Does your fridge resemble this when you open it up?

I can’t stand opening up the door and staring into a jam packed fridge. It doesn’t get much worse for me than this. I realize this is dramatic, but it’s the thoughts racing in my mind.

What’s in here? A bunch of spoiled out of date food- maybe this stems from my week long bout with food poisoning as a teenager.

Where is the salad dressing or ketchup or pickles? Hidden from sight without moving twelve things, spilling two drinks and dropping a Tupperware container of leftovers on the floor.

What do we need from the store? I have no idea. Just buy everything you think we might need and we’ll cram it in there with all the outdated, expired stuff we already have.

Here are 7 quick rules to keep your fridge tidy.

1. Buy less stuff at the store. Only stockpile things that can be frozen like meats, veggies or items that get stored in a pantry. Don’t go any farther out than a month or two. Don’t buy six months worth of crackers or coffee.
2. Only cook what you’ll eat, or eat the leftovers in the following day or two. After that throw them out. If this offends your stewardship then buy a dog and make the dog happy.
3. Give items in your fridge a home. How about: condiments on top shelf- milk, eggs, yogurt, cheeses and butter together in drawers and on their own shelf- leftovers and ingredients for today’s meal on there own shelf, fruits in one drawer, veggies in another, meats in another- frozen stuff sorted with like items in the freezer.
4. Take things out and put them back where they go. Don’t just look for the open space.
5. Clean your fridge out whenever you take out your garbage. Not every time. Whenever you take it for pickup. We only have to do this weekly but usually cook what we need or eat the leftovers quickly.
6. When you store things always consolidate- take a huge casserole dish with one serving left and put it into a small container. When you come home from the store- take things out of their boxes, bins, and containers to save room with storage in the fridge.
7. Be honest. With all things in organization, eliminate what you do not use regularly. By the time you use the 5th different type of cream or dip, odds are it will be green with mold. Save yourself the disgust of opening it and toss it now.

I’m am doing this as we speak.

How about this system?

• Pick 5 or 6 Main Categories- Make them fairly broad or else you’ll be tempted to create a new category every time you encounter something just outside the Main 5 or 6. Show them multiple places on your blog.
• Use your tags to liberally to tell the world what your post is about. Don’t do it in a spammy way. For instance, the tag fantasy football has nothing to do with this post. Nor does the tag batching even though it’s one of my favorite things to discuss.
• Make sure you pick a category, sometimes two if there is overlap, every time you post.
• Add good descriptive tags each time you post.
• Add a tag cloud to a few places on your blog so readers can really delve into the stuff they are interested in. I would love it if Tim Ferris had this on his blog. I love to read his posts. I like his categories, but I would love to be able to read everything he’s written that was tagged with batching or elimination or minimalism.

Just my opinion. I’m cleaning up my categories on this blog right after this ……

I love batching. I will try to batch just about anything I can. I will do it compulsively as part of my OCD. My latest attempt at batching is the monthly meal plan and grocery shopping excursion. Let me start by listing the problems I see with not planning a menu, not making a grocery list, and not shopping efficiently.

1. If you don’t plan what you’ll eat (leaving some run for flexibility and creativity) then you will have many arguments that go like this. What do want? What sounds good to you? I don’t know, what sounds good to you? Do you just want to pick something up? I’m not going out. “Screaming hungry kids in background cause more stress.” Let’s just cook some chicken here. What there isn’t any thawed out? Well I’ll just whip something up real quick. OK what? That doesn’t sound good to me. Pause Pause- 15 minutes has gone by. OK what do you want? I’ll run out at get fast food so we can put off those weight loss goals, give the kids some quick junk, have heart burn in 2 hours and spend money we should save.  That is how the conversation went in the Raley Household. Did I hit a nerve?
2. OK now we’re at the grocery, which in our case is Costco and Kroger. Hey how many cans of tomatoes do we use to make the chili? Do we have half the pot roast left in the freezer? Are we out of taco shells? I think I used the last of the ketchup, should we get some more? Without a list of ingredients for the meals you’ve planned, and a inventory of your pantry, fridge and freezer you would likely have multiple conversations like this while you’re at the store.
3. Now that we’re back from the initial trip, here’s how the saga unfolds. I told you we were out of canned tomatoes. I thought we had some. My bad. Now I can’t make chili, spaghetti sauce or lasagna. Oh yeah and I can’t make the beef vegetable soup. We should have bought an extra pack of chicken too. I’ll run out tomorrow, and pack up our three small children to go and do this all over again. Two days later. Since I didn’t think it through again and make a list the second time- I forgot to have you pick up the oregano and parsley for the sauces. No big deal I’ll stop on the way home from work and pick it up. I have an enormous amount of free time and I’m independently wealthy. Whether you are lugging three kids or just yourself, making multiple stops for anything is a huge waste of time. I used to joke with my wife when she made her weekly pack up the kids and go spend $50-$75 at Kroger trip. I would ask her how long it would take and she would almost always underestimate the time by 30-45 minutes. This is true for me as well and probably for you. We are very good at misleading ourselves into believing that things take much less times than they actually do.
4. Every time you do any of the above you are task switching and creating open loops of new tasks to do. Not to mention spending money in two transactions is much easier to record than having 8 receipts from 6 different stores on 6 different days. Tough to budget that way.

Just a small caveat based on my personal preference. If it were just me, which it’s not- as I have a wife and 3 small children; then I would eat very simply. I would eat the same things over and over for breakfast and or lunch and mix in some variety with dinners. I did this twice in my life and it helped me lose over 30 lbs both times. For me it is a chore and major pain to take time to think of what I want to eat. After all it’s just fuel for my body. Since it’s not just me, and I have little mouths to feed, we add more complexity to our meal plan, but at the same time I think you’ll see the simplicity in the concept.

Here is how we do it.

• First we live an uncluttered life and this can be seen in our kitchen. The set up is very minimalistic and the pantry, cabinets, fridge and freezer (in the garage) all are very organized. It is simple to look in and see what we have in inventory and what we need.
• Second we like to eat the same handful of meals. In our case we’ve picked out 24 meals. We take out a simple monthly paper calendar, you could create a separate Google calendar, I ‘ve done it that way in the past. We add the same four meals to Mondays from the previous month. Tuesday night is date night and we eat out somewhere fairly cheap with a coupon or gift card. Wednesday four more meals. Thursday four more. Friday you guessed it four more meals. That is 16 meals plus the four eating out meals. That leaves us four on Saturday and four on Sunday. These are typically caseroles, comfort foods, soups and chili while the meals during the week are quite healthy.
• Each meal has it’s own side dishes that don’t change.  If we’re having Roast Beef, then it’s grilled cabbage and parmigiana potatoes. This makes it easy to scan the meal list, look at the ingredients, compare it to our pantry and alter our list. We don’t recreate the list each time. Of course we batched it. We made a template with all the ingredients and which of the two stores they typically come from- Costco or Kroger.
• We line up my mom as our babysitter on Tuesday nights for our date night. Most Tuesdays we relax, have a meal or make our quick pick ups (I’ll explain in a moment). Every 4th Tuesday night, we pick a restaurant where we can eat quickly. Mexican and sandwich shops work great for this. We’re in and out in less than 30 minutes. We leave at 5:45PM or so and finish eating by 6:30PM. We head to Costco, divide and conquer our list. By the way we also pick up all the toiletries, baby stuff and cosmetics at Costco using the same list process. We leave Costco and head to Kroger. We divide and conquer the list at Kroger and are back home by 9PM.
• When we get home I breakdown all food out of its packaging when possible for easier storage, while Ashley puts the kids to bed. We have successfully planned out, shopped for and stored all the food we will need for the month in three hours of shopping and about two hours of prep beforehand.

Now the world is not perfect so occasionally we forget something or use more of an ingredient that we thought. The dog runs out of food or the fruit molded in the fridge. In this case we make any quick stops as part of our date night routine. After a nice dinner and cup of coffee, we may bounce around a store or run into a Walgreens to pick up a knick-knack. We are pretty detailed about this process so this rarely happens to us, but it does give you a flexible way to keep the system in tact. The key is that it’s fun time and intentional. There is no stress because it was unplanned, untimely or the result of our own shortsightedness.

Here are a couple other keys to pulling this off.

Document your favorite meals. Some people eat their favorite meal once per week. We strive for once a month, and it’s cool because we never tire of the meals and we’re always looking forward to them. After all it’s been a month since digging into Ashley’s Chicken Kabobs with Cous Cous or her Chicken Enchiladas.

Empty out your car or van before you go. You will fill it up.

Keep the menu interesting but simple.

Plan your meals with the freshest ingredients earlier in the month.

Used your frozen or canned vegetables and fruits for later in the month.

We freeze 3 loaves of bread and the 6 gallons of milk we buy fits into our fridge and a small dorm fridge in our basement. You can do the same. The milk is organic and the expiration is much closer to a month instead of a week.

Separate your meats before you freeze them so they are easy to grab and thaw the day you need them.

Take everything out of it’s package when possible to create easier storage. I will post some pictures which show our pantry, fridge, freezer and dorm fridge. They are not overly cluttered even on the day we do our shopping.

Give this a try and use the time you save to do the following:

• Spend time with your family
• Read or write or blog
• Practice a hobby
• Volunteer
• Connect with a ministry, missionary, or nonprofit you want to support
• Watch an inspirational movie
• Relax and do nothing
• The possibilities are endless

OK, this video should be pretty self explanatory. I’m organizing my backpack for the first time in months. You know the thing I carry with me daily, transporting all my key work tools and belongings. I touch it everyday of my life. I put things in it, take things out and it’s probably with me more than my wife and kiddos. So why would it be one of the last frontiers of organization in my world? Because it became second nature and blended in.

This video is two parts and the second one cuts off at the end. My cell camera ran out of memory. Our main camera was out of batteries. We buy those things once a quarter and Murphy’s law got us. My Macbook isight camera was too stationary for this shot. I apologize for the muted somewhat bumpy shot, but listening to my explanation should help you tackle your own small organizing project.

Part 1

Organizing my Backpack from Bryce Raley on Vimeo.

Part 2

Organizing my Backpack part 2 from Bryce Raley on Vimeo.

Here are links to some of the items in the video.

Retractable Mouse

Case Logic

Flash Drive

Moleskin Notebooks

Vibe Liquid Nutraceutical

The other day my wife grandmother and I conducted an experiment with clutter. As I’ve mentioned in past blog posts, we are selling our home and thus living in staged home. Our dining room has a very simple look to it. There is an old antique table with 4 chairs. Two more chairs from the set are in opposite corners and a small shelf with two decorations rounds out the room. The room has one large picture and a mirror on the walls. The object in questions was a fake flower vase. I asked my wife and grandmother to walk into the room and look at the room. The first time they both came in and focused on the vase. It has a few loud colors like pink and red and sprawls out over the vase in the middle of the table. My job was to sit and watch their eyes unbeknownst to them. The first trip neither one of their eyes could get past the flower arrangement. They looked at it, then away, then back at it.

Now I mixed it up on them. I asked them to leave the room and this time I removed the flower vase. This time it was a different story. Both of their eyes looked at the table, then scanned the walls and up and down from floor to ceiling. They looked all around the room. When the flower vase was present their eyes could not get away from it. It was blocking their view of the room and they didn’t even realize it.

Neither did I really. This wasn’t our idea. Our realtor Shawn Hogle always moves the vase when we have an open house. Now I knew why.

Try this sometime. It will make you think twice about cluttering up a room.

Let’s cut to the chase here as well- If you don’t know what Google is, then sorry. The ship has taken off and you’re stranded on the desert island. The good news is that this is the search party. If you wave your hands and light a flare or two then we’ll swing by and pick you up. If you continue to ignore Google, it won’t be good.

1. It’s free- well there are no free lunches right? That’s Econ 101 right? Well for your ticket to use Google Apps you must be willing to see their ads in the margins as you use their highly productive tools. I’m in.
2. GMail is very effective at working with multiple email accounts. I have 3 different email accounts sent into GMail, but I can respond to to any email from my business email. Which is what I prefer because it has the free promotion from my signature byline. Ever have trouble with that one in Outlook?
3. GMail also allows you to never really delete email unless you want to- which I do. The labeling system in Google is far superior in my mind to a simple drag and drop folder system in say Outlook. In Google I can label an email with 3 different labels. Then later when my mind tries to find it through association I can look in two or three spots that jog my mind. Of course you can also search your emails using the most powerful search engine in the world. Integration it’s amazing isn’t it?
4. Google calendar allows me to create seperate calendars for my schedule ( My wife and I share calendars of course- meaning she can click on mine and I can click on hers at anytime). I have business calendar, a calendar where I schedule my customer site visits and organization jobs. We have a meal plan calendar for each month. I also access my backpack calendar with tasks via Google Calendar. How powerful for the small business owner!
5. Google Reader allows me through RSS to bring in all the blog and news feeds I like the best into one location. Instead of going to Doug Wead’s or Eric Schansberg’s blog every time I want to check for updates, I simply open up my Google Reader application and it’s all there for me. I keep up with 15-20 different blogs and news sources on politics, business, my Christian faith, organization and sports. The typical guy topics. Sorry ladies.
6. Google documents allows you to upload, share and access key files from wherever you are. Pretty straight forward but nice feature alongside all the others.
7. GMail has a feature to house all your contacts as well. I imported mine via an excel csv and it was pretty seamless. Now if you follow my lead you have email, contacts, calendar, RSS/blog reader and document sharing all in one web-based application via Google. You also would have everything else you need in Backpack. One is free and the other is a great value.
8. Igoogle may be my favorite Google application. I was slow to discover the power in igoogle but now I love it. Would you like to have exactly what you want on your homepage along with Google’s powerful and simple search engine box? If so give Igoogle a try. Pick your favorite news feeds or your favorite tools. I like the bible verse of the day, the google maps and mapquest boxes. How about a link to movies playing in your area or the local weather? I have a Youtube widget along with a craigslist search box. I use the digital and second hand clock widget telling me the time all day. Last but not least I have an ever-changing picture of a really neat place somewhere off in the world.
9. Google checkout has some powerful applications and is great for non-profits I’ve heard. I haven’t used it a lot myself but I’ve heard it’s great.
10. Do you really need a 10th reason to get started with Google apps? Even though they are free to use, maybe you need some assistance migrating your small business over to them. Give us a call and we can make that happen for your business. We have already helped other small businesses make this transition and they’re not looking back.

Because if you don’t follow it you end up typing blogs like this a week after they were supposed to be done.

You also will end up having a next actions list the size of Websters dictionary.

You may also end up with a stack of papers to file that covers your office floor.

You could also end up missing a few deadlines.

You could also get behind on your reading.

You may also skip some of your best practices when it comes to marketing and sales.

You may also procrastinate important projects or great someday maybe items.

If you haven’t guessed I’m speaking from experience. I have missed my last few weekly reviews and I’m now paying the price. I am reaping what I sowed and the golf game is suffering needlessly.

Here is a list of things you can organize on your MAC or PC.

I’ll stick with windows lingo for this post. I’m way to new to MAC to try to use their lingo.

My documents

Organize your pictures on your computer and using a tool like Flickr.

Your passwords- I use a simple excel template and right now I have over 8 pages with 10 entries on each. Think about your financial passwords, software passwords, website passwords, web tools passwords, affiliate programs and many, many more.

Your favorites in Internet Explorer or bookmarks if you use Mozilla. A great tool for organizing these guys is delicious. Click here to see my past blog on delicious.

Removing unused programs or software. Be careful here if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Updating current software or programs.

Your email folders and inbox.

Your web based tool sites.

Your website, blog, or email newsletter.

Your backup procedures- online, physical, or whatever you’re using.

Well I’ve been wanting to try out Stumble Upon or Delicious or one of the social bookmarking websites. So far I really like it. Essentially, I moved all my bookmarks (in Mozilla Firefox) (favorites in Internet Explorer) into the Delicious website. The advantages are many but to name a few:

1) Instead of having a list of favorites or bookmarks of websites tied to one PC or MAC- Delicious give you a website accessible from any PC or MAC. It is also much more organized than simply adding favorites/bookmarks and then putting them into folders.

2) With Delicious website are tagged with keywords such as financial sites, blogs, shopping sites, etc. Most website can fall into several categories. Let me give you an example. Say you bookmarked or added a favorite for Zig Ziglar. When you think of Zig’s website and company many keywords may jump into your head. You may think- motivational, marketing, personal development are all keywords that describe Zig’s site. Well they do all describe it. Tags become very beneficial a couple weeks from now when you say I need to read up on some marketing experts. Now instead of thinking what folder you saved them in, you can sort your bookmarks by tags. Click on any of the tags mentioned above and you’ll see Zig’s site. Pretty cool.

3)A third benefit is that bookmarks can be listed as private or public. For the public websites you can then share the cool sites you find with your friends, associates or business colleagues.

This is a web based yahoo networking group for Christian Professional Organizers.

They have a list serve to share problems and questions. They also have a referral link through their website.

I haven’t experimented much yet, but I was excited to see a Christian group focused on organizational professionals.