organizing kitchen cabinets and drawers

Good morning! I love when the sun streams into my house like this. Makes me (kind of) forget that it's really -15 with the wind chill out there.

Are you familiar with the blog, Apartment Therapy? I love this design blog. I'm following their January Cure where every day they email you a short assignment to do in your home - little organization projects that will lead to a cleaner, more organized, more peaceful home. Who doesn't want that, right? There were a few assignments to clean out and organize kitchen cabinets and drawers. Mind you, this doesn't have to be done all at once. Just one cabinet or drawer at a time. I've been working on this for several days.

Here's what I've accomplished so far. I don't have a walk-in pantry, so a lot of my everyday staples and baking goods are in cabinets. I am fortunate that we have an unfinished basement with metal shelving units where I keep other pantry items (broth, canned tomatoes and beans, tuna, toilet paper, etc.). This is my main food cabinet before. Not too bad, but still needed to be cleaned out and better organized. 

Here's the after. I keep a lot of food items (mostly grains and pastas) in jars. Takes up less room, is easier to see what you need, and keeps these items fresh. 

The bottom shelf holds my spices. Since I have so many, I find it easiest to keep them organized by category. For example, one basket is Italian spices and herbs: oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, parsley, bay leaves, dried shallots, onion powder. Another basket holds Mexican spices such as chili powder, cumin, red pepper flakes, and cayenne. Additional baskets hold Indian spices - turmeric, curry powder, garam masala, cardamom, coriander and fenugreek seeds; herbs such as dill, Herbs de Provence and lemongrass; and seeds like sesame, poppy, celery and caraway. And still another basket holds fall baking type spices such as cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg and cloves.

Baking cabinet before:

Baking cabinet after:

Moving on to drawers...

Junk drawer before:

Junk drawer after. 

I have two utensil drawers. Here's one that started out organized with bins, but over time got messy. I took everything out of the drawer, washed the bins in hot, soapy water, wiped down the inside of the drawer and went through the utensils to see if there was anything we never used. Those items went in the donation bag I keep in the basement.

Better, though I see I need a bigger basket instead of that little white one to hold the stray stuff.

This is the second utensil drawer which is right next to the stove. I didn't get a before picture, so this is the after. I keep spatulas, big spoons and a ladle in this drawer since they're easy to grab while cooking. This drawer used to be so crammed with stuff that something would get stuck almost every time I opened the drawer.

So what to do with the "extras" that I took out of that drawer? I found there were a lot of serving spoons and a couple of serving forks. I found room for those at the end of the cutlery drawer.

I also had wooden spoons crammed into that narrow drawer. Those went into a utensil crock on the counter.

My kitchen already looks and feels better. Next cabinet to tackle is the storage container cabinet. If you don't hear from me in awhile, I probably fell into this black hole.

Sharing with Cozy Little House Tweak it Tuesday.