Welcome to Day 1 of  a 5 Day series, “Organizing & Cleaning Your Kitchen”.  I’m joining up with 21 other bloggers to share all of our organizing & cleaning tips!  Each of us has a different topic to share about, so please, don’t forget to check out the other topics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Days of Organizing & Cleaning Your Kitchen

Brought to you by Fridge Coaster.  I will share more about them tomorrow, but in the mean time, you should check out the awesome coasters that they have to help protect your fridge against spills, making clean up faster and easier!  They call it fashion for your fridge!  

 

Day 1, Organizing the Clutter Under Your Sink

I have a confession to make.  I may have told you this before.

I’m a messy.

My husband is messy.

We truly enjoy a clean and organized space, but sometimes, our brains really struggle with making it happen.  After being on vacation in a nice, empty condo that only has the necessities, we threaten to condo-ize our home….but we rarely stick to our guns on that one.  Once I’m back home for a while, I just get overwhelmed with where to begin.  I’m often able to look over a mess and then all of a sudden, it stands out like a sore thumb and I wonder how it got like that.  I am NOT an observant person.  If you have lost weight, I won’t notice until it’s A LOT!  If you get a hair cut, I may never notice.  I won’t notice what you wore, if you wore jewelry or anything like that.  What I notice has to be something drastic.  If your hair was dyed pink and you were wearing neon striped toe socks, I’d probably notice.

Anyway, I said all of that, to warn you.  I didn’t plan this little organizing series because I have it all together!  I planned it because it is a huge weakness in my life.  I collect clutter.  Most of the time, not on purpose.  I knew that I wanted my kitchen nice and organized and functional, so I decided that would be my topic.  I’d HAVE to do it, because I committed to these 21 other bloggers that I would.  I’ hoping that along the way, maybe you’ll catch some inspiration to tackle an organizing project that you’ve been meaning to do!

The other day, I was trying to decide which part of my kitchen to start with.  There’s so many areas that need help!  We never even finished painting it, putting up trim & back splash, etc after we moved here.  We’ve never put up pictures in there either.  It’s a work in progress and you’ll have to bear with me and realize that my kitchen isn’t out of House Beautiful!  Some day, I think I’d like to paint the cabinets, but for now, they will remain the way they are until I can find a little more time!  Anyway, while trying to decide which area to start with, I found a puddle at my feet in front of the sink.  The sink was leaking!  I guess that’s a great place to start!

This is what it looked like before:

Yeah, not pretty.  How can anyone find ANYTHING in that mess?  I couldn’t….so I rarely opened it.  When I did open it, stuff fell out.

Here’s what I did:

Take the plastic bags out.    I threw them all away because they were wet from our sink leak.  Had they been dry, I would’ve found an alternate place to keep them so they’re not all scattered under the sink and thrown away whatever didn’t fit into that spot.   If I do that, my plan is to keep them in something contained.  Maybe a Tupperware container or a drawer.  Where do you keep your plastic bags?

Remove anything you don’t use regularly!  I had cleaners I don’t use, various light bulbs I didn’t know that I had, a filtered water pitcher, etc.  Some of the bottled items that I knew I wanted to keep but don’t use often enough to keep them in the kitchen, I’m sending out to our out building (we use it kind of like a garage).   The rest of the stuff, I’m giving away.  My  mom had given me 3 bottles of floor cleaner several years ago and I never used them!  I guess I always forgot I had them!  She was over yesterday, and I asked her if she wanted them back and she did.  LOL.  I was just storing them for her!

Place like items together:  I just happened to have a large storage container that the baby would always knock out of the storage container cabinet.  I was annoyed with it, because it was too big to store food in it.  SO….I put it to good use and put all of our various sized light bulbs in it.  Problem solved.  I now know where to find my bulbs and I also know when I run out.  I made a basket for flash lights.   I know, I don’t really need that many flash lights in my kitchen, but there’s such few items down there now, I decided it’s a good place to keep them so I know where to find them.

Label as much as you can.  I could have gotten all fancy and printed some pretty labels.  Maybe I will one of these days, but until then, white duct tape and Sharpie markers work wonders!

Contain loose items.  I had a few other things that were running loose down there that I didn’t want to start scattering everywhere.  Air fresheners for my Glade Plug ins, my battery powered Fly Zapper (yeah…it’s more for entertainment for my kids than anything…when the flies are bad), bird seed (cuz I don’t want it to spill!) and steel wool.

Here’s a picture of what we are not putting back!  Yay!  Less mess = less time spent looking for things!

Here’s how it looks, all finished!  I can’t wait to do this to the rest of my house!

 

 

Do you have a big project that needs you to organize it? Jump in, get it done & tell me all about it!  I’d love some more organizing inspiration!

Don’t forget to visit some other bloggers who are also talking about getting organized this week!  Click on the photo below:

(This giveaway has ended)

The cash giveaway is below!  Don’t forget to enter it!  There are several giveaways to enter into as well!  Enter the cash giveaway at the end of this post!  There will also be a cleaning pack from Bon Ami, Fridge Coaster pack from Fridge Coaster (which I will share all about when I share my refrigerator posts), many different e-books and even a Lowe’s gift card!  To enter the giveaways, visit the bottom of the main landing page for the series.  Also, you won’t want to miss the Mommy Time Facebook Party tomorrow night on my Facebook page.  More prizes will be won and we’ll share our best secrets on organizing and cleaning!  You won’t want to miss it.

 

 

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