#1 Thanksgiving Preparation - Help for You!

Thanksgiving (TG) is a really big holiday in the United States. We commonly have large crowds over to our homes and prepare large amounts of food. Sometimes we have guests spend the night in our homes so we must prepare for all of this. In addition to the preparations, Christians prepare mentally and spiritually for the family members who may not be on the best of terms.

In other countries where T2CHK has many readers, there are also big holidays where the women of the house prepare large meals for crowds of people. These Thanksgiving Prep Plans can be adapted to any holiday or event. I hope you will find these ideas and lists to be of help to you in your preparations to show hospitality.

I suggest that you print off these instructions and place them in a notebook where you can access them easily.

Any really big occasion requires planning. And even if your Thanksgiving isn’t going to be BIG, you can make it much more simplified and restful by planning. In these instructions you can replace the word “Thanksgiving” with most any other occasion and utilize them in your preparations. This year our Thanksgiving Plans include a 4 week guide to preparing your heart and home for a celebratory meal and for guests that may stay in your home over night.

You will need a notebook or a folder to keep all your plans and information in.

Our TG plan includes 4 weeks of preparation.

First three days - Planning and List Making - October 29-31

Task #1 - Cleaning and Organizing, Buying Supplies November 1 - 4

Task #2 - Gathering in Supplies and Bake Ahead Week 5 - 10

Task #3 - Touch-Up Cleaning and Begin Cooking November 11-17

Task #4 - Thanksgiving Week - cooking and enjoying time with your guests 18-22

For the next three days we will make lists and make plans. Your plans may be different from mine or others’ plans. Use these instructions to make the pans that will fit what you need to do in the next 4 weeks to get your heart and home ready for Thanksgiving.

Lists To Make

1. Menu Plans
Plan your TG menu and write it all down. You can make changes in it as the days go on.

Favorite Dishes and Recipes
Gather together all your recipes or ideas for food that you want to offer. Ask friends and relatives for recipes that you don’t have but are interested in making. Try out new recipes to make sure you will be satisfied with them. Put all your recipes in your TG notebook.

2. Plan who you will invite.
This is a great time to start new traditions. One of those traditions can be to invite someone new to TG dinner. We often have a soldier or soldiers over from the local military base. Making a list of people that you want to invite will help you in several ways. It will keep the number of people to feed and seat in your mind, and it will make you aware that you need to find out about food allergies or preferences. Make a list of the guests you will be having over, or just note that you will have only your immediate family if you will not be having guests this year.

3. What do I need to do as far as cleaning and repairing goes? You can do a deep cleaning or a light once-through. It all depends on what state your home is in, what your acceptable level of clean is, and how much time you have. Don’t forget to delegate duties to family members.

4. What do I need to gather together as far as equipment goes?
You need to make sure you have all the correct pots and pans, cake pans and gelatin/congealed salad molds, serving pieces and flatware that you will need. As you decide on your menu, you will be better able to fill in your list of needed pots and pans. Same for the number of chairs, when you know how many are coming, you can start to fill in that information in your list. So leave a page for this list ready to be filled up as you plan. Did you kow that your dinner plates and glasses, saucers and dessert bowls don’t have to match? And they don’t even have to be glass. Really! Some Thanksgivings I use PAPER PLATES. No kidding. If you want a really easy clean up, consider paper plates, tumblers and dessert plates this year. Last year I saw plates, cups, tumblers, napkins and flatware that all matched with lovely fall colors. The plates were sturdy and it looked great!

5.What kind of decorations will I use? This is one of the really fun parts. You can go wild with decorations and not spend very much money this time of year by bringing in the outdoors! Pine cones, leaves, branches of buds, nuts, dried flowers and seed pods make lovely decorations.

When you bring in things from the outdoors, be sure to lay them in the tub for a while to see if any creatures crawl off of them. You wouldn’t want them to crawl off on your TG table. Lay them in the tub and give them a shake every few minutes. If the things you chose are sturdy, you can rinse them lightly under warm water and allow them to dry in the tub. One of my favorite arrangements is a small pumpkin cut open, with flowers arranged in the top. Of course you can choose to have a professional arrangement made, or simply buy some fall flowers and arrange them yourself.
Brown butcher paper or postal paper can be colored or cut out and made into a very pretty cover for the table cloth.

6. Look for activities for the children.
Coloring, crafts, games. Think about table decorations for both the buffet table and the dining table. I like to use brown postage paper to decorate the children’s table, with a white butcher paper over that. Then I cut designs (stencils of corn on the cob, Indians and pilgrims, pumpkins and turkeys) in the butcher paper so that the brown shows through. Its always a good idea to delegate this to an older youth or young adult in your family. If you came up with the ideas and materials, older children and young adults can usually manage getting the younger ones involved.

For the next three days we will be working on getting all these plans made. If you have other plans you are working on, be sure to share them so that someone else can help you or can have the benefit of your
experience. smile.gif List your menus, add recipes to the Recipe Forum; look for the Thanksgiving Thread.
Share your lists for cleaning, cooking pan lists, anything you are getting together, for the next three days.
Remember, for the next three days, we’re just making plans and sharing what we’re doing. Ask questions, if you need information!

Cream Soups

Sylvia has written an informative article on making cream soups. Check out her blog to read more.

“Cream soups don’t necessarily contain cream, they are creamy in texture and full of rich flavors. Cream soups are great for warming up a family on a cool evening and they can be remarkably healthy if you follow a few steps in preparing the ingredients.”

Fast and Furious Fall Cleaning and Organizing - Day 5

Today is the last day of the Fast and Furious Fall Cleaning and Organizing Event!

I’m so glad its nearly over! But I’m so glad my house is sooooo clean and organized. I’ve organized cabinets and drawers and things that I’ve needed to do for months.

The living room or den is the room where a family does most of their, well…. living. Its a busy room and takes a lot of wear and tear. So, it can usually stand a good cleaning any time you want to give it one.

Begin by picking up the room and using your 4 bags/boxes/baskets like we have been doing all week. Get everything out of this room that doesn’t belong. Sometimes I place personal belongings in a basket and tell the children to come get their things in the next ten minutes or the things are leaving home

Be sure to check out Robin’s Organizational Thread at the T2CHK forum for ideas that will help you get all your living room belongings stored and put away nicely.

Make a pan of hot soapy water or use the kitchen sink.

Once you get the room emptied of stuff that doesn’t belong, take up nicnacs and decorative items.

Clean and wash picture frames and nicnacs, set them out to dry.

Take down the curtains and take up the rugs, wash them if possible or hang them out to air.

Take up tablecloths, doilies, all fabric coverings and pillows; wash and dry if you can or air dry.

Wash down the door frames, window frames, baseboards, all woodwork, ceilings and ceiling fans.

Wash windows

Clean off shelves, rearrange books, wipe down the shelves while they are empty.

Clean up work areas. Organize work materials.

Organize movies, cds and dvds, organize the whole tv/entertainment area

Dust all furniture, polish if needed

Move out furniture if possible, if not just clean around and under as best you can.

Vacuum upholstered furniture

Vacuum floors, sweep and mop, polish wood floors

Replace rugs and curtains

Replace furniture covers if using and pillows

Arrange magazines, papers, books that don’t have a shelf. A basket might be nice, or simply stack them up neatly.

Replace nicnacs and pictures…. do you need them all in this room?

Light some candles and relax. Sweetie, You Are DONE with the house!!

I hope you have enjoyed the FFFCO event this year. I have enjoyed leading you and getting my own house clean. Next week we will take some suggestions for cleaning other areas that we didn’t hit this week. Then we’ll take them at a more leisurely pace, perhaps three days or so on one room.

Fast and Furious Fall Cleaning and Organizing - Day 4

Are you tired yet?? I am! But there are two more rooms to go on my list: The Kitchen today and the Living Room Tomorrow.

The Kitchen

The kitchen is usually the hardest room to Fall or Spring Clean in because we use it so much and its hard to have it out of commission for a day in some families. So I suggest that you utilize your crock pot or other means of having supper tonight so that you can concentrate on cleaning instead of breaking to cook.

Take a good look at your kitchen….. does it need:
…to be majorly decluttered?
…to be degreased?
…to have structural work done?
…to be emptied out and started over? laugh.gif

You must choose what you need to do in your kitchen today. Do you have time to devote to this project? maybe you should not get in to a really deep, deep cleaning of the kitchen today. Perhaps you should do a medium clean. That’s what I am going to do. You just find your happy place and get in the groove, OK?

First Things First:
Take out trash.
Pick up countertops
Take everything out of the kitchen that doesn’t go in the kitchen… use your 4 bags/boxes/baskets!
Take down curtains - wash
Take up rugs - wash

The kitchen can become a catch-all if you’re not careful. If your family has a habit of depositing things in the kitchen, and you’re OK with that, try to have a receptacle for all their stuff. Baskets are great for keys, change, pocket contents.

Mail really clutters up kitchen counter tops! Try using a box or basket to hold mail, both outgoing and incoming.

Move out furniture and take everything off your countertops that you possibly can. I will use my living room to store these things while I am cleaning because I have just cleaned my dining room and I don’t want to mess it up!
I will use laundry baskets to hold everything.

I don’t recommend that you attempt to clean the frig and the oven today unless your kitchen just doesn’t need all that much concentrated cleaning elsewhere…that’s a lot of work that might not get finished if you’re not careful!
But if your frig needs it, feel free to tackle it!

Next
Sweep down cobwebs
Make a sink of hot soapy water or use your chemical cleaner. Get out your rags and start washing down
the ceiling if needed, door frames, window frames, baseboards and walls. Wash windows.

Take up your rugs and put them in to wash. Take down curtains and wash.

Put a load of dishes in to wash while you work, or go ahead and wash all the dishes by hand.

Clean the top of the refrigerator, the stove exhaust hood, all large appliances. Go ahead and spray cleaner in the oven if you’re adventurous. Take out the drip pans and put them in a pan of hot soapy water to soak.

Clean of shelves and inside cabinets. Wash them down. Order and organize your pantry food and your pots and pans.

Wash inside your cabinets while they are empty.

Re-line cabinets if needed. Did you know that in the “old days” we used to use newspaper for this??

Replace everything that goes in the cabinets, washing and dusting off as you go.

Wash down the outside of the cabinets, use de-greaser if needed or a wood soap. Dry them and then polish them with lemon oil if they are finished wood. This is going to be the really hard, arm-breaking scrubby part for me today. My cabinets just need a really good deep scrub. But when its done, it will make the whole kitchen look better!

Don’t forget the areas over the stove!

Change your wash water if needed.

Wash down all the bottles, canisters, containers, etc. that sit on your counter tops.

Scrub the counter tops. Wash and replace the drip pans.

Sweep the floor. Make up your mop water and get to scrubbing. I will use a scrub brush this morning and scrub under the stove and all around the cabinets. Then I’ll mop the rest of the floor.

Can you move the stove and clean under it? That would probably be a good idea.

Consider setting up a Baking Center if you cook and bake a lot. I sat mine up in one of my cabinets. I put these items in the Baking Center:

Mixer
Food processor
Flours
Yeast
Baking powder and soda
Salt
Cornmeal
Shortening
Oil
Spices

You could put more in it, like measuring spoons and mixing bowls. It really is a time saver for me!

Finally…

Put all your curtains and dry rugs back down when the floor is dry. Give the appliances one more look and a polish.

Rearrange all your counter top things.

Check out Robin’s thread for ideas regarding kitchen storage and organization.

Light yourself some candles, make some tea and enjoy your kitchen!

Fast and Furious Fall Cleaning and Organizing - Day 3

Today we will be working on the eating area. This is a difficult thing to dictate what to clean because some have dining rooms and some don’t. Some use the dining room regularly and some don’t . So we are going to have differing levels of need for our eating areas today.

I have a dining room that we use every single day. Its the first room that anyone coming into the house sees, so I try to make sure it is always presentable and neat. Since we eat in it most every day, I also have to be sure to get it clean every day.

Here are some general cleaning recommendations for most any room, with a few suggestions thrown in here and there for the eating area. if you have suggestions of your own, feel free to post them!

First Things first:
De-clutter. Get everything out of the eating area that doesn’t belong there on a daily basis. If you have a real clutter problem, get out your 4 boxes, baskets or bags and label them like we did for the master bedroom. You will throw away some things, store some, put away some or give away some.

If you are having serious storage issues in your dining room/eating area and need help with that, check out Robin’s threads in the Organizational/Scheduling Help forum.

Clean out hutches, cabinets, clean off shelves, tables and chairs. Get everything out of this room but the furniture.
Move things off walls and off of all surfaces.

Anything that can be wet, go ahead and make a sink of hot soapy water and immerse it. Anything else, just sit it on the kitchen counter for now.

Now Start Moving Things Out Of Your Way

Take down curtains, toss in the wash if you can or air them outside.

Take up rugs, wash or air.

Take up chair pads, wash or air.

Get the chairs out of this area for now.

Get rid of cobwebs. use a towel on the end of a broom or other tool. Don’t use polish or cleaner for this you can streak your ceilings and walls!

The Nitty Gritty Cleaning Part

Make up a pan of hot soapy water or use whatever chemical you like.

Wash ceiling and walls if needed taking care with the kind of wall coverings or paint you have.

Wash down the door frames and window frames. Wash doors and baseboards. Dry if needed.

Wash windows.

If you can touch up paint in this room today, now is the time to do it.

Clean the furniture, wash and/or polish. Clean and polish chairs. Spend time cleaning and polishing the table.

Replace anything that truly goes in the storage areas of this room such as the hutch, cabinets, shelves, etc.

Sweep,vacuum and/or mop. Polish wood floors.

Bring chairs back into the room.

Spread out your tablecloth, if you are using one. Place a nice little arrangement on the table or a candle.

Replace curtains and rugs.