mission: organize my life: the kitchen



okay, so let me preface this by saying i'm a little bit embarrassed to be posting this. but i have to do it because this - the topic of organization - is really important to me right now. i mean, i am an organized person usually. but lately, i have seriously struggled maintaining it all - working, cooking, cleaning, time for me, time for terence, just everything. i've kind of been frozen with the overwhelmingness of it all. so i've decided to come up with a plan of attack. i'm going to go through each room in our house and finally put them in the order that i've wanted to for months. the state of our house relates directly to my state of mind. for me, i need to have a plan and organization in order to be able to make plans for our future and plans now for our family. (as an aside, this topic is directly connected to my dream of moving to the pacific northwest. more to come about that!)

so, please pardon a post without an adorable one year old and instead admire my newly organized kitchen cabinets. :) i didn't do any "before" pictures. i don't want to remember that. just the good stuff. 



i scored some sweet containers from the dollar store for bulk items - rice, pasta, cereal. a little basket and stacking shelves keep preserved goods together and easier to see. vinegars and oils are all in one place now, too. and up top are small appliances that i use fairly often.

i have a lot of baking and cooking pantry stuff. and before it was just, everywhere. now, these blue bins on the left hold baking products. i keep my sugar and flour in the airtight, clear containers on the middle shelf and cooking oil bottles are next to them. all of the pantry beverages - hot chocolate, tea, ice tea, coffee - are now in their own blue bucket. and another part of our pantry that was totally out of control was all the treats and snacks. not any more - they're all together neatly in a basket.

and lastly, i finally got to put these cute bins i got from target years ago to good, organized use. previously, they held all of ruby's bottles, sippy cups, and dishes, but in a complete mess. and this corner pantry was overloaded before which didn't help. now i've cleaned out all random appliances and dishes, leaving room for the bins. i just stacked up all of ruby's dishes and bottles neatly. same deal for the top two shelves. the key to this area was cleaning out all of the random crap that had piled up in here. once it was all put in its right place, everything else pretty much organized itself.