{Day 5} Kitchen, Part 2

Yesterday, after writing my Day 4 post, I took some time to clean my fridge. And I do mean clean my fridge, which hadn't been done since months ago when my mother in law got bored one day babysitting and did it for me. (thanks, Barb!)

One thing I do in our fridge: I keep a bowl (that I love, but it's chipped so I rarely used it for guests) in the fruit drawer, so apples, oranges, etc are always accessible and ready to grab. When I buy grapes, I always wash them and put them in a bowl so the kids can pick at them whenever they want.

A few choice finds in the fridge:

- a jar of yellow pimentos that didn't expire until 2012, yet were definitely not red anymore

- an upside down bottle of mustard, when I have 2 unopened bottles in the pantry that I got for FREE, so that was tossed

- four boxes of baking soda...apparently something was really stinky in there at one point!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Okay, on to today: Day 5 - decluttering what lurks BEHIND THE CABINET DOORS. (gasp, scream, horror!) This was exhausting. Especially because I didn't consistently have all like things together, so in the process of purging, I was also rearranging the cabinets so they made more sense.

Here is the cabinet above the fridge - rarely used, taller items like vases and the bread maker. I sent the vases that I don't absolutely love to the Good Will box (how many vases does one girl need, anyway?!) and stuck the roasting pan (that I use twice a year) behind the bread maker (that I plan to start using more often).

BEFORE:

AFTER:

This is the cabinet above the newly tidy "junk" counter - vitamins, coffee/tea/cocoa, other random stuff. I took before, during and after pictures because it was so refreshing to see the cabinet empty. (I put the coffee mugs with our other dishes *duh* and, after finding two full available shelves, I moved our paper goods to this cabinet) PS - this is just above our kitchen phone, so I have a phone list taped to the inside of one cabinet and a calendar Ryan made us for Christmas on the other side where I hand-write in our meal plan.

Above microwave - cookbooks, extra storage bags, Food Saver and accessories, Tupperware caddy thing. Here is before and after, which may not look very different, but this cabinet is DEEP, so there were things hidden out of view that I didn't know I had. Like TWO unopened boxes of large Ziplocks that I wrote on our grocery list yesterday!

I pulled out about 30 cookbooks (all hiding behind the frequently used books), recipe boxes and recipe cards that I'll be giving away soon...stay tuned!

The spice cabinet and baking supplies. (no purging needed to be done) I keep my baking spices on the left and my cooking spices on the right. Plus, I have one of those ingenious expandable shelves in there, so I can easily see the spices in the back. Another tip: I found a "baking substitutions" list a while back, printed it off and taped it to the inside of my spice cabinet. It's been really handy in a pinch and is someplace that makes sense to me!

Our main cabinet - for dishes and glasses (Do you like the random shamrock glass on the top shelf? It hasn't been touched since I received it on St. Patrick's Day, 2007.)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Next to our sink - water bottles, popcorn maker (because there's space), dishtowels and random serving pieces. (this is where the baby bottles will end up - I need to save room for later) I'm just going to do this one tomorrow. I can't handle any more organizing right now!

The back of our pantry (yes, it's that big) - a 5 foot tall crawl space where I keep random extras. Here are before, during and after pics. (I don't think the floors had been mopped since we moved in 3 years ago...)

All of this took almost 3 hours, with normal kid-stops including clearing space to cut, serve and clean up our watermelon snack, taking pictures, running the dishwasher, answering a couple of phone calls, you know how it goes. I worked fast, but exhausted myself so I stopped at 10:30 to relax with the kids in the pool until nap time. It was the perfect break! But now I need a nap to recover from all that sun and am unmotivated to finish the last of what needs to be done. That's why I will continue with "Kitchen, Part 3" this weekend! Don't worry, I won't bore you with more pictures. I just need to finish the project and get my kitchen back to normal.