Archives for February 2016

Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos: Part 1

This post is part 1 in the series Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Read my policy here.

Cooking can be a refreshing and relaxing experience . . . but not when you’re pulling out your hair trying to find everything you need. Digging through a vat of pot lids, hauling everything out of the freezer to find tomorrow night’s roast, and trying to get everything away so that your kitchen doesn’t look like a war zone can make the process something to dread.

A disorganized kitchen is stressful and wastes your time every minute that you have to do battle with it. I’ve discovered and come to love the following tools for keeping my food and equipment organized, which in turn saves my time and sanity. [Read more…]

Quick Tip: Slicing a Loaf of Bread

A bread knife is a great tool in the kitchen, but it’s caused some major loaf carnage in my kitchen. Sometimes the pressure required to slice homemade or bakery bread — especially when it’s toasty warm — can flatten a previously lovely loaf. Sometimes, wrangling the knife can make it extremely challenging to get even slices of the right thickness and a smooth cut. Even under the best circumstances though, I wind up with piles of crumbs on my counter . . . wasted bread! [Read more…]

4 Ways to Pack for a Trip at Lightning Speed

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Read my policy here.

How familiar is this scenario? It’s 10:00 at night, you’re leaving early to travel, and you haven’t packed a thing.

Back when I was single, my less-than-ideal approach to packing would involve miming my way through each day of my vacation to figure out what I needed to take and packing each item as I went along. Mentally walking through a long weekend though was incredibly time-consuming, and I’d still head out in the morning muttering, “I hope I remembered everything.” It was often the daily essentials I didn’t think about — comb, razor, toothpaste — that would be most likely to be forgotten.

Now with a husband — who seems to require more accessories than I do! — and a kid, I definitely can’t stick with the old approach. To keep my sanity and save a massive amount of time, I’ve whole-heartedly embraced the following tips for getting our family’s packing done in a snap: [Read more…]