Moving one household to multiple destinations

Working with individuals who are downsizing for a move means I run into more and more people moving items to multiple destinations.  Recently I spoke to someone who needed to transport items to new homes in both Boston and California as well as a storage unit in the area.  The packing company had to know exactly what to pack and ship to each destination and we needed an easy system for accomplishing this goal. 

We decided to take different colored masking tape and assign each location a color.  Every item in the house would get a strip of tape based upon where it needed to go.  Then the packers would know exactly which items to pack up for each house or the storage unit. Brilliant!

How to purge food without throwing it away

When my pantry gets a little too full I look at what I have and make a meal plan based upon the contents before buying more food.  Often times I get almost a week’s worth of dinners from the food.  This prevents my pantry and refrigerator from becoming too full.  When either space gets packed it is hard to see what is on hand and duplicates are bought by mistake.  I like to “shop and cook” from my cabinets and fridge about once per month instead of buying ingredients according to a menu I have already created. 

This habit helps me cut down on waste and really use what I own!  Sunday as I prepped my shopping list I noticed I had leftover veggies that would only be alright for a few more days.  I needed to buy more but didn’t want to waste what I had.  So I made soup out of the older vegetables and made room for the fresher ones.  It was a tasty solution to my space problem.