Operation Declutter Day 7 & 8 - The Kitchen

My kitchen is small and very full. There are a bunch of overstuffed cabinets and drawers. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through. I haven't had much time to dedicate to decluttering. My deadline is fast approaching on the 30th and I'm not going to make it. But, I'm still going to finish. I will just begin to put giveaway stuff on freecycle or donate to our favorite thrift store.

I realized I totally forgot to finish showing the girls room, so I'll get to that soon also.

Here we go:

THE KITCHEN: The first two very important areas were my pantry and "lets just put it here" cabinets. They had no rhyme or reason and were in complete disarray.

Hmmm Lets see, measuring cups, spices, baking ingredients, teas, magic bullet pieces. It's a hodgepodge of "I don't know where to put this, so I'll stick it in here" stuff. Can you guess which family members would have done this???

Before

                                              

  After

           

I reorganized all the spice jars and placed them in a small tray so I can just pull out the tray. Hopefully this will help things not get knocked over. The two upper shelves are now home to all baking ingredients and stuff like that. The cabinet goes way back where you can't see, so I wrote what was in there according to shelf and posted it inside the cabinet. It's always a bummer when you buy apple cider vinegar and come home to find you have 2 bottles already.

Before: Pantry cabinet

 

Ahhh, CLOSE IT QUICK BEFORE EVERYTHING FALLS ON YOUR HEAD! It's really hard for kids to put groceries away when nothing has a dedicated spot. Everything was taken out of this cabinet and put on the kitchen table.

The little girls were the perfect helpers. They passed all the stuff to the big girls.

Crazy huh?

We organized everything while it was on the table and put it back. Much better. A little organization is fantastic. I also listed all the canned goods we had on a paper for this cabinet. We are all VERY short, except for my husband. It will save me from having to climb the step ladder each time I need to see what I have.

After

We have a white cabinet in the dining room where I had about 10 mixing bowls, 3 large storage bowls and a bunch of other misc kitchen gadgets. I have a couple Tupperware items that I've never used. I looked them up on Amazon and Ebay and they sell for about $80 combined. So I'll be selling those. I decided that I didn't have my stuff placed in a very functional manner. This cabinet is easy to access and can be used frequently.

Before

I donated a few of the mixing bowls and moved most of this stuff to another cabinet that I kept most of my bakeware in. I use the bakeware often and these bowls, less often. They traded places. It just makes sense.

After

The drawer below the stove had a pot and pan set that I've had for the last 11 1/2 years. In fact they arrived from a Pampered Chef Party the day I was leaving to go to the hospital to have August and Kiley. 4 years ago, we got a new stainless steel set to replace this non-stick set. The plan was to donate the old set. Umm, I forgot that part. Maybe it was sentimental reasons, I don't know, but they are taking up precious space. So two of the pots are graduating to camping gear and the others are being donated.

Before

Oh, there are all my pot holders and trivets.

I moved all of my cookie sheets, muffin and cake pans here. I'm slowly trading out my nonstick bakeware for stainless. I promise I will not keep both. I will throw away/give away what I replace, that very day, from now on. My new mantra.

After

Donation pile

The donation and recycle piles weighed 33.4 pounds. This brings our running total to:

........

235.5 pounds. GONE FOR-EVVVV-ERRRR

If you're just joining the journey, I've committed to ridding my home of 500 pounds of clutter that is invading our lives and home and stressing us out. You can see other posts here.