The Little Things

The last few weeks I've been reading all kinds of blogs about organization and getting your house in order.  And while I was on bedrest for a month and a half, my house definitely began to fall into some chaos.  When others offer to help, it's so very nice, but I feel a little shy about saying, "okay, do this and this and this and this."  So a lot of the stuff that I normally like to do doesn't get done.

I can't blame the state of my kitchen cabinets on bedrest, though.  That's just sheer laziness.  I've been living with this disorganization since the day we got married (well, since the day I moved in, which was about a week later, after our honeymoon).  So on Monday, I decided to do something about it.

After getting off bedrest, it's like I've been moving from 0-60.  I feel like I've been going, going, going with all these ideas and projects in my head.  And I've been so bone tired by the end of each day.  But this was a smallish update and it has made such a huge difference. 

This was my cabinet before:

Here are a few things I had already pulled out when I took the last picture:

You can see in those pictures that there is no rhyme or reason to the way things have been thrown in there.  I've got couscous on two different shelves, canned goods on two different shelves, cans and oatmeal together...really kind of a mess.

After a bit of reorganization and throwing away some outdated items, I began to put stuff back.  I bought some clear plastic bins at Home Depot and grouped foods into like categories:

Now I can easily see what I have so that I don't end up buying three yellow mustards (which is true -- and two out of the three unopened bottles were expired).

I also cleaned out a different cabinet, which is situated on the other side of the stove:

I didn't take a before pic of this cabinet, but it was even worse than the first.  Really kind of a nightmare.  I decided to put all of my spices on the bottom shelf.  Half of my spices were here before.  The other half I had been keeping on my counter (the spices that get used more often).  I decided to group them in the same way, but into old orange crates and all inside the cabinet instead.  I did this so that my counter could look like this:

Aahhh...much nicer.  I love how uncluttered it is.  The coca cola crate was holding the second group of spices plus some dish towels; now, it holds the dish towels and pot holders so that (again) like items are grouped together.  I also moved the teas into the above cabinet and a tin of clothespins into the pantry in my laundry room.

And, so that you can laugh at me, here are some incredible discoveries:

Mmmm.  That's cinnamon.  Scary.  If the sell by date is in '99, when was this purchased?  We may never know.  But I do know that I was in high school.  15 years ago.

And, here are all the items that I discovered were expired:

How does this stuff accumulate?

Anyway, yesterday, as I was opening my cabinet to again admire my handiwork, I became frustrated over the amount of core body strength is took to open them.  Here is the culprit:

Not the baby-proofing lock, but the little hexagonal sticky thing in the corner.  Just a shot in the dark here, but I'm thinking these may have been installed when the cabinets were installed.  The cabinets are original to the house, and the house is 20 years old.  These little guys have long stopped functioning as they were originally intended.  Instead, they make the door stick to the cabinet box.  It's like a game or who's strongest every time you need to open the door.

So I removed them.  Kind of on a whim.  And I love it.  And I'm planning on doing the rest of the kitchen (and the bathrooms as well) today.

It really is in the little things.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah