Review of Simplified Pantry

The majority of the products I get to review are for my children (which I love!), so I was intrigued to review something just for me.  Organization is not, to put it benignly, my strong suit, so when Mystie Winckler's Simplified Pantry products came up for review, I knew I had to jump at the chance.

Paperless Home Organization is a 75 page ebook which leads disorganized women (or men!), such as myself, through the process of creating a digital homemaking binder.  Like me, Mystie tried more than one homemaking binder system before realizing that she just couldn't make it work.  Unlike me, she fixed that problem by creating a system that does work for her!

Using three online tools and their corresponding apps (Evernote, Remember the Milk, and Google), Mystie teaches her readers how to streamline and organize their lives seamlessly.

As I already use all three of these applications on my phone and computer (although I am not as consistent with Remember the Milk as I could be), I was anxious to see what Mystie had to say.  As it turns out, Paperless Home Organization is *very* good at explaining how to use these tools! Using step-by-step instructions for how to set up all of these apps and sync them, and supplementing with plenty of screenshots, the ebook walks you through the steps that are necessary to use all of the features of the three apps to their best advantage.  Best of all, even though I use all three already, I still learned a few things.  I was not using Remember the Milk to its full advantage, and after I followed each of Mystie's steps, I have noticed that fewer tasks are getting by me, and that those tasks that remain uncompleted are getting rescheduled for a later date.  For me, that's huge.  Being able to work with Google's calendar more effectively has also proven helpful for me.

If you have never used Evernote or Remember the Milk, this ebook is a must, especially if you have a smartphone.  Trust me, your phone can make your life easier in ways you can't imagine, but you really need someone to walk you through which apps to use and how to make them work together seamlessly.  Paperless Home Organization does that in an easy-to-read and cost effective way.  This ebook only costs $3.99 for the Kindle or as a pdf!

Simplified Pantry also offers Simplified Dinners (also Simplified Dinners Gluten Free/Dairy Free),
an ebook that promises to simplify your dinner making with a master pantry list and multiple ways/recipes to prepare a single type of meal.  For example, Simplified Dinners will begin with a crock pot roast, give you the method of preparation, and then offer eight different ways to vary this basic preparation.

When I followed this method of dinner preparation, I was hooked.  It is essentially how I already think of dinner, but having the master pantry list, and having the variations already done for me, made the whole process so much easier! The ebook is attractively laid out, the recipes are extremely simple, and the results are good! Even better, once you start cooking this way, your own ideas really start flowing and you begin to add to Mystie's.

I love the no-defrost slow cooker chicken pieces best.  I'll confess that I go ahead and make it more expensive than it has to be because I use chicken breasts, but instead of having to do Internet searches several times per week for crock pot chicken recipes, I just pulled out this page in the cookbook and threw in an average of four or so additional ingredients (which, thanks to the master pantry list, I already had on hand), and I was good to go.  For $12.99, this cookbook is worth its weight in gold.  I love this method of cooking and will continue to cook (and add to!) this book.

From May 20 - June 3, Mystie is offering TOS Review Crew blog readers 30% off the purchase of her ebooks with the coupon code TOS2013.  As the books are already reasonably priced, this adds up to big savings!

Be sure to read all the Crew reviews to see what other Crew members thought of these neat Mom-centric products!