it thickens and remove from heat.  Add at least 1 tsp salt and 1 small can of mushrooms-food processed.  After hamburger is browned, drain the grease.  Add the cream sauce to your hamburger and heat on low for at least 10 minutes.  Serve with homemade buns.  Yummy!