Organized Spaces

By nature I am not a very organized person.  If you believe you inherit most of your traits from your parents either by nature or nurture… then you will understand why I am totally messed up.  My dad is this hyper rational, uber organized person who likes it when everything is in its own place.  We once had a long running battle over the 3 ketchup packets he had me go remove from his clean car because I had left them there… but that’s another story for another day. And my mom thrives in chaos.  Honestly she does her best work when everything is strewn in as many directions as possible (not that she has really tried it any other way…).  Well, I inherited a little bit of both, I love when things are clean and have their own place, but by nature I get everything out at once and throw things where they are convenient not where they belong.  In other words… I drive myself crazy.

But that also means that when I have an organization system that works… it REALLY works.  So since we spent all weekend working on another dining room table (the same as the one in this link but for my brother-in-law and his new wife) but it isn’t done yet, I thought I’d show you a couple of the organized spaces that have really worked for me.

First up… my baking supplies.  I love to bake just about anything but I found that the more I bake things, the more baking things I have to store.  Since they aren’t every day items and I usually use most of them in one chunk of time, the space above our oven/microwave combo fit the bill perfectly.

The great thing about this cabinet is that it is huge! Since it is the same depth as our oven, it can hold a lot of things.  The bad part about this cabinet is that is is huge and things EASILY get lost in the abyss.  Before our wedding I was putting things back into this cabinet and several things came crashing down on my head (have I mentioned that I am a bit vertically challenged and therefore this whole cabinet is above my head?) and I had had it with this cabinet.  So I did what any good organizer would do (trust me… I’m still not calling myself a good organizer, but you know… fake it until you make it) and emptied everything out onto my kitchen counters… assessed what I would need and then got in my car and ran to my saving grace, The Container Store.  I picked up some acrylic fridge drawers (they were the right depth), a couple of dividers, and a shelf.  When I got home I divided my goodies into their four bins; mine are: cupcake liners and decorative tops, sprinkles and food coloring, icing containers and cookie gun, and cookie cutters.  I also put my pans vertically in the dividers which means I only have to pull out one (or two) at a time and the rest don’t come crashing down on me.  And the best part of this whole thing? That cabinet has stayed almost exactly the same since I first organized it more than 8 months ago.  I took the picture below this morning without moving a thing… so if you came over today… this cabinet would look exactly like this.  That is what I call an organization win.

Next up is another space in our kitchen that needed a little love.  Our medicine cabinet. Seriously whose medicine cabinets don’t need a little love.  It is just me and the husband that live in this house, no little rugrats, so we don’t need a second selection of child friendly medicine.  (Although we do keep it in an upper cabinet so that the younger nieces and nephews can’t get into it).  I just reorganized this one a month or so ago, but we’ve been able to use things in it for the past month and keep it exactly the same way, so I’m hopeful this will be a permanent organizing solution.  Again I picked up some of my favorite acrylic drawers from The Container Store.  I love clear drawers because they make it easy to see what I’m looking for.  I organized ours into categories and dropped them into clear bins and then labeled them with my awesome label maker (nerd alert!). And then put the labels over some washi tape to make them more visible.  This also happens to be where I store my camera bag so that it is easily accessible, so that takes up most of the second shelf.

Happy Organizing!