LessMess was featured in the August Issue of Prevention Magazine.
Here is the article by Sally Kuzemchak and Christina Sexton

The kitchen is the heart of your home, but it might also be the heart of your unwanted weight. Everything from the size of your plate to the wattage of your bulbs has a direct effect on what and how much you eat, according to research published in the Annual Review of Nutrition. Here are seven signs that you kitchen ins sabotaging your waistline – and simple fixes to get the scale moving in the right direction.
You Stack Mail On the Benchtop
“When your kitchen becomes a dumping ground for clutter, you tend to avoid cooking, which is a problem,” says Susanne Thiebe, owner of Sydney-based organising company LessMess.” Often, people might have healthy fresh food hidden in the back of the fridge, bought with good intentions to cook. But when your kitchen bench or dining table is covered in homework, paperwork and odd socks, it’s too easy to give up on preparing a nutritious meal and just order takeaway. About 95% of my clients keep clutter on their dining table and eat from trays in front of the TV and wonder why they’re overweight!”
Solution
Take baby steps with kitchen clutter:” Clear one area of the fridge at a time,” advises Thiebe.” This can take as few as seven minutes. When you finish plan to do another the next day, so you don’t get overwhelmed and stop.” The best advice Thiebe gives her clients? Always unpack the dishwasher. “It’s not a cupboard for clean plates! If you leave clean plates in the machine, there is nowhere for dirty ones to go except in the sink or on the benchtop. Lack of bench space discourages you from taking time to cook a healthy dinner.” Organising is a skill.”
Anyone can learn to keep their kitchen in order, but you have to want to,” adds Thiebe.

DeclutterOnline
The ABC of Organising

A live on line group coaching course aimed at people who are overwhelmed with stuff.

We tackle decluttering, organising and time management to get you back on track and give you more time to live your life.

Live and interactive. You get time during the sessions to put into practice what you learned. We don’t just talk – we DO. We get over the procrastination.

Courses are currently conducted via SKYPE.

31/08/2011    Bathrooms
7/09/2011       Wardrobes
14/09/2011    Laundries
21/09/2011    Time Management

Lessons start at 12.30 and go for 90 min. In this time you will learn the secrets and get started on your own organising mission.
You can book the whole course for $289 or book separate units for $60.
to book go to my website and find the right course under the DeclutterOnline tab – and hey, I finally figured out how to make the PayPal button work!!

Our remote coaching course: DeclutterOnline-  now has it’s own facebook fan page:   like us!

these are the topics and dates for next term’s Skype based remotecoaching courses.
They are a fantastic, cheap way to get started. Or to just check  a Professional Organiser out. You can do one at a time or go full throttle and book them all. We are offering them at different times of the day – if you can’t make your favourite course, please drop us a line and we’ll try to look after you next season.
All courses are just $60 to find out more, just click on the links through to  my website. Or just comment here and we’ll get back to you.

• Wardrobe Workout – how to have an organised wardrobe 20.7.2011
• Meal planning- how to keep your family healthy 22.7.2011
• Loveable Living Rooms – do you suffer from CHAOS? 28.7.11
• Tackle your timetable – time management 29.7.2011
• Better Bathrooms – how to get controle over your shampoo collection 1.8.11
• Liberated Laundries – how changing your washing basket can change your laundry 2.8.11

You know, when I started this blog a year ago, I did some soul searching, got some advice and did some planning. And I would have never anticipated, that the “product tip” part of the blog would be the hardest one to get together.
There are heaps of creations out there, I thought. People like to read about products, because most people like shopping, right? But then, when you look a bit deeper into most gadgets, they might be nifty, but are they really necessary. I don’t wan to burden anybody with more stuff than they already have. I see too many clients that have half a Howard’s Storage shop at home and still no space (I had a client some years ago, that had a whole room of empty and half filled containers). Happens too often.
And it’s about sustainability, too. From an organising point of view, there is no difference between an old shoe box and a pricey stainless steel container from Philippe Stark. As long as it fits into the space and holds what it should hold.
Have that in mind when purchasing any organising products – even the ones suggested here!
So for this post, no product tip and in case you are wondering: I do cherish good design and love Philippe Stark’s lemon press. But the lemon juice with the plastic one from Target tastes just the same

This weekend a  friend of ours popped in with, this story:
“I have been buying Philip’s irons for over 40 years, they used to last 10 years, now they just do 5. I kind of accept that loss of quality. Last week I bought their middle of the range model, and it didn’t even last at all. It was kaputt straight away. So I went and returned it – got another one, which, in turn had the same fault. Going back to the shop I was offered an upgrade to the top end model, which cost twice as much. I am very happy with what I gained, but felt the need to write to their operations manager for Australia (someone with a ‘van’ in his name, being Dutch!) informing them of my ordeal and that really this shouldn’t be necessary. I also included a copy of my travel ten (public transport ticket in Sydney) and asked for a refund of the travel cost.”
He got his refund and a better, brand new iron. This story highlights two things for me: the necessity to keep receipts, an understanding of which ones could be relevant for how long and the need for all of us to make use of our right for perfect products and customer service.
I pride myself as being a bit of a queen of refund and return: I returned stockings with a run (luckily I still had the packaging in the recycling) and last week I returned some flour to Aldi. It wasn’t flour. It tasted all right, but everything I baked was dense and gooey. I did a test with two identical loafs of bread, baked with two different flours. The Aldi one was UN edible (except Mr. 8 eats everything, so he toasted it and gobbled down the whole loaf). On returning the flour (without a receipt – who keeps that?) I got my refund and the remark: “but you are the first one returning it.” But it wasn’t what it is supposed to be – and NOBODY realised????

Aldi is my favourite grocery store. There are a couple of reasons; it feels a bit like home. I grow up shopping at Aldi and it sustained most of us when we were at Uni -  in Germany Aldi has Alcohol!!! (So do the ones in Victoria)

Nowadays I love it because it offers NO CHOICE. It’s a no brainer and super quick. Where else can you shop (almost) everything for a week in 20 min with 3 kids in tow? Where else can you send hubby or the neighbours to do the shopping for you? If the shopping list says: rolled oats, they will bring the right stuff. It’s the grocery version of an organised household.

To make the most of it I sort my shopping list. All items on the right side of the list can be bought at Aldi, everything else I need to get at a speciality shop or a normal supermarket.

I also trust their specials products, which saves on the shopping around. And they re appear in an almost yearly cycle – so if my iron is kaput, I just don’t iron till Aldi sells one. (Fantastic excuse!!)

These fridge baskets from Howard’s Storage a fabulous because:

• they are plastic which is very hygienic,
• They a long an narrow. Perfect to use the whole depth of your fridge
• They have a handle so you can take two at a time in and out of the fridge

Fridge Basket Large
Ventilated with high sides and sturdy handle. Ideal for the fridge or cupboard.
Product cod Hll100
Dimensions (Width x Depth x Height): 15 x 31.5 x 13 cm
Howard’s storage $ 4.95

Fridge Basket small
Product cod Hll100
Dimensions (Width x Depth x Height): 16.5 x 27 x 11 cm
Howard’s storage $3.95

To stop small vegetables rolling all over the drawer and eventually turning into compost below everything else…  use a plastic cutlery holder from a  one dollar shop

Did you know it takes just 7 min to sort and clean one shelf in the fridge? So don’t be scared of your fridge.
It helps when you have some categories going on in the fridge; label your shelves so everyone in the family knows.
For example,
Top shelf: mine is the meat chiller – and I store chocolates there in a separate container
First shelf: all condiments, opened food, leftovers
Second shelf: breakfast and sandwich ingredients
Third shelf: bottles
Drawer :veggies on the right side, fruit on the left?
I know a lot of people swapping the intended use of drawer and fresh food and put their drink cans in the veggie drawer. As long as it works for you
Give your fridge a quick clean before going shopping. It should be half empty (otherwise you shouldn’t go shopping)

It all starts with an organised pantry:

before

pantry after

Now that we are on the tail end of the school holidays (as you might have guessed by the amount of sibling fighting going on in your house), here are a couple of points I find/found helpful over the years:

Don’t buy the school uniform too early. When I helped at my kid’s primary school at Orientation day in October, I couldn’t believe how many parents bought every item available, even winter clothes. Kids can grow considerably in three months.

Same goes for shoes

Buy at least two school hats

These are our favorite lunch boxes. They have a hinged lid so you’ll never lose the lid. And I am very happy to report, that they are available from Woolworth. I used to import them from Switzerland – complicated and expensive. They come in different sizes, so you can avoid buying overpriced single wrapped snack/ treat items. Just put two biscuits in one of these and you’ll save the planet from too much packaging. And if you can pack the sandwiches separate from the fruit, you don’t have to use any glad wrap. So that can’t be blown away on the playground, because my kids tell me, that’s what seals get wrapped up in.

To keep all the boxes in one place use one big container. The best all year round ones are the slightly isolated with a zipper. The sipper should open on the big side, so you can access all the boxes at once, rather than have to fish them out one by one from the top.

Stock up on lunchboxes (I never thought I would use the word: stock up!) you’ll never find the same variety throughout the year. And you might need them. Some kids lose a lot. Others just give up in term III (the lunchboxes not the kids). For some reason boy’s lunchboxes are quicker sold out than girl’s.

Water bottles. Well, this is a bit of an issue. Decor used to have these very flat ones out of hard plastic, but they don’t make them any more, and I have been searching all of last year. There is plenty out there in that sort of size, but I am not too keen on the softeners in the plastic. So if anybody can point me in the right direction….?I also like them nice and flat, so they can act as a cooling pad in summer. Fill it with water up to 2/3, then top it up in the morning. Otherwise it might not have defrosted enough by the time the first brake comes.

there are other specialised containers out there. I found these at “Chalet” but didn’t buy them yet. I am contemplating the green one, because bananas are really hard to transport, and once they ripen in our garden, I have to feed them to the crowds.

Reading through this, I actually realised, that there are a couple of tips for my “no kids” customers. Maybe one of your New Year’s resolutions were to save money. So what about starting to take a sandwich from home instead of buying lunch in the city. You’ll save yourself a staggering $1500 a year – and don’t spend that on another handbag!!!!!