confessions of a clutterer: kitchen days 3-7

The kitchen certainly took much longer than I expected.  I did take time off here and there for my nephew's birthday and other fun stuff, but I think I got most of it under control!

I was working on the cabinets....still.  I have cabinets on each side of the microwave that I keep baking stuff and cooking stuff.  Baking soda, spices, brown sugar, garlic powder, vinegar.  You know, that kind of stuff.  They looked pretty bad, but they weren't as awful as I expected.  There were some expired things and a couple of things I have duplicates of, but not as many as there were in the pantry :/

 Baking Stuff

 Cooking Stuff

 Condiments & Junk

My befores are on the left and the afters are on the right.  It doesn't look like I did anything, but I swear I did!  In the baking area I tried to keep the stuff I use more often on the bottom shelf.  With the cooking stuff I did the same thing and though it does look crowded it actually is less so.  I greatly thinned out the oils & vinegars and hot sauces on the lazy susan.  To me, it looks a lot better.

The main thing I did was make a list of everything that I have in there so I can keep track of what we have and what we need.  I find that's my biggest problem.  I can't see stuff because I'm so short so I think we don't have it and then I buy another one.  No more, my friends!

And I got these done:

Before

After

Before

After

I still have to work on the cookbooks and food magazines on the bottom shelf.  We went and bought the overlay that goes down so I can put the books up instead of stacking them.  We also got a hook for the fruit basket and I love it.  It was just hanging from the top shelf and taking up room and now it's off to the side.  I thinned out our reusable bags (again) and put them inside my spam musubi bag.  I put all of our outside toys in the bin.  Bubbles, sand toys, chalk and the such.  Generally, these would stay outside until the got infested with spiders or the chalk melted away in the rain.  Hopefully this will keep our stuff a bit longer.

So the kitchen is almost done!  I still have the desk drawer, the junk drawer, the cookbooks and the cabinet above the pantry.  I think I can knock those out in one day and then get started on the living room.  Since Ray is off this week we're taking the girls to the beach tomorrow with my parents and maybe doing a couple of other fun things, but I think I can squeeze in a couple of hours of cleaning somewhere!