Kitchen Organization - Part 1

Before I talk about my kitchen organizational ideas, I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all the sweet comments about my closet clean out. I love hearing from you and appreciate all of your feedback. :)

Now on to new business...

Our kitchen is not glamorous. It's not even "nice" by most people's standards and it's teeny tiny. I'm not exaggerating. I love our apartment. It's a nice one. The kitchen however, not so much. In future posts I'll show you the lovely *ahem* space that is our kitchen, but for now, I thought I'd share with you some of the ways I've organized the very little cabinet space we have. It's still a work in progress and as I move forward with more, I'll update you. Remember, this is a rental and we can't really do anything to solve the space issue, but we can make the best of it.

I recently got tired of opening my cabinet doors and seeing this: 

So I decided to stretch my organizational skills and utilize some cheap items to make my cabinets more functional.

I won’t even show you the plastic storage bowls cabinet. I’m that ashamed.

So I bought one of these: 

You can find this tiered rack at Target. I think mine was $12.00, but I'm not sure. I remember balking at the price, but I'll admit to you that it was totally worth it. 

We already had one of these:

This is small packet storage from The Container Store. It used to house all of my seasoning packets, but I realized quickly it wasn't up to the task if I was going to be buying in bulk to save cash, so instead it houses our hot cocoa mixes.

But I upgraded to this: 

This is the large packet storage box from The Container Store. It cost $14.00. Expensive right? Yes. Normally I wouldn't have spent this much, but it was worth it to keep me from being a victim of sauce packet avalanche every time I opened the cabinets.

 Then, since I’m short I bought two of these for the over the stove cabinetry (really? Who thought this cabinet up? No one under 5’5” can reach these.): 

This is a lazy susan from Target. It was also under $10.00 and has made reaching for things much easier since nothing gets lost in the very back of the cabinet. I didn't take a before picture of this cabinet because I was so giddy to purge and reorganize that I forgot. 

Here's what both lazy susans look like: 

I used some of that Rubbermaid/Tupperware stuff that always gets out of hand when left to it’s own devices (I’m pretty sure they reproduce in the cabinets at night) to store dry beans (a cheap alternative to canned and with a high nutritional value). I broke out my trusty label maker to label them. 

I also grabbed some command hooks from my stash (a must for anyone living in an apartment…the Hubs loves them so much he says he’d use them even if we could poke holes in every surface) to add out of the way storage for our measuring cups. I plan on doing this for the measuring spoons too, just haven’t yet. 

When I'm done purging and organizing I'll show you what the cabinets look like now and reveal the Thumbelina sized kitchen I cook in. In the meantime here are a couple more tips for organizing your kitchen:

1. I don't know about you, but we end up with extra sauce packets from fast food and take out and they end up cluttering up the cabinets or junk drawers in the kitchen. To combat this, I bought a small square container from The Container Store to corral all of them:

2. Label things. If you don't have a label maker, you can generally get one inexpensively at Target or Walmart. I've labeled the dry beans as well as the condiment storage, and the large and small sauce packets. It tends to make finding things husband proof.  ;)

What are you organizing? Do you have a kitchen organizational tip to share? What’s the current bane of your organizational existence? Leave me a comment and share! :) 

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