Organisation: Coking Christmas dinner

So, finally I remember that I have a word of the year- organisation! It sort of fell a bit beside the wayside this year, but it gets one final hurrah before the end of the year.

I’m not especially fond of cooking, but I can do it. Last year I cooked Christmas dinner for the house (with a faulty oven which meant it happened several hours late…). This year, I have an oven which works, and a much larger dinner to cook. There will be 9 of us eating, including a vegetarian, so forward planning is a must! Otherwise I will forget something, and it’s anyones guess what!

So, here is the final plan of cooking (written on a whiteboard so I can easily change things if necessary 🙂 )

How do you all plan large cooking escapades? Or do you just wing it and hope that everything ends up fine?

Organisation: meal planning

A while ago (or so I thought, I can’t find it now!) I wrote a blog post where I was discussing what I wanted to get out of a meal planner. As like many things, it ground to a halt and I forgot all about it until I moved house, earlier this year.

My mum came up to help me move, and bought me some tiny pegs (from Paperchase), and, well, I couldn’t just leave them in their bag now, could I?

So out they came, and I wrote the days of the week on them, and stuck them to magnets so they’d stick on the fridge (this was also so I’d remember to take dinner out the freezer when I got breakfast…)

After I’ve cooked the dinner, the slip of paper gets thrown away, and I move the peg over to the other side. Then, on Monday (usually) I figure out next week’s meals, and sort out what I need to buy etc. The whiteboard in the middle is used to keep a track of what meals I have in the fridge/freezer (it’s a bit out of date now though :/)

(Yes, this photo was taken a few days ago!) I’m still thinking about the scraps of paper with the meals on. I’m kinda thinking of maybe writing several of each meal down and laminating them or something, and then keeping all the meals I have in the freezer in one box, and all the rest in the other, so I can even more easily see what I have, but I’m still thinking about that part!

Organisation: work

Rather than an organisation post about crafting, this time it’s all to do with work, and various papers. As you’ve probably picked up by now, I’m in the middle of my PhD, which involves a lot of articles, and my own work, usually in several different areas.

Before, I was using the floor as a wonderful organisational tool- different bits go in the different piles. Unsurprisingly, my mother wasn’t particularly impressed by this method, and so bought me some pop-folders. I have a variety in different patterns, the best to distinguish between them.

I improved them slightly by sticking a plastic wallet on the back- you need to sellotape on all 4 sides to make sure you only have one hole to insert paper into- make sure you sellotape on top as well, otherwise it gets very difficult to insert paper into. You can then put another piece of paper on the back, either with an overview of what is in the folder, or as I prefer, a list of questions to ask my supervisor! I also cut the edge- the bit with all the holes- off he wallet, which I think makes it look a bit neater.