I use a lot of canned tomato products and I use a lot of canned coconut milk as well.  I also use canned chicken or tuna if I need a quick meal and I like keeping canned beans on hand to throw together a meal in a pinch, or add some protein to a meal.

And I like having a decent supply of food on hand so I won’t have to run to the store if someone is sick, or if something were to happen like a big storm.  It’s a little security feature for me to have a full cupboard

So what I’d really love is to have a great way to organize my canned goods.  Preferably something that will keep my Brennan happy too… and amazingly, I’m not alone.  I’ve found something that would be 100% perfect.  On Friday I have a chance to win one – and so do you.  I thought I’d share the wonder that is the Shelf Reliance Harvest unit.

You know those marble toys you played with as a kid (or jealously watched your brother play with as you got yet another pair of plastic high heels)? You dropped the marble in at the top and watched it roll down the levels.  Well the Shelf Reliance shelves do that for your cans – keeping them neat, and automatically rotating them so you’re using them in a “first in, first out” order.  It’s very nice!

Go to the Shelf Reliance Blog and enter to win this wonder of human ingenuity for yourself.

And in the meantime, you can see what the kids and I have been rigging up for a summer project – homemade can rotating racks   Scott got inspired and built us a wooden one too, which will probably last long after our cardboard ones.  But it’s fun and the kids are loving it.  If only they were front-loading like the Shelf Reliance System :p

So I suppose I am officially nesting because I have been working hard on our house.  I’ll admit the baby is a major motivation – indirectly and directly.  I of course want a nice, clean, well-prepared home when the baby arrives.  But I also want the house to be somewhat presentable for the midwife and anyone else who may come to assist after the birth of the baby :p

I’ve also been working on it just because I want a neat and clean home.  To my credit I got most of the moving boxes gone within a couple of weeks of moving in.  We still have a few around in out-of-the-way spots.  But I dislike boxes unless they’re being used for storage. Even with the boxes gone, though, our house was (and is) cluttered.

I do not like clutter.  Even if we had a bigger house I still wouldn’t like clutter.  And if you move to a bigger place and you have clutter, your clutter just gets bigger too.  So I’ve been focusing on some really bad spots and it has really helped.  The kids’ room was the first place I got straightened up.  Since then I’ve been working mostly on our upstairs landing and some in the bedroom and office.

The house has improved a lot of the past few weeks and I’m really pleased.  I still have a lot to do (I haven’t touched the kitchen!)  But it’s a lot neater, more open, and functional.   If we’re going to have these things, we should be able to use them.

I’ve done all this by working about 30 minutes a day.  On the weekends when Scott is here to help me with bigger things we spend a bit more time on it.  But I usually work about 30 minutes each weekday and I’ve been surprised at how much gets done and how satisfied I feel with it.  There’s still a bunch to do and the never-ending mountain of paperwork to take care of.  But every week the house is looking better, and I’m able to take care of household paperwork faster and more efficiently (I mostly work through papers and budget issues on Fridays, and each Friday it has been a little easier as I’ve tackled the backlog).

So if you’re “nesting” and want to organize your house give short increments a go.  It’s good for the first and third trimesters when your energy may be lower.  And it’s great because you see definite progress towards your goal but you don’t get so overwhelmed that you quit altogether!