Need some basic tips for organizing the most used rooms in your home?  Here is a room-by-room checklist that will help you get started.

Bedroom

☑ Decide what you want at your fingertips and what things can be stored

☑ Go through your closet and pull out everything you have not worn in the last year and donate those items

☑ Hang like items together—group shirts together, pants together, dresses, etc.

☑ Donate to local charities or friends and family items that are still in good condition but you no longer need. Schedule a donation pick up with DonationTown.org

Kitchen

☑ Determine the flow of activity in your kitchen before you decide where to place items

☑ Things that work together should be stored together, such as baking supplies, plastic containers (with lids), pots and pans with lids, and large platters and bowls

☑ Drawer dividers are a good way to keep smaller items separated

☑ Place glasses near the sink or the refrigerator for easy access to beverages

☑ Put healthy snacks for your kids in an easy-to-access drawer or cupboard

Home Office/Den

☑ Make sure you have a good chair, good lighting and ample workspace. Without them it’s harder to be organized and effective.

☑ Keep only supplies you need on a daily basis on your desktop

☑ Assign a contained space or “in-box” for your incoming documents and only use it for items that haven’t yet been reviewed such as paper mail, receipts, and catalogs.

☑ Make a decision about what action or task you need to take with each document (including recycling) and follow through during dedicated “admin” appointments

☑ Keep the most recent papers in the front of the file. Whenever you open it, the current information will be on top.

Garage/basement

☑ Sort, purge, and then decide the proper storage containers or fixtures for the treasures that you must keep

☑ Design a floor plan for storing items and stick to it

☑ Get rid of things that don’t work

☑ Clearly label both the tops and the sides of containers

☑ Consider floor-to-ceiling possibilities for shelving, racks, stack-able drawers, hooks and pegboards, and don’t forget the rafters

REMEMBER: When you are done organizing, make sure you donate clothes, books, furniture and other household items to a local charity.

One of my clients recently lost her mother after a long illness. I am helping her organize and declutter her basement. Among the items she chose to let go of was a supply of home health equipment her mother used to be mobile and comfortable including a folding walker, a shower seat and an orthopedic boot. It gave my client great pleasure to learn about a place where she could donate these items so they could be used by someone else who otherwise couldn’t afford to pay for them. It’s called Home CARES.

Home CARES is a small organization that makes a big impact.

Every week in the counties of  Marin, Oakland, Sonoma and San Francisco, in Northern California, volunteers gather at their sites to accept donations of durable medical equipment and supplies. The organization operates on a shoestring budget. No fancy storefront, the Oakland site for example is located in an underground parking lot and consists of a folding table a few chairs and a walk in closet stuffed, yet organized, to the rafters with everything from pill boxes to wheelchairs.

Items are made available at no cost to people who need them.  I know this for sure because when my husband had shoulder surgery last year he was in need of a device called an “Ice Man.”

Ice Man

Our insurance provider would not cover the cost of this simple device which looks like a small picnic cooler with a power cord.  When used correctly, it circulates ice-cold water through an attached tube and then up into a series of pads that are gently strapped to your body, in my husband’s case, his shoulder.

Having the Ice Man made a huge difference in his pain management as well as his recovery. What did it cost us to get it? Nothing.  We borrowed it for six months and when my husband was fully recovered, I brought it back.

When I told my client about Home CARES and how her mother’s medical equipment could benefit someone else, perhaps another senior, or someone with a disability, she was more than happy to donate them. Today I brought in those items, along with a three-tiered mesh document file I happened to have in my trunk, which went into use immediately to hold the few document clipboards the site keeps to track donations.

The cheerful volunteer nurse who staffs the Oakland site is often there with her teen age son and other volunteers, mostly seniors who, despite the chilly air of the unheated parking lot, really seem to enjoy their work. It is “grassroots” at its best.

When you visit the Home CARES website, be sure to read the article written by Dr. Kate Scannell, a physician and specialist in medical ethics who discovered Home CARES through a colleague.  (By coincidence I used to work with Dr. Scannell when I was a project manager for a large health care organization in Oakland.)

Dr. Scannell captures the essential goodness and relevancy of an organization like Home CARES.  She writes, “In these days of fractious and tedious debates about health care reform, it’s refreshing to see what can be joyfully accomplished by community visionaries trying to tackle some piece of the enormous American health care debacle. It is reinvigorating to witness the efficiency with which medical problems can be solved, lives are made better, health care costs are conserved, and the environment is protected. Sometimes a small closet contains an entire and amazing world.”

I could not have said it better.

If you live in Northern California or want to support Home CARES, a 501c3 tax deductible organization, visit their website at http://www.homecares.org/ or go to the resources page of my website at LET’S MAKE ROOM, to locate a link to Home CARES.

According to a recent survey conducted on behalf of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO):

• 71 percent of those polled said their quality of life would improve if they were better organized.
• 65 percent described their home as at least moderately disorganized.
• 27 percent said disorder keeps them from being effective at work.

As millions of people vow to get organized as part of their New Year’s resolutions, it is no surprise that January has been dubbed National “Get Organized” month, a 7- year-old event, sponsored by NAPO, an organization that represents well over 4,000 members in the U.S. and beyond.

Long after the celebratory confetti is swept up,  many people will once again make an all out effort to plow through their piles, manage their files, clear their clutter and make more room for themselves in an effort to feel happier at home and more productive at work.

And before the end of the year, as predictable as the sound of popping champagne corks, many will resign themselves to yet another year surrounded by clutter in their homes, on their desks and worst of all, in their heads.

Excepting New Year’s resolutions, the decision to get organized is usually precipitated by an event or changing life circumstance. Examples include moving, expecting a new baby, sending kids off to college, getting a new job or keeping up with the demands of an existing one. Even a loss of health, money or death of a loved one can be the deciding factor in getting organized “once and for all.”

Whatever the precipitating cause, it is wise first to assess whether or not you have the time, skill, and motivation to manage the resulting organizational tasks by yourself. If not, seeking the help and guidance of a professional organizer could mean being able to check  “Get Organized” off your to-do list.

Ultimately the question of whether or not you would benefit from the help of a professional, can best be answered by you.  Here are 11 questions that will help you decide if hiring a professional organizer is right for you:

1. Do I want to get organized but have no idea where to start?
2. Am I moving and need ideas on how to set up my new home or downsize from my old one?
3. Is my disorganization or lack of productivity holding me back from success or costing me money?
4. Is the clutter in my home or office weighing me down?
5. Is there someone in my family who messes up all my attempts to get organized?
6. Have I lost or misplaced documents that cost me late fees and unnecessary finance charges?
7. Do I frequently apologize for ‘the mess’ to guests who come to my home to visit?
8. Have I tried to get organized but never seem to make any progress then slip back to my old ways?
9. Am I feeling stuck because my living or work space makes me feel unfocused and distracted?
10. Do I want to be more organized but just can’t get motivated?
11. Am I feeling frustrated, overwhelmed or stressed by my mess?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you will most likely benefit from the services of a professional organizer.  To find one in your area check out the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) website or visit mine at www.letsmakeroom.com.

As a professional organizer, my goal is to come up with innovative ways to simplify the lives of my clients.  Innovation is not a new concept but these days innovative companies seem to be acting on our lives at warp speed and sometimes that speed has usurped their common sense, at least when it comes to the customer experience.  Case in point: blister packs.

The other day, I actually broke my scissors trying to open a new cell phone charger that was packaged like it was expecting an attack from an insurgency. Just when I thought I had finally broken through, I was foiled by a series of krypton-like twist-ties that never seemed to unwind.

It doesn’t just play out in packaging. It’s in product design as well.

Take those enormous toilet tissue dispensers in public bathrooms.   Can you ever find the end of the roll?  You just keep spinning and spinning.  Don’t even think about reaching in.  You may get in, but you’ll never get out.

And can someone tell me why we need light sensor paper towel dispensers? Are we really being kinder to the environment here or more innovative?  I still don’t know what was so wrong with the old, hand-cranked version.

When I have one of those days where everything simple becomes overly complicated, I start to wonder if I’m an unwilling actor in a 21st century version of George Kukor’s movie, Gaslight, pushing me, an otherwise sane person, into a state of borderline psychosis.  “There’s nothing wrong here. It must be you,” [close-up of face in look of terror, fade to black.]

Somewhere along the R&D cycle, it seems to me that many so-called innovative companies have forgotten about their customer’s experience.  They’ve got the development part down but what happened to the research?

Nobody has a stronger love/hate relationship to technology, than those of us born before 1980. I’m continually amazed at the level of communication, knowledge, entertainment and efficiency that technology has made possible.  Pandora. Itunes. Skype. Online Banking.  Yet with all its advantages, it only works if you know how to work it. I love what the Internet has brought me but it will never be able to pour me another cup of coffee.

I sing the praises of social networking sites. They’re great for reconnecting with old college friends but try to find actual help from them to solve a user problem? Good luck. It’s like sitting around the dinner table with my relatives. Every question is answered with a question. Whenever I find myself entering a “help” site, I feel like I’m driving on the LA freeway for the first time; going round and round and ending up nowhere.

The other day I was trying to find out how to adjust a setting for my Facebook business page. Each search took me to a new level of FAQs but no closer to resolution. At every dead end I was confronted with the site’s feeble attempt at gaining my trust.   “Did this answer your question? Thumbs Up Thumbs Down?” At that moment, what I was really feeling had more to do with another finger.

Perfection can indeed be the enemy of progress but what good is innovation if it only pisses you off?  How are we, the consumer, being served when companies seem more focused on being the first, the cutting edge, the latest and greatest, at the expense of the actual human beings using their products?

When it comes to providing real service, real help, real satisfaction, I wonder. Has innovation killed their humanity?

Recently I was listening to an interview of author Paul Reyes about his book Photojournalism and Foreclosure, which depicts the emotional toll of the economic crisis in his home state of Florida.

During the interview, he tells the radio interviewer a story behind one photograph that showed the interior of a home left practically intact following its being foreclosed on, as if the owners had just stepped out for a short time instead of the forever they never expected.

Reyes learns the homeowner, prior to abandoning his home, had taken the time to carefully remove the name plates from literally hundreds of his son’s Karate trophies. What remain are the statues themselves, in various shapes, all void of any personal reference save for their dusty fingerprints.

When I heard this, I pictured the homeowner cradling the trophies while gently removing their shiny plaques, each inscribed with his son’s name and the name of the event for which he had won, “First Place,” “Second Place,” and so on.

How did he decide among all his other possessions that these were the ones that held the most meaning for him? I also wondered whether the homeowner had much time to decide what it was that he most wanted?

For a brief moment, it occurs to me that on a continuum of tragedy, this father was a degree “luckier” than the victims of other tragedies like the San Bruno fire that occurred just across the bay from my home. He at least had some warning time to make a decision about what it was that was meaningful to him.

What is the essence of our lives?

What captures the profound love, connection, celebration, and transformation of what it means to be who we are? What object or item represents the sum total of our lives or at least our accomplishments and which of these things would we take with us if we had to make that choice quickly?

I am still pondering that question. The obvious items float to the top of course, photo albums and pictures… but what is the essence of my life?  Not an inconceivable thought considering one in five homeowners, according to one statistic I heard on public radio, are in some kind of financial trouble.

In my work as an organizing and productivity consultant, I often challenge my clients to look at the major “buckets” of their lives; to help them understand first and foremost if they are putting their time and their effort towards those activities, projects and tasks that best represent their intentions, their goals and their dreams.

Yet often our time will be spent on the ground level, literally, sifting through the meaningful from the less meaningful objects that have taken up residence in their homes and offices.

For some, the holes of their sieves are large; they can let go, especially when given the information they need to comfortably decide what items no longer hold meaning for them. For others the holes are much smaller because they have assigned meaning and value to more than they have the space for, or in some cases, because they have lost so much already.

I believe that part of the reason some people find it difficult to “get organized” is because it means having to come face to face with the deeper question of “What really and truly matters to me and if I identify it, can I lose it?”  Ten or twenty years ago this used to be a pretty abstract question, now, as they say, not so much.

In the midst of what feels like the worst crisis I have experienced outside of my own personal life in 50 years, answering the question of what is the essence of my life is no longer a compelling philosophical one. It could be the most important question of all.

I am a hotel geek. Always have been ever since I was kid.  My favorite book growing up was Eloise of course, the precocious, forgotten child of jet-setting parents who lived in the penthouse of New York’s famed Plaza Hotel and spoke french to her British Nanny while creating mischief throughout the hotel with her pet dog and pet turtle. I grew up in New York City, which made this book all the more appealing to me, and to this day I still own every book in the Eloise series.

As a child, instead of drawing little daisies or writing my name in curly cues in my book margins, I would sketch my imaginary hotel.  It looked like the Goodyear blimp on wheels with several floors and a set of M.C. Escher-like stairways leading from one floor to the next.  Each room was visible as if the entire outside was nothing more than a plate glass window.

My hotel had everything my nine year-old imagination could dream up.  A game room, bowling alley, swimming pools, a crystal-chandeliered ballroom, library, bedrooms with fireplaces, even a salon.

So whenever I have an opportunity to stay at a hotel, I jump at it. It need not be a 5-star hotel – although they sure do wonders for my hotel fantasies – a nice, clean, comfortable Marriott or Sheraton is just fine.

So this past weekend, when I had the chance to get away to the annual regional conference for the National Association of Professional Organizers, I couldn’t resist even though the hotel was only a little more than an hour away from my home.

There is something about the anonymity of a hotel room that appeals to me, and room service, of course.  I love the feeling of walking into a hotel lobby for the first time knowing from the moment I enter I am treated as a “guest.”  I suppose if I had to travel every day of my life like the character George Clooney plays in “Up In The Air” the novelty might wear off after a while, but luckily my hotel fantasy gets to be played out only occasionally.

While the rest of my colleagues were gathering for schmoozing and appetizers, I was out soaking, alone, in the outdoor hut-tub right next to the “climate controlled” heated pool. During a break I walked around the hotel to sneak a view of the other unoccupied “deluxe” rooms because I like to know what could be available to me.  I looked at every amenity, stopped in to every empty conference room, scanned the supply of junk food at the “snack shop”  and took a thrill as I opened the little bar soap in my over-sized bathroom,  never before to be new again.

When I started to write today, I thought briefly about writing about my insights from the sessions I attended or the connections I made with other professionals I met.  Instead I kept thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice to be back in that hot-tub again, looking at the stars and contemplating a cold beer brought to me by a nice waiter or better yet, dessert served under one of those aluminum trays from room service?  So instead I had Chinese food delivered to our house, took a hot bath in my own bathroom and wondered what ever happened to my drawings of the “Goodyear” Hotel?

Think about your home or where you live.  Does your home change from day to day? Do you live in a different place depending upon how you feel from moment to moment? Chances are you don’t. You come home to the same place most nights. The same is true for our stuff.

Imagine that everything you own has a “home.” Not a “for now” home, but a permanent home.  If you’re not sure where something “lives” then think about the way you use an item and that often will inform you about where it can live. If you use an item in multiple locations, then assign it a permanent home so you’ll always know where you can find it.

For years, I could never find my eyeglasses.  Now, I keep a pair in multiple locations around my home.  This is because I need a pair for cooking and reading recipes, a pair for office work and a pair for driving. They always live in the same spot.  My kitchen glasses live near the phone. My office glasses live in a small, decorative container on my desk and my driving glasses live in my purse, always available to me when I drive. (I could also leave them in my glove compartment but I also use those glasses for shopping.)

Next, determine what you really want, need or love.  What you don’t want, need or love should be donated or appropriately disposed of.

For the things left over, start thinking about where they will live.

Finally decide how best contain them. It wouldn’t make sense for example to go out and buy 30 containers to hold all your old magazines if in the end you decide to donate them to a local hospital or library.

Here’s how this looks in a typical organizing challenge.

You have clothes strewn all over your home that need organizing. They include, winter wear, summer wear, formal wear, sportswear, kids clothes, and more.  Some you (or your family) still wear, some you don’t. Where do these clothes live? Are they clothes worn occasionally or are they part of your everyday wardrobe? Would it make sense to have some items live in one part of your home (say a coat closet) while others live in your bedroom closet? If both are crammed full of stuff already, then your task is to assign a home for your clothes, place them as close to that area as you can, and begin the task of creating the space you need for them.

Sometimes we don’t have the information we need to make a decision about something. A typical example is paper we keep.

Let’s say you have a file stuffed with tax related documents because you’re not sure if you need them. There are many ways you can get the information you need to decide.

• Ask a financial or tax adviser if you have access to one.
• Look on line at places like Moneygirl (http://moneygirl.quickanddirtytips.com).
• In some cases, a professional organizer will be able to tell you as well.

The important thing is to get the information you need to make your decision and avoid keeping it “just in case.”

Another decision-making obstacle occurs when you keep something “for sentimental reasons.” This represents the emotional attachment to our things.

Try asking yourself, “Does this item bring me pleasure?” “Do I associate it with a good memory?” “Is it healing to me in some way?” If yes, keep it, if not, it’s time it found a new life somewhere else.

A typical example I see with some of my parent clients is they don’t know what to do with their child’s schoolwork, artwork and handmade cards.  Here’s what I suggest:

• First decide what you love about them and use these criteria to make decisions about each item.
• Then decide what your purpose is in keeping items you don’t love. For example you want to keep a record of your child’s progress.
• Next decide where these items will live — and make room for these items ahead of time.
• Finally, contain the items. I generally recommend using what you already have around the house before going out and purchasing a new container.

Here’s how it might look in the end:

You decide you love your child’s handmade cards (they say, “I love Mommy” on all of them).

You decide you want to keep some of the artwork but you realize you don’t need every class assignment your child did since 2nd grade.  You know you have room in your office closet for about two boxes because you just cleaned it out and there is some room on the top shelf.

You decide to photograph your favorite drawings and upload them to your computer or even to a site like Snapfish (http://www.snapfish.com) to create a photobook.

You decide you need a record of their school progress, and keep or scan their report cards and teacher notes, and recycle their individual assignments.

You decide to contain the art work in a scrap book, using paper protecting sheets available from a craft store such as Michael’s Arts & Crafts (www.michaels.com)  and the rest in a watertight box available from the Container Store (www.containerstore.com)

You decide to put the box or boxes in your office closet, where they will live.

It is a strangely modern phenomena that we’ve accumulated so much more than we truly need.  We’ve learned to measure our happiness, rightly or not, by how much we own.

Additionally, how we value our lives, our worth and ourselves is muddled in with the emotions we experience every day about our security and our future, especially now.  We find ourselves keeping this or that for a guy called, Justin as in “just in case.”

Some of what we keep is tied to the memory of someone else or some unrealized version of ourselves.  We get stuck in our clutter like an overstuffed drawer we can’t open. We deny giving life to those dreams we had, and instead keep them hidden in a box or a closet or right out in the open as just one of many piles on our floor.

I believe organizing is not only about the physical act of clearing clutter or arranging items in closets, it’s about creating the room in your life for other opportunities and unrealized needs to emerge.  If you want more information about how I work, contact me at LET’S MAKE ROOM (www.letsmakeroom.com)

Think you’re decisive when it comes to your stuff? Great! The task of organizing will be a whole lot easier for you.

But if you catch yourself one too many times, saying to yourself, “I’ll just put this here, for now,” chances are you’re experiencing what professional organizers refer to as delayed decision making or what I think of as decision-deficit thinking.  That is, you lack the objective criteria or information you need to make an effective organizing decision.

It’s not that we can’t decide. We simply don’t know what the decision points are.

Before you can organize anything, whether it be your piles of old magazine clippings, your cluttered garage or the boxes of memorabilia you’ve kept for 20 years, you first need to decide three things about each item you’ve kept, in this order:

1. Do I need it, use it or love it?
2. If I do need it, use it or love it where should it live if I want to find it and if not, how do I dispose of it appropriately?
3. What’s the best way to store or contain it?

Think about it. When you embark on an organizing project the first thing many of us do is start with the third question first. We go to our favorite home furnishing or office supply store and buy ourselves some type of sleek-looking container or in some cases, many containers. Then we get home and realize the overwhelming task ahead of us. Next thing we know we’re sitting on the floor, eye’s glazed over, with 300 copies of the Utne Reader surrounding us, back where we started.

Is this our fault? Absolutely not! It’s just that in our consumer-based culture, asking the question, do I need it, use it or love it rarely gets answered.  Instead we learn to believe we need it, use it and love it. This belief comes from the habits we grew up with, through overt or subtle persuasion, through fear or insecurity or some combination of all three.

Clutter comes when we can’t decide what to do with something we know we need, use or love. You know you may be experiencing decision-deficit thinking if you catch yourself often saying, “I’ll just put it here for now” or “I’ll put it here where I can see it.”  After a while everything gets put “here” until you can’t see (or find) it or anything else.

So what do you do?  Check out my next blog for answers.

Lis Golden McKinley, M.A.
CEO (Chief Executive Organizer)
LET’S MAKE ROOM
Oakland, CA

Visit my website: https://www.letsmakeroom.com

Every week or so I have a kind of therapy appointment. It’s not with a therapist though. It’s with one of the employed blue shirted “geniuses” (an entirely deserved title) at my local Apple store.

This week’s  peace of mind came after learning how to import the music from my old PC into I-Tunes into my new Macbook Pro.  Not all of my sessions are this fluffy. Last week I learned how to set up a Google calendar that could be read by my new Droid phone.  As it is, I can’t even believe I know what that means now.

As my trainer and I sat waiting for a few moments for the transfer to finish, I asked him how his day was going. He smiled widely, and thanked me for asking, adding no one had ever asked him that question before. He actually looked surprised and grateful.

He explained he didn’t mind because he loved his job.  “Like winning the golden ticket for the chocolate factory tour,” he told me.   At that moment, I looked around at the large number of people in the store all checking out the latest Apple gadgets and caught the sound of a little girl singing while she sat at a computer table set up just for kids her size.  This is a company that totally gets it’s customers, I thought.

It’s a sometimes strange, occasionally intimidating,  wondrous place, the Apple Store.  It’s the piazza, the town hall, the local cafe, the mall and yes even the therapist’s office all wrapped up into one.

I looked back at my trainer and told him how when I was his age (I’m guessing he was in his late 20’s), people barely gave me the time of day when I was job hunting.  I was young and inexperienced. I knew things but not a lot.  I needed to start at the bottom, ‘pay my dues,’ or so the line went. Now, just looking around the store, I noticed that most of the employees in the store were probably born after 1990, and now they are the ones to know.

Do they even realize it? I wondered  Unlike those of us born at the tail end of the baby boom, they are the experts now. It struck me how much the entire paradigm had shifted. I felt a pang of regret knowing that after all these years I was back to being the “new kid” again.

There I was, as old or older than the people I used to approach for jobs, listening with rapt attention to someone who really did possess the “golden ticket” but not because he was fortunate to get a job at Apple, but because he happened to be born into the digital age.   This made him, or at least his knowledge, very valuable to me.  Why? because I know every time I turn on my computer, or walk into that Apple store, I’m going to be playing catch up. But it’s okay. If I’ve learned one thing by now, it’s that it’s good to always be learning.

My husband is the fixer of things in our home. I am the fixer of food, and, pretty darn good at it, thanks in part to professional cooking courses I’ve taken over the years and lots of practice.

Like my handy husband, I learned the hard way that there is nothing more maddening when you’re practicing your craft than poor quality tools. They may save you money in the short run, but you’ll end up cursing the cheap knife you bought from that late-night TV commercial when it ends up with a piece of your finger falling into the Bouillabaisse.

Now that the economy has sliced into our national dining-out budget, supposedly we are all becoming masters of our kitchen-domain. Yes, there are real money-saving and health benefits to becoming our own version of the “Next Food Network Star.” But when it’s 7 p.m. and you’ve just arrived home exhausted from work and the first thing your family says to you is “what’s for dinner?” suddenly the take-out menus in your kitchen drawer start calling your name.

But wait! Don’t dial yet. What if I were to share the knowledge that will help you make a delicious and nutritious meal in less time then it takes for the Mu-shu to arrive at your door? No, it’s not a recipe. You probably have enough of them already. Actually, it’s all about having the right tool – the best tool – for the job. This is what makes cooking fun even if you don’t like to cook.

After years of fixing meals for my family, my friends, my relatives, even my pets, I realized there are a handful of cook’s tools I use over and over because they do exactly what they are meant to do – help me get dinner on the table quickly and efficiently. My favorite cooking tools are well made, well designed, and great values. Any reasonably organized home cook would do well to include these clever tools in their kitchen.

As a professional organizer with a knack for kitchen design and meal planning, I decided it was time to share my list and my reasons for picking these tools from the thousands out there. Your list may be different. If so, send it to me. I’m always interested in learning new things much like the first cooking course I took. It was a birthday present from my husband when he was still my fiancé. He knew how much I enjoyed cooking and I suppose he knew he’d get a good home-cooked meal out of me as well.

By the way, all the items I have listed are available online and in stores including Sur La Table and Bed Bath & Beyond, neither of which employs me in any way. (Although if either want to send me a gift to thank me for the free plug, who am I to refuse them?) So here they are:

Ten Clever, Timesaving, Cook’s Tools for Under $50 (and Often Much Less)

1. Chef’s Knife – Nothing is more important to a cook, then a great knife. And nothing is more dangerous then a lousy one. I like the 8-inch Wüsthof model which I purchased at Sur La Table. It’s large enough to dice an onion and small enough to slice a strawberry.
2. Stainless steel tongs – I prefer the unlocking kind. They are lightweight and don’t pinch. I use one made by Oxo for everything from flipping filets to tossing salad. They are lightweight and generally cost under $10. I use the tongs probably more then any other single tool in my kitchen. Buy two so you’ll always have one available if the other is in the dishwasher.
3. Mandolin – I use this handheld, adjustable slicing tool for making uniform slices of anything from cucumbers to cabbage in less than 30 seconds. Perfect for stir-fries. If you’ve never seen one, it looks like a paddle with a kind of guillotine blade built into it. I recommend the version that comes with the hand guard. Kyocera makes one in red.
4. Rubber garlic peeler – Whoever invented this should win a Nobel Prize. It’s basically just a small rubber tube. You roll your unpeeled garlic cloves inside it and voila! Out rolls peeled garlic. Since there are no moving parts, cleaning it is nothing more then a rinse under water.
5. Micro-plane grater/zester with handle – This long, narrow grater looks like a giant nail file with tiny holes. Use it to grate garlic right into your hot sauté pan. Doing it this way, versus crushing it, will prevent the garlic from burning and turning bitter. It’s also great for zesting lemons and hard cheeses like fresh Parmesan.
6. Digital probe thermometer/kitchen timer – This has been my foolproof tool for roasting meats or poultry to perfection. It allows you to monitor both time and internal temperature while cooking. I like the one that has the magnetic backing for attaching to your range hood while cooking. No more guessing if the turkey is done on Thanksgiving.
7. Horizontal peeler – I use the Oxo brand. It has a good grip and has a matching vertical model. It’s perfect for peeling large, winter veggies like butternut squash and turnips in a snap.
8. Electric coffee grinder – I like the model made by Krups. Its powerful motor is great for grinding small quantities of fresh-picked spices
and nuts. It’s less expensive then the ones sold as “Spice and Nut” grinders exclusively. It comes in black and white. Buy them both and use one for coffee and one for spices. But don’t mix the two otherwise your coffee will end up tasting like oregano.
9. Handheld citrus juicer (a.k.a. lemon squeezer) – When these brightly colored squeezers first came out, I’m sure I was among the millions that said, “I wish I’d thought of that.” Get the one for lemons. It’s big enough for small oranges and works just fine for limes as well.
10. Magnifying glass – It’s not a cooking tool per se, but if you are past the age of 40, you’ve probably noticed that the typeface on labels, and in some cookbooks, has mysteriously shrunken in size. If you left your reading glasses upstairs by the computer, having a magnifying glass in your kitchen will prove to be a great timesaver.

Bon Appétit!

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