As I mentioned in my Pumpkin Beer Bread post, I was a busy bee on Sunday. I took advantage of the most excellent extra day off and took apart my pantry, laundry room, and kitchen drawers to reorganize. I may or may not have DESTROYED everything before I built it back up. My husband hates my “way” of cleaning, but you’ve GOT to remove everything before putting it back, even if that means making a huge mess. (Am I right?)
From this angle, the washer and dryer still look a bit crowded, but it’ll get better once we install a cabinet up over the dryer, and add an additional shelf where the window mirror is.
Here’s what our pantry looks like now – yes! Everything has a place, and is organized. All old stuff is tossed (wasn’t much, but still) and I reorganized so the kids could reach more things they want and need.
Before I reorganized, I didn’t have a place for my empty laundry baskets or their sports bottles. Now I do! Yay!
On this second shelf, I’ve moved the breakfast cereals, pop tarts, and oatmeal here, so the kids can reach their breakfast stuff. (We’ll see if it remains here with Baby V the Destructor). In the meantime, I reorganized the jars and cans that were on this shelf, and moved over some of the larger items to the end.
On this third shelf, you’ll notice the nut butters (because Baby V knows how to unscrew the lids and stick her hands in), as well as rice, oils, pastas, and baking items (like flour and chocolate chips). I love those stackable white bins and the undershelf storage for our bread and plastics/foil. I used an old Tupperware piece to store extra K-cups.
On the fourth shelf, I store the bulk stuff and specialty breads, like the pretzel bread and tortillas. I also have all the chips up here, and more under the shelf storage for more bread and buns.
On the tippy top shelf, I have alllll our many cookbooks, some alcohol for cocktails or recipes, and the party supplies, like plates, cups, straws, napkins, etc. I also store my protein and more bulk snacks that are too big for other shelves.
On the washer, I have all my washing apparatus, including one of those stackable buckets in the back filled with dryer balls, bra basket, and other laundry items. I also kept a box of Clif bars here, since we weren’t quite done with the other one yet (on the pantry shelf).
I used an old pot to store our water bottles not in use (for now), and a white storage container to hold the kids’ lunchboxes. It’s sitting on top of the large electric skillet we use often. Towards the back is a shelf with picnic stuff.
I am VERY proud of how my kitchen drawers look now. Simply adding a recycled plastic container or two to the silverware drawer improves it considerably.
Our kitchen utensil drawer (filled with stuff we don’t use often) was easy to organize adding another plastic container to handle birthday candles.
Our cutting board drawer looks a bit bare – I might add some plastic containers in here later if I need additional storage for something.
This drawer is our “fun” drawer (except for the medicine droppers). It containers our fun shapes for cutting out cookies, pancakes, sandwiches, etc.
This next drawer on the other side of the stove containers our potholders and measuring cups, as well as our baggie of box tops for school.
And this.. this is my junk drawer! Yes! This was nowhere near as painful as I thought it would be. I have screws, nails, and hooks in two different containers, broken crayons in the back, batteries in another, school stuff in another, and that leaves just enough room for the battery charger, rulers, and some flypaper.
I removed the rest of the writing implements from the junk drawer – they were simply taking over! I separated all the broken crayons (to make our own crayons for later), and only put in the full sized, working items. If those twistable crayons were broken, they were tossed. We had quite a few left, that I’m SO happy about. This thing is nice and full and looks great and organized now! Yes!
I could not be more pleased with how this turned out! Better than last time!