GingerBabyMama: 31 Day Organizing Challenge

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!!