New Year's Organizing Revolution 2013: The Kitchen

Welcome to week 2 of the New Year's Organizing Revolution 2013! You can go HERE to see what this challenge is all about & you can go HERE  to read my post about week one's challenge, the office.  This week's challenge was the kitchen! I was actually excited for this week because there were a few areas in my kitchen that I wanted to concentrate on:

1. Spice Cabinet

2. "drink" cabinet

3. pantry

 So, I will start with the spice cabinet. It was nice, neat & organized at one point, but over time it's gotten crazy. Things were getting thrown in there that didn't belong and I bought  few things that I didn't know I already had. 

Here's what I started with: 

 I completely emptied the cabinet & wiped the inside down:

 I grouped like spices together:

 I think we have a garlic problem:

 I found 3 EMPTY jars of Nutella:

I made a popcorn basket:

 and a seasoning packet basket:

Then I neatly put everything back in. Top shelf is broths & syrups. Middle shelf are oils, popcorn & seasoning packet baskets. Bottom shelf are all the spices. 

Here they are side by side.....much better!

 
I then moved on to what I call the "drink" cabinet. Not the alcoholic drink cabinet ;-) That's for another post. This is where I store coffee, tea, water flavor packets...etc. This cabinet was just a mess. So, I completely emptied it, wiped it down and put everything back in an organized manner. I moved my bags of Body by Vi shake mix to this cabinet along with my measuring cups and food scale.
Here is the before.....

 and the after.......

So clean & organized and I can actually find things now!

The last thing I worked on was the dreaded pantry.....UGH!!! Let me give a little history on this pantry. When we first moved into this house it was actually the laundry closet. I hated it being right off the kitchen because it was so loud. So after a couple years my husband built a laundry room between the house & the garage and I turned that laundry closet into my scrapbook closet/office and it stayed that way for 10 years. That's when I decided I needed a pantry. So, I packed up my stuff & moved it to the bedroom and we put shelves in it to make it a pantry. Since I didn't have doors on it for the past 10 years, we of course had to get doors put on. It of course was one of those projects that took forever to get done. The biggest problem was that since it was just an open pantry with no doors, things got thrown in there that didn't belong. It was absolutely ridiculous. This past weekend, I finally talked DH into putting the doors up and OMGOODNESS I can't believe how good it looks!
But first.....a few crazy BEFORE pics:

DISASTER!!!

THINGS JUST THROWN IN!

MORE THINGS THAT DON'T BELONG!

HUBBY PUTTING THE NEW DOORS UP

WE HAVE DOORS!!!!

Empty containers...wowzers

more empties......

Tupperware I decided to keep. Just can't part with it!

My give away/donate pile so far

 So, just like the cabinets, I removed EVERYTHING from the pantry & wiped it down. What a job. I then starting putting things back in as best I could. I tried to containerize things, group like things together, but it was tough. I did not realize how many empty containers I had! I have a big pile of things to give away also.

AFTER:

 1. Lunch bags, thermos', etc
2. Things I use on a weekly basis. Potato slicer, produce containers, apple slicer, etc.
3. Chips/snacks
4. Mexican food ingredient basket
5. Baking stuff
6. Can goods/condiments
7. Pasta ingredient baskets
8. Bread/buns
9. Cereal/Breakfast stuff
10. Tupperware/Rubbermaid food containers/Pyrex glass
11. Picnic stuff (plastic utensils/cups/straws)
12. Crock pots/roaster
13. Courtney's insulin pump supplies
14. Box of aluminum foil, baggies, etc. Still have to find a place for these.

WOWZERS! In case you all are curious, the pantry alone took me 8 hours, but I'm so glad it's done! The kids even said they can find things now! I've also threatened to break their fingers if they don't help keep it organized ;-) Just kidding! It's amazing to me how fast a pantry can get so messy.

One more shot of the before and after:

I'm exhausted just looking at it! The best part about this is that I used things I already had so this organization project didn't cost me a dime ;-)

Next up in the New Year's Organizing Revolution: CLOSETS!