Today you get to meet my new friend Renae. Renae is the blogger behind Madame Deals, and she and I connected as fellow frugal bloggers. Renae has a heart of gold and some fantastic ideas to share !
One of the great things about using coupons and playing the drug store game is that you will soon have an abundance of items. While it is a lot of fun getting so many freebies, it is not worth the effort if the items are left to expire. It is important to rotate your stockpile and stay organized. Staying organized also saves time and a Sharpie (or any permanent pen!) will help you do just that.
For boxed items in the pantry, take a Sharpie and write the expiration date on the end or top of the box. Write it big enough that you can spot the date easily. I also write the date on the caps of salad dressing and condiment bottles. I started doing this after I had to throw away four bottles of salad dressing that were expired and unused. What a waste! When items are not marked it is too easy to mix up the newly bought items with stuff that was bought a while ago.
My Sharpie organizing tip doesn’t stop with food! Health and Beauty items have an expiration date too. Make sure you mark your toothpaste and medications with an expiration date. It is really easy to miss an expiration date on the medication bottles since the writing is so small.
How about clothing organization? If you have kids close in age a great time saver tip is using the dot system to mark their clothes. My husband is forever putting my kids in the wrong clothes. My two year old will be swimming in his older brothers t-shirt while my oldest is wearing 2T shorts!
The dot system works like this, place one dot on the clothing tag for your first child. The second child gets two dots and so forth. When child number one out grows their clothes, add a dot to the tag. The clothing is now easily identified as child number two’s. This system is a huge time saver when it comes to sorting and folding laundry. The other great thing about the dot system is that when the boys stay over with relatives, everyone knows whose clothes are whose!
Take a few minutes to organize and in the end you will save money and time!
Renae is a married mom of two young boys. She loves to garden, canning food and creating outdoor adventures with her boys. Her other passion is teaching people how to make dollars out of change with her blog Madame Deals.
This post is linked to:
:: Works for Me Wednesday hosted by We Are THAT Family
:: Frugal Friday hosted by Life As MOM
Great idea! I work in a pediatric office. We recently had to throw out quite a lot of outdated, expensive baby formula. It just isn’t safe to let a newborn have something that is even a day out of date. I felt so bad about that. So now I’ve started writing the expiration dates on the cans and canisters in big, black numbers with a Sharpie. Now, if I see there’s only a month to go and we don’t have anyone in line who can use the formula, I’m going to ask if we can donate it to a food bank. Even though these are free samples from the company, it’s still money lost and a shame. Sharpies just might be the trick to no more loss!
What a great idea!! No sense letting things go to waste, especially expensive baby formula!