Kitchen Organization!

The other day I read something on FB about kitchen organization and how when your counters are all crowded it can make you feel overstimulated visually. I walked into the kitchen and thought that maybe that person was onto something. My plans for the day had unexpectedly gotten changed so I thought why not tackle the kitchen. 

I forgot to take a picture right before I started...you can see on the left I had already started taking things out of the cabinet. One of the things the lady had mentioned is the fact that most of us keep a lot of things on the counter when we literally use them for a few minutes every week. Her thinking was how hard is it to take something out of the cabinet for those couple minutes and then put them back. 

So the first thing I had to do was organize the cabinets better so I could fit the things that were on the counter in there. That cabinet in the corner is where we store all the coffee/tea/hot cocoa and then all the baking basics like flour/sugar/brown sugar. 

It's amazing what you come across when you organize...this is my mouth guard from one of my gum surgeries forever ago. Seriously...why did I keep this!!! 

Here's the cabinet all organized. I was able to put the white canisters that were on the counter in there. The coffee maker and the hot pot also are up there now. We don't even use those everyday so it does seem silly to have them on the counter all the time. 

This opened up the whole corner of the kitchen. The bread basket and the cake ended up getting moved later too. 

Here is the snack corner. This area is always so packed...we are serious snackers in this house! This part of the kitchen has bothered me for a long time, but because it's tucked to the side of the frig it's kind of out of view so I've just dealt with it. Part of the problem is those darn huge boxes of Costco stuff. The popcorn box won't even fit in the snack cabinet.  

I'm one of those people that would have fit in really well back during the depression era. I don't throw away any reusable containers. I remember going into my Grandma's kitchen when I was little and she literally had about 20 Country Crock containers just waiting to be used. These containers are my Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough ones from the boys fundraiser at school. They fit the popcorn bags perfectly. 

 One box down...lots of organization to go! 

I was able to use a few Costco spice containers to fit more snacks in and it was looking better. 

I ended up moving the paper towels and my kitchen brushes and sponges over to the right side of the sink. It made more sense since I mainly use the right side of the sink anyway. This side of the kitchen was looking much better. I still wasn't really happy with the area on the right of the stove. That's where I put all my paperwork and all the pens/pencil. 

All the spices used to be in the corner above the sunflower canisters and it seemed silly that they weren't closer to the stove. So I reorganized the upper cabinet to the right of the stove so I could move them over. That left this corner cabinet open so I was able to put all those big chip bags up inside the cabinet. I love that they aren't on the counter. The donut box and cake pan aren't things we normally have so they aren't something that will be on the counter all the time. 

I finally came up with something I liked better for the "office" portion of the kitchen. It's much cleaner and I love it!!! 

The next day I decided to tackle the pantry. We have such a huge pantry I don't really have to be super organized, but it always helps! The top part of the hanging organizer is filled with all sorts of baking things like food coloring, icing and sprinkles. They really were taking up a bunch of those little pockets so I knew I wanted to relocate those. 

The pink thing hanging in the pantry is my new grocery bag holder I sewed for myself. It seems like I'm always sewing things for others so it was fun to sew something for myself. 

I freed up a bunch of those pockets so I was able to put different things in them like...medicine/nail polish/the boys glasses. 

The pantry used to be organized to where a bunch of stuff that we used regularly was in the way back so I changed that and moved it forward. 

All those baking things got put inside one big clear reusable container so I can easily see them, but they aren't taking up all this valuable space. 

And to top off this reorganization adventure I even cleared off the top of the frig! All the work was definitely work all the free space that's now on the counter!