Organizing Kitchen cupboards

Don’t you wish you had more cupboards in your kitchen?

I know I sure do! Insert SlideDeck So how do you organize those kitchen cupboards when you  have a small house with 7 people living in it? Believe me….I know it isn’t easy!   This cupboard looks ok now….but you should see it if one of the kids or my hubby puts dishes away.  The bowls aren’t stacked anymore….you might have that big yellow one on top of the smaller ones.

On the left…forget putting the lids in the slots they are supposed to be in and the plastic containers were they go. Aren’t you supposed to just throw them in that side?

Organizing can be really hard to maintain, especially if others aren’t as on board as you. It is all about the maintenance, but we aren’t going there today…today we are just talking about some ways to try and organize those cupboards.

Baskets

I love using baskets in cupboards.  You can see the red ones up on the upper shelf.  That is a hard place to get to things and it is a narrower shelf, so it doesn’t hold as much.  Those baskets hold the other plastic containers and lids that you accumulate.  They make it very easy to pull the basket out and get to what you want. They help keep things confined so that it isn’t falling all over your cupboard…and they are inexpensive!

Do you use it?

If you find there are things in your cupboards that you haven’t used in ages ….or you don’t have a lid for it and because of that you don’t use it (and you will!!) then get rid of it.  Why should you use that precious space on items you don’t use anymore?  The general rule is if you have not used it for a year or more then get rid of it.

Organizing kitchen cupboards isn’t necessarily hard to do.  But keeping it that way can be what is hard for many.

Rainy Day Organizing – Maintenance

What better day to do some organizing than a rainy day?  It is pouring rain today and I look around my house and think….perfect day to organize this office a little more.  Most of my organizing is just maintenance. I have the organizational system in place….but it has to be maintained.

Keeping up on all of it can be daunting. But if you have a place for everything…or most things, then clean up is much easier and less stressful.  If you do not have a system, then when you come to that extra door stopper in the junk drawer or the extra phone extension cord…you have NO idea where to put them?  So what happens?  Nothing. And the problem grows.

Look around today (even though it may not be rainy where you live today) and pick one thing to accomplish that will make you feel better once it is done.

It may be a junk drawer, it may be the front entry way with a zillion shoes all over, it may be the kitchen desk.  But take some time today (even if it is just 1/2 hour) and start. It will feel good!

Organizing can be like a diet.

Organizing is like a diet. Once you lose the weight…you can’t just go back to eating anything you want, you have to “maintain” your weight.
Same with organizing. Once you organize a room or an area…you can’t expect that it is going to stay organized forever. You have to “maintain” it.
Find a system that works for you…and with learning a new habit and new way of doing something…maintenance is not a hard or scary thing..you too can have an organized room….where there once was clutter.