Organize Your Space, Organize Your Thoughts
How many of you have transitioned into being stay-at-home-virtual-working-moms-and-dads since the pandemic hit? How many are unemployed due to the shutdowns? Twenty-twenty destroyed whatever sense of normalcy we once knew. For some, it presented devastating hardships. For others, it presented new life challenges with adapting to virtual learning and virtual careers. For others yet, it presented some positive opportunities, like focusing on healthy lifestyles or taking up new hobbies.
The best way I have found to cope with this new lifestyle is to organize everything. When my environment is organized, I thrive. Organization not only helps me to manage and accomplish many tasks in a day, it also greatly decreases the amount of time I am forced to spend completing them. Even if you don’t share my personality traits, I truly believe this coping skill can help you just the same. For the purposes of this article, I am going to focus solely on pantry organization, but many of these ideas can be utilized in other areas of your home as well.
Begin by sorting everything in the space. For instance, chips, pretzels and popcorn can go in one pile, different types of pasta can go in another…cakes and cookies…canned goods…baking supplies, and so on. You can decide how to sort things based on your own preferences. The next step is to choose a location for each pile you have created. It is ideal for everything to be visible so you can find it quickly, but if you have space limitations, you can easily fix that by storing things in clear plastic stackable containers or by placing labels on shelves that tell you what is on them. Storage spaces do not need to be cluttered and unappealing. There are many types of containers, baskets and bins that can be used to clean up your storage spaces and cabinets within your home. Have fun with it! Organizing your environment can be very therapeutic and once you get started, you may want to start organizing everything!
Sarah K. Young
