Work for me Wednesday ~Kitchen organization

Works for me Wednesday is hosted over at Rocks in my Dryer

and it is a fun day of learning about what simple tricks people have learned or just things that they do to make their life easier. I am hoping to start participating regularly as I think it will be fun. Also I am hoping to do a series of posts on organizing mostly because I thought it would be good motivation for me!! Lately I have been working on organizing my kitchen so I thought I would share some of the things that I have done that Work for me!

My kitchen is on the small side which when we moved here a couple of years ago was a huge adjustment for me as the kitchen I had before was quite large. I had barely gotten everything to fit and then I had been given gifts that went into the kitchen so it was full and overflowing and then my Mother-in-law gave me an early birthday present of two new glass cake pans. I loved them but had absolutely no space for them. I decided it was time for the kitchen to have a complete going over.

In the past few weeks I have gone through and cleaned out every cupboard and drawer and also completely cleaned on top of all the cupboards. I ended up with a big box to get rid of (give away or garage sale). I also figured out a few ways to make things fit better.

I have a drawer for baking supplies where my cookie cutters were rather taking over. I found this old cookie box and was able to fit all of them in it. That has made my baking drawer much more orderly.

My "junk" drawer was also a bit of a mess. I took the various picnic stuff out and decided to just store them in the picnic basket which sits on top of one of my cupboards, I took some various crafty stuff out and put them with my craft supplies. Then I took some extra mugs from my crowded mug shelf and used one to put twist ties in and the other for rubber bands and clips. I then lined the boxes up neatly and had space for my "bag bag" which I store grocery bags in which had previously been under the sink. I also made another "bag bag" to store food bags that I have washed out for reuse. (thought I am afraid I made it to small and I think I will have to make another). It is nice to have a much neater "junk" drawer.

Under my sink I was able to organize so that I had space to set up a place for recycling. I have a paper bag for paper and cardboard and then another place for cans and such. When these get full then I can dump them in our bigger recycling containers which are downstairs in our laundry room. This has been vary nice to have this upstairs and handy, as I was a little lazy about running little scraps of paper downstairs to recycling when the trash was so handy. Now both the kids and I have been recycling a lot more!


I also thought I would share with you an organizational tool that has worked very well for us. On the back of cupboard doors I have put our schedules. One is for the kid's chores, one is my daily jobs and the other is my monthly, seasonal and yearly jobs. On the inside of another door is our menu. I like putting them on the inside of doors as that makes them quite handy but also out of view as they aren't really decorative.

It is so nice to have it all clean an organized, hopefully I can keep it that way! I would to love to hear about some things that work for you in organizing your kitchen.