Write down what we had for dinner

I know that the best thing is to plan a week's worth of meals and spend Sunday prepping all the food or whatever, but I rarely plan dinner 24 hours in advance.
I have a bunch of go-to meals, but I worry about having some of them too often, especially the less-healthy ones like mac-n-cheese with peas.

Solution!
I write each meal down (after dinner) so I can keep track of when, and how often, we are having each meal. It also helps me track how often we order out. As you can see in the photo, I'm not specific about the meals; just enough to get the gist of the main course.

An unexpected benefit is that I can use the calendar to come up with the night's meal by seeing what I *haven't* made in a while. It also helps me figure out how old some of the leftovers in our fridge are.

Reuse glass jam jars for nuts and dried fruit

My husband has expensive taste in jam. Or should I say fruit preserves. He buys this fancy, boutiquey brand. It seemed extravagant... until I realized how lovely and useful the jars can be.

The labels come off clean in the dishwasher top rack (without falling apart), and the jars and lids stand up to the dishwasher top rack for repeated washes. The 8oz size is just right for keeping snacks on hand.

We buy our raisins and craisins in bulk, so it's helpful to have a convenient jar to grab for sprinkling on cereal instead of the enormous Costco bag. The rest of the bags of nuts from Trader Joe's go in the freezer, to keep the oils in the nuts fresh, donchaknow.

I like to cut the labels from the bags and stick them on the jar with clear packing tape. The tape can weather a few runs in the dishwasher, but it's not a tragedy to peel it off and start over.

Clementines in glass vases

I think the wood boxes they come in are cute, but vases create vertical storage and take up a smaller countertop footprint.

Ziploc divided containers for daycare lunches

I love LOVE these Ziploc containers for making the girls' lunches. They have three separate parts, so it's easy to just check off my mental list:
sandwich
fruit
veggie
dairy

AND the boxes fit in the girls' Skip Hop lunchboxes. I usually stick a Gogurt or a juice box in the lunch box too.

The containers are really cheap and fit in the dishwasher's top rack. If I forget to unpack the girls' lunches all weekend and end up with a Hideous Mold Situation, it's not the end of days to sacrifice a container.

Extra Freezer

We rent, and our refrigerator is probably 25 years old or so. The freezer is not large.
With two small children, there's a lot of food that we need to be able to cook on-demand, and we also need some flexibility about when to cook the meals we'd like, which is why we use frozen vegetables more than fresh. Other frozen staples include chicken nuggets, popsicles (in the summer), hamburger patties, pork loin (bought on sale), chicken breasts, pizza, and pasta dishes. Our affection for Costco means we shop less often (which is KEY with little kids!) and we need more room for what we buy.

Enter the extra freezer. It makes it easy to stock up on stuff, and if you have an infant and pump breast-milk, you actually can have room for that storage as well.
I saved money and energy costs by not getting a "frost-free" freezer, but I think if I had it to do over, I'd go with the frost-free. Defrosting the freezer isn't a hassle, but all that frost build-up is annoying on a day-to-day basis.

Loading the cherry into the pitter upside down

I just tried out the cherry pitter my mom gave me last year, and it's really amazing. The instructions say to load it with the stemless top facing up, but I found that if I loaded the cherry by threading the stem down through the holder and splatter shield (posh!), then the pit pops out attached to the stem, and there's no lost/attached cherry flesh. No need to de-stem this way, too!

Roasting frozen vegetables in the oven or toaster oven

My husband and I love that we can shake frozen vegetables onto a foil-lined tray, spray with olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper, then pop the tray into a preheated (circa 400F) oven or toaster oven for about 10-15 minutes and voila! Delicious roasted vegetables.
This is incredibly easy, and has made dinner so much less daunting.

My mom mentioned to me the other day that we could just put some chicken thighs on the sheet with the veggies, and holy moly, that worked too!