Kitchen Organization, Part 1: The Best Storage Containers
I started tackling problem areas of my house (which makes up a good portion of my house) months before the new year, and I'm glad I did. I still have plenty of room for new year resolutions, but I feel good about having gotten a head start. To keep myself honest and motivated, I wanted to share my little head start, and tips for gaining control over inside your cabinets (the place I chose to start).
Hopefully in this new year, we'll start renovations to our kitchen, brightening it up, updated counters and backsplash, and streamlined structure. I realized through other friends going through kitchen renovations that I really need to clean out the extra stuff, declutter and start organizing the remaining stuff BEFORE our own renovations start. This will help the current living and kitchen usage, but also the cleaning out/moving back in process later.
Before we just had loads of food stuffed (literally) into our cabinets. Nothing organized, nothing finable - so much so, we would just constantly buy new items we needed immediately, instead of the stuff we already had. As I was cleaning everything out - I found items that had expired in 2009!
The first thing you need to do is enlist/bribe/coerce a friend into helping you. It's way more fun with a friend (and some music), plus they help keep you honest. Thanks, Tiff! And take before pics, because you'll forget how bad it actually looked and it'll be super motivating to continue/do more.
Second: Take everything out of your cabinets. EVERYTHING. Then you can start grouping items and throwing out things that are expired (like from 2009...), not used in over a year or multiples of items. Once the cabinets are clear, you can begin measuring your space to know what size of storage containers to get.
Once you've cleaned out a bunch of stuff and grouped your remaining items, you'll assess what kinds of storage items you need.
I immediately ordered these Sistema Bake IT Storage Containers in both the "Flour" (larger) size, and the "Sugar" (smaller) size for all my powders, seeds, oats, chocolate morsels and granules. I love these because they seal well and easily, plus come with a measuring scoop. They also keep everything lined up and visible to what is running low and needed.
I also got these clear storage bins for my spices. My friend had the genius idea to group my less-used or extra spices by alphabetical order and toss them in bins vs. lined up and lost to the back. I then use a lazy susan to alphabetically organize the spices I used the most for easy access.
As a final and added touch, get a label maker to make it extra clear where everything goes. Just beware, once you get to labeling things, it'll be hard to stop!
{for the record.. this was their ideas!}
My cabinet organization products:
Tell me your favorite life-changing organization updates or what's on your list to get organized!
