Spring Cleaning Saturday: The Kitchen

First stop on the decluttering and reorganization train was the kitchen. I figured it would be easiest to start in a room with clear storage spots and lots of surface space to work. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a lot of before pictures, so you're just going to have to trust me when I say it was a hot mess in there.

When we moved in, we unpacked our boxes in a hurry to get the house set up. One of the cabinets in the kitchen is one of those awkward in the corner cabinets that is way larger on the inside than it appears from the outside. What did we put in there? Cups, mugs, and glasses. The cabinet next to it is a standard double door with a few shelves. We put plates, bowls, and Pyrex containers in there. Anyone see the problem here?

The cup cabinet is deeper than either of us can reach, so everything got lost in there constantly. The plate cabinet is shallow and the doors don't close 100% because the plates are too big. Yes, it took us over a year to realize the problem with this. After sorting through things we don't use (which was a lot) we did a quick swap, and wouldn't you know it -- everything fits perfectly now!

There is so much room in the dish cabinet now and I can't believe we fit all of our plates and bowls in the other one! The one unfortunate part of where the cups are is that the bottom shelf is as short as it goes meaning our taller mugs and sports bottles needed to fit there. We do use them a lot, but not as much as regular glasses. Oh well.

Another cabinet that got an overhaul was C's cup/plate/bowl cabinet. What a mess that was! We'd collected so many sippy cups and bowls that we weren't happy with and kept them in there for some reason. Out they came and right into the yard sale box they went. What's left are the things he actually uses. As a bonus, it made enough space in the rest of the cabinet for the baby bottles and accessories we need to get ready soon.

I really love this white shelf divider and will be getting another one for the other side of the cabinet. It keeps the shelf tall, while making room for shorter items.

We also cleaned out the spice cabinet, which I fortunately (unfortunately) did get a before picture of. It was an embarrassing mess of spice jars, clothes pinned bags, and expired ingredients. After throwing in some Tupperware, mason jars, and labels, it was much more manageable. I seriously save every jar we empty to store something else in later.

We also seriously pared down our plastic storage container stash, organized our baking sheets and pans, got rid of some small appliances, and of course cleaned as we went. So, no earth shattering or Pinterest worthy organizing tips just yet. Finding the motivation to actually go through stuff was pretty impressive if you ask me.