Kitchen Contained!

Hello my friends! Sorry I have been MIA this week. The kids and I were sick, then we had a couple of spring break all-day-long-play dates and now it’s Thursday Friday and I’m finally posting for the first time! I’m working my way cupboard by cupboard, and stretch of countertop at a time. So far I have handled my glassware, pots, pans, platters, bowls, Tupperware and my command centre. Being a part of OrgJunkie’s 31 Day Organizational Challenge has definitely spurred me on!

Finally!!! My kitchen chaos has been contained!!

This week I am working on the most challenging part of my kitchen – my baking supplies. I bake. A LOT. Last year I spent time on the Quest for the Perfect Cupcake. Needless to say, I have an extremely large amount of baking accoutrement. I store most of my shaped and larger cake pans in the garage, and my seldom used cupcake display pieces in an upstairs part of my linen closet. My supplies however, they live in the kitchen.

SO.  MUCH.  Crystal Light.  Yes, this entire container is filled with Crystal Light singles and pitcher packets.  I know, I have a problem...

For those of you just coming by here for the first time, let me tell you flat out – I am a hoarder. Well, I’m a recovering hoarder now. I have been following a minimalish path for a few years now and have slowly worked the minimalish rules on most areas of our home. I do however, still hoard food and ingredients. I have baking supplies and ingredients in no less than four different cupboards in the kitchen. 

Before I even started this project, I called in reinforcements!  My rock star neighbour Krista came over to help me start the PROCESS. I extended my kitchen table to its fullest capacity and then hunted through all of the cupboards for all of the baking stuff in the kitchen. Oh mercy, there was even more in there than I thought possible.  

Since I didn’t have a ton of stuff to purge, I started sorting like with like: all the chocolate chips together, all of the sprinkles together, all of the paper cupcake liners together (note to self: DO NOT buy any more cupcake liners!!). I went even further and put all of the puddings and jellos together, since I usually use those for baking instead of just for their intended purpose.

 

My total organizational container investment for this huge project was $8!! I bought 6-$1 lidded Sterilite containers from Walmart and two $1 packages of hot pink stickers to use on the labels. I had cardstock on hand that I used to line the front of the bins to hide the supplies within. After moving our breakfast foods into the cupboard that previously stored half of my baking supplies, I was able to consolidate all of my pretty new containers into the pantry we have in the kitchen! WooHoo! Extra bonus – all of my ingredients are now right next to my beloved kitchenaid mixer! I think this calls for a celebration – cupcakes all around!!

While organizing all of the baking supplies, Krista and her organizing OCD also got me fired up to organize the kids homework and craft supplies into one of the newly emptied cupboards - YIPPEE!!

The last thing I needed to do in my 31 Day Organizational Challenge was a thorough deep cleaning of the kitchen. I got out my mop, bucket and cleaning cloths and got all of the kitchen surfaces sparkly clean! Ah, I love a clean, organized kitchen! Thanks again to OrgJunkie for hosting this challenge and to my friend Krista for helping me finish it!  Here are some quick before-and-afters of the Kitchen Chaos project:

Week One: The Glassware Cupboard

Week Two - Pots and Pans, Dishcloths, Platters and Tupperware:

   

and after

   

 

 Week Three - The Command Centre

Week Four - Baking Supplies:

Baking supplies AFTER!

Laura asked all of the Organizing Challenge participants to answer a couple of questions about the work we have done this past month.

1. What space did you decide to organize and why?
I decided to organize my kitchen.  The kitchen is the heart of the home, and we live in our kitchen!  There is always something happening - homework, cooking, baking, chatting, party planning.  Our kitchen takes a beating and needed some definite organizing love.

2. What steps did you take to ensure you completed the space within the 31 day timeline?
In order to finish in the month long timeline (which was HARD!!) I made a list of all of the cupboards and their uses and then broke them out into the weeks I had to finish the work.  It was tough, because we were away two of the weekends and the kids were on spring break for 2 weeks, but I managed to get it done!

3. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and how did you overcome it?
TIME.  Because I spend so much time actually using my kitchen, finding the time to empty cupboards and purge and organize was tough!!  But I soldiered on and stayed up after the kids went to bed. 

4. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
I was able to bring some of the extra glassware down to my cabin to be repurposed, and donated a bunch of other dishes and kitchenware.

5. Tell me one of your proudest moments during this challenge?
That I was able to finally contain my baking supplies.  I bake a lot and having my supplies spread out over four different spaces in my kitchen meant that I was constantly making an even bigger mess digging out supplies and ingredients than I should have.  Hopefully this new, pretty-labelled system will work for me!

6. Explain any organizing “tools” you used to help you create additional space and to establish some limits and boundaries?
The best organizing tool for me is the dollar store!  I can find everything I need there to better organize the spaces in my home very inexpensively.  I love the simple baskets and bins and the craft section for labels and making the space a little prettier!

7. What is ONE piece of organizing advice you’ve learned on this journey that you could encourage someone else with? 
Just take it one small step at a time.  Even though this month I tackled a big (for me) project, breaking it up into smaller steps that I could do one at a time made it way easier to handle.  I also like knowing that I only need to commit a small amount of time when doing a small part of the project, instead of taking an entire day to go start to finish on a massive job.

I want to thank Laura from Org Junkie for hosting this challenge and for inspiring me to finally get this space in order!!

Kitchen Chaos - Week Three Progress!

Week THREE! Progress!! Well, not a lot of progress, but a little progress is better than none, right?? I have been trying to tackle the chaos that is my kitchen bit by bit this month as part of OrgJunkie’s 31 Day Organizing Challenge. The first week I attacked my insane collection of glassware. The second week I went crazy and organized my platters and bowls, dishcloths, pots and pans and Tupperware! It was a little bit insane, but felt really great when it was done.

This week I’ve been working full time because the hubs is home having spring break adventures with the girls. What this means for me is that the three hours of project time I usually have between the littles going to bed and the hubs getting home didn’t happen this week.

I did manage to carve out a few minutes while cooking dinner to get my command centre back in order. You can see my original post on how I created this space here. I put this system in place almost a year ago and it’s been doing pretty well for us. This week I took every piece of paper from the massively accumulating pile and took them into the living room to sort while watching TV. I also took stock of what ends up in this space and made a few small changes.

My girls bring an enormous amount of art home from school and since I have a hard time parting with it, and have a good system for retaining it (which I will share as soon as I finish sorting the art I removed from this space!!) I needed a better way to contain the incoming art.

My local dollar store sometimes carries really really cute organizing items. I found these magazine storage things in my favourite color of the minute – grey! I labelled the container “Incoming Art” and hopefully once the glue and paint have dried and they are finished their rotation on the fridge they can be nicely placed in the Incoming Art space. 

Fifteen minutes later, ta-da!!  All done!

I took another five minutes to sort out our lunch box storage area. I installed some cheapie plastic hooks to the end of my cupboard in the front corner of the kitchen. I have two small hooks that hold Miss A and Miss E’s lunch bags each evening. I also installed a little larger hook to hold my lunch bag, which is a bit heavier.

Being spring break, it is a great time to do a deep cleaning of the girls’ lunch boxes. Some hot water, vinegar and dish soap and a good scrubbing later, the lunch boxes were spick and span and ready for school in another week.

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to find the time to tackle the biggest issue in my kitchen – the insane amount of baking supplies and ingredients. OrgJunkie gave me some serious inspiration in this post so I have a starting off point.

Thanks for checking in with my progress. If you like this post you should definitely check out the other people linked up with Org Junkie, there have been some awesome transformations!

I’ll be linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

31 Day Organizing Challenge – My Crazy Kitchen

 

One year ago I started this little blog because I wanted to enter OrgJunkie’s contest for her Organizational Challenge. 

 Last year I tackled our scrapbook room. The project was a huge undertaking, but it’s done! And for the most part, the room has stayed neat and organized. 

                     

    

The room that I chose to tackle this year is my kitchen. Since today is the first link up party, I thought I could show my before pics (AAHHH!!!) and my first bit of progress. 

We have a couple of trigger spots in our kitchen – the command centre, the homework area and oh yeah, ridiculously over filled cabinets. It’s a bit insane. I have posted in the past about my organized command centre, and when it’s organized it’s a thing of beauty. However, with the amount of paper that comes into my house, it doesn’t take long for it to become chaos once again.

 

 

My plan is to go through my cupboards one at a time and see what I have too many of, or what I have not used in the past year. All of these items will promptly be placed in my donation station and transported to our local thrift store so someone else can make use of them.

First stop on the kitchen project – our ridiculous collection of glassware. I have THREE full cupboards of glasses. There are four of us. That’s a bit insane. I started by taking everything out of the cupboard and wiping down the shelves. I always wonder how it’s possible that crumbs end up in a cupboard where CLEAN dishes reside.

 

After paring down my ridiculous number of glasses, and filling a box with some plastic wine glasses and beer glasses to bring down to the cabin I got to work organizing. I had some pretty shelf paper from another project, so I cut myself a couple of pieces to line the bottom shelf of the cupboard. I could have gone crazy and lined them all, but since I’m only 5”5” on a good day, I just lined the one shelf I could actually see.

 

Since this cupboard is also the home to our kiddie dishes and cups I pared these down also. I got rid of the little little kid sippy cups and just kept these straw cups with lids. They cost about $3 for a four pack and they are the BEST cups!!

 

Ta-Da!! Well? What do you think? Here is my nicely organized glassware cupboard! A box and a BIG bag of excess dishes later and this is where we are at today! I have a full shelf and a half of EMPTY space and all of my glasses are neatly organized.

 

You may wonder about my mug collection - how they are all random and un-matching? It’s on purpose. A long time ago when I started on my decluttering journey I got rid of the matched set of mugs I had because they just weren’t big enough. I need a CUPPA tea, not a teeny tiny mug worth. I have my favourite HUGE mugs (from Disneyland) and a couple of other big mugs. I do maintain two small ones for my neighbour Kelly who is anti-huge-cuppa-tea.

Progress! Thanks so much for coming over to see my little bit of progress in the kitchen. Hopefully by the next linky party I will be able to tackle some of the rest of my kitchen projects – the baking cupboardS (yes, plural), the platters and bowls, and the food – oh my, the food.

I’m linking my progress post up to Org Junkie’s Challenge page. I wonder what the other posters are organizing!!