I could tell from the beginning that this was going to be a huge task. I have quite a few cabinets and drawers, most of them overflowing. I have reorganized these before, yet somehow it never seems to last long so this challenge was certainly going to it me where it hurt.
My most used cabinets are in a pretty organized state. But others, like the corner cabinet that stores plastic food storage gets pretty messy from time to time. I decided to mark my cheap mark my cheap plastic food storage with permanent marker so that each container has a corresponding lid. Hopefully this will save a lot of time that I waste trying to find lids that match containers. This was also a good time to dispose of any containers that didn’t have lids. That cabinet has always been too full, so sorting it was a real challenge. But I either recycled or donated things that don’t ever get used and rarely used items were relegated to the top shelf.
Before
Before
Under the kitchen sink. Now there is a wasteland of cleaning products. Dumping old cleaning products seems wasteful and unhealthy so as a result I have half empty bottles of so many different kinds of cleaners. Many are used for very few tasks (like Goo Gone) but crucial when needed so I can’t quite part with them. I’ve also developed a collection of reuseable cleaning rags. But now things are organized by frequency of use and either empty and mostly empty containers have been recycling. Plus my cleaning rags are nicely folded in the pile next to the appropriate cleaning products (dust rags in one pile, resuseable swiffer socks in another etc.)
After
After
Now you may not be able to tell from the picture, but I got rid of a lot of things in the corner cabinet so that mostly what you see is what is in there. That way there aren’t things stuffed way in the back that never get used and are completely forgotten. As for the cabinet under the sink. Some of you may remember from a previous post that we strive to use very few paper towels. This roll under the sink currently represents the last roll in the house. We only use it for cooking bacon or other really unsanitary jobs where cleaning rags won’t do. I’m hoping to avoid replacing it for as long as possible. By having it under the counter, we aren’t tempted to grab a paper towel out of instinct when a rag will do and it gives me more space on my countertop.
While I didn’t have time to completely reorganize all of my cabinets (several of them were already fairly organized anyway), focusing on the worst offenders has made my kitchen more functional already.
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