Spring Break Spring Cleaning!

This week on Project Simplify, the challenge was fridge/freezer and pantry organization.  I have been pretty good at cleaning out my fridge each week when I plan my weekly menu, but this project gave me the opportunity to really deep clean my fridge and freezer. I had also cleared out my pantry fairly recently, so this week`s challenge was more of a tidy-up and allowed me to reassess my current organizing setup.  
Here are the BEFORE photos...

oh wow, that looks really bad

 

We had a pretty massive storm come through here on Monday this week.  It knocked out our for about 5 hours. Since the kids were trapped at home with no electronic entertainment (oh the humanity!) I put them straight to work on organizing the kitchen cabinets. 

They emptied the shelves they could reach, they sorted like items together, and then they found the candy bin.  They promptly emptied said bin and I didn`t see them for a couple of hours!!

While the girls played on a sugar filled playdate at the neighbour`s house, I got straight to work.  I finally installed the super-awesome soup can organizers I got for Christmas, and filled them up with the cans of soup I found in no less than three different kitchen cupboards. 

Then I got out my ghetto labeller (cardstock and a sharpie!) and started labelling!  Originally my plan was to organize the food stuff and leave the massive mess of cookbooks and recipes and craft supplies on the bottom shelf for another day. 

But once I started, I couldn`t stop!!  I went through all of the magazine holders and saved the What`s Cooking magazines (I use them all the time!). 

  

Then I took what was left and whipped through them super fast and pulled out the recipes/ideas that I thought I would use.  I went from about 14 magazines down to about 10 pieces of paper that I promptly tucked into my recipe binder!

Right about this time, the power came back on!  So, I got to work on the fridge and freezer.  I followed the rules and completely emptied out both fridge and freezer, tossed any yucky/expired food or bottles of salad dressing that were never going to be used.  Then I hit up the freezer.  I didn`t have much to toss, but I did have a massive amount of reorganizing to do.  When I did my big freezer cook a couple of weeks ago, I stored a whole bunch of the meals in the kitchen fridge freezer because my deep freeze outside was too full! Once the frozen food was put in the proper freezer, I had lot of room to properly sort the stuff in this freezer. 

I cleared off the front of the fridge of all but the "necessities" - the monthly menu plan, a grocery list pad, a supercute photo of Aidyn holding Eila when she was a couple of days old, and some papers I'll be needing in the next few days. 

Although it was a L-O-T of work, and it took a good few hours, I felt great once the project was complete!  Did you organize this week?