Kitchen drawers

When your goal is to organize the whole house it can get a little overwhelming.  I have decided to stay with drawers, cupboards and closets for awhile.  It is easier for me to designate their assigned purpose.  My kitchen has a lot of those so that is what I will focus on for the next few blogs.
I have four drawers to hold my different cooking /baking tools.

My usual first step is to empty the drawers and then evaluate what I have and what I really need.  With the encouragement from the comment by BeDesigned on the Jewelry Draw post I knew I could do this.  I can get rid of the things I don't really need.

Whisks:  I just purchased the two black ones to use with my non-stick pans so they stay. The Blue one is broken (that is why I bought the black ones) so it goes.  the silver ones I will keep the three heavy duty ones so two more are gone.  Ok here is the hard one.  The gravy mixer.  My grandmother gave it to me when she was cleaning out her drawer.  (she passed away 22 years ago so that gives you some idea at how old it is)  The metal in the middle is rusty and I don't want to use it in food for that reason.  You ask what I would say to someone with a similar emotional hang up.  I would say "take a picture of it and write about it in your journal to see and share and then move on. So that is what I will do.

Knifes:  get rid of them all.  I have a great knife set in a block on my counter so why keep these knives that I never use?  I think I am making excellent progress here.

Graters:  Keep all
Rubber Spatulas:  One of each size.  I think the orange, green and dark orange one
Ok, progress may have been slowing down a bit.

Spatulas:  Love them all!  a must keep
Wooden Spoons:  Keep two.  I really am only keeping them for my daughter Lindsay to use when she makes soup at my house which is fairly often.  (Hey, If someone wants to cook for me, who am I to complain)

Baby spoons:  Need them all for when the little ones come over.  No I don't have that many grandchildren but they have to hold one while someone holds one to feed them and then you always need another one when one gets thrown on the floor. (that is a lot of ones)

Now this is getting boring so I will just show you what else was in the drawer without the blow by blow decisions that I made.

The time has come to put it all back.

No wait!  Distraction time.
My husband called and said he had found the dog they have been looking for.  Other people wanted him too so I needed to hurry and make sure I got there first to claim this amazing animal so our poor little fifteen year old boy could have the companion of his dreams.

You have to admit he is cute.

The drawers will have to wait to be completed.  Life does get in the way sometimes.  Even for organized people.  At least I think so.  How about you?

Junk Drawer

    Every house has a junk drawer or closet or maybe even a room.  I know growing up I loved our "Junk Drawer"  it held all kinds of wonderful things.  If I ever needed a little part to something or a safety pin or a screw to fix something, it seemed to magically be in the "Junk Drawer".  Because of this great drawer growing up I have incorporated junk drawers in my house religiously.  In the house we are living in now my main "Junk Drawer" is located in the kitchen.  I clean it out regularly and put away various items that have found their home there since the last clean up session.  But now it is time to change the drawer from a "Junk Drawer" to an organized drawer with it's own specific purpose.

So here is a picture of the drawer before I start to work on it.

     My first step was to take everything out of the drawer and to organize it in piles of similar items.  It reminded me of when my kids would come home from halloween trick or treating and would dump their pillowcase of candy out on the floor or table and organize it to see all the treasures they got.

      Do you see the resemblence?

I took a lot of shots up close so you could see the wide variety of items I have collected.  I thought I could keep the kids entertained for hours with a few pictures by playing "I spy".    

      Can you find the candy, thread, marbles, screws, ear-rings, hair elastics, legos, tacks, ipod?  The list goes on and on.

      Finally I put in the drawer the things I really wanted the drawer to be used for.  I did leave one section to still collect a few misc. items that I find while cleaning the kitchen.  I will then have to clean out the one section on a weekly basis and help those items find their true home.

     So do you have a "Junk Drawer"?  Do you want it to stay that way or do you want to re-purpose it?

Jewelry Drawer

     I have been having so much fun thinking of all the things I want to organize.  I have a whole house waiting to be recreated.
     Ok, I know that I haven't totally finished the freezer but that shouldn't stop me right? Especially since I was stuck and didn't know what to do next.  While trying to get inspiration I saw an idea on how to organize ear rings using ice cube trays.  Brilliant, my husband had just last week pulled out all my ear rings trying to help me find the right one for the out fit I was wearing.  His comment was, "you really should come up with a better system for these". I agreed and left them on top of the dresser waiting for some magic fairy to come and put them away in a better fashion.

   So now I had my next project and off to Rite Aid I went to hunt for ice cube trays.  I came home with a little more than planned but they had a dollar aisle that had all these cute things to organize with.  You never know when you will need them.  The orange lidded containers  I bought thinking they could help with my freezer problem (which they did, they work great to hold all the different kinds of fruit I like to use)

     Below is a picture of  what my drawer looked like before I reorganized it, and that is without all the boxes on top of the dresser.

       This is what it looks like after a few minutes using all my finds in the dollar isle.

      Here I have pulled out two trays so you can see the other two underneath.  Cool huh!

     So I used the little containers for my necklaces but I have put them upside down to I can see which necklace is where.

     I also used some cute containers that I found at Office Max.  They have a clear top and the bottoms come in all different colors.  The size I bought where 99 cents.

     Next I used round containers to hold all my bracelets.

     Everything fit back in the drawer and I can easily see and access it all.  And it cost less than $10.  Success!  Then why am I mourning the loss of the cute little boxes I used before.  Some of them are as important as the jewelry itself to me.  I have to go back and reconsider some things.

     Have you ever organized something and then missed the mess or personality of the space before?

Freezer Part 2

     So cleaning out the freezer has already begun to cause a stir.  My daughter opened the freezer and staggered backwards (a family joke from the British Comedy "Keeping up Appearances") and said "Your freezer looks beautiful".  I read a book once called "Sidetracked Home Executive" that said you should write down every compliment that you get on a 3x5 card so you could pull it out and read it to help keep you motivated.  It might be worth a try.  Of course, I didn't tell her to look in the bottom drawer because it is not beautiful yet. 
     I have started on the bottom drawer but I am having a hard time finding the right size of container for my food and freezer needs.  The right side of the bottom draw is how it has normally been looking with the food in ziplock bags and kind of pushed around to fit in.  On the left side is an attempt to organize the grains I keep on hand to bake with

     As you can see the top draw is doing much better.  I have my nuts and seeds and cheeses etc. in neat little containers that are so much better than before.  While going through my shelves I found that I had 3 ziplock bags of sunflower seeds and 2 bags of cashews. But the real winner is whole wheat flour.  I had 5 different bags of it.

     This last picture is the top view of the top shelf.  It may not be perfect yet but it is getting pretty close.  I just have two bags in the right front corner that haven't found a home yet.

     If anyone has a good idea on how to store the frozen fruit I would love to hear it.
Till next time.  Happy Organizing.

Let us begin

How to begin is always the tricky part.
Simply I want to get my house in order.  I mean really in order.
There are a lot of blogs on organization out there and it is a bit overwhelming, but there are some great ideas that I can build on and tweak to fit my needs.  Now the trick is to apply them into my own life.  I believe that I can use blogging to help me stay on task and really succeed at my goal.
I told my husband about my idea and he thinks it is great.  In fact he decided to help me out by taking everything out of the freezer and putting it on the counter.  There is nothing like the "sink or swim" philosophy to get one going.  I decided to take on the challenge and begin to organize the freezer.
There are a couple of rules that I have decided I need to incorporate in my organizing psyche.

1. Nothing is forever.  I can change what I have done if I find something better or my needs change. (this is an important philosophy if you are a perfectionist and get paralyzed if everything isn't perfect.) 
2. Organizing isn't meant to break the bank.  If I can use what I have or get supplies for cheap I will.

With these two rules in mind I started to organize the freezer.  But I started backwards.  I went to the dollar store and found some cool containers in a lot of different styles and sizes.  I didn't know how many I needed and what size I should get so I just bought a few and went home.  I quickly realized that what I needed to do is figure out what I want to have in my freezer and the amount I want to keep there.  
In my freezer I need supplies for:

• Fruit Smoothies. Frozen bananas (a must have), strawberries, blueberries, grapes, nectarines,  peaches, oranges, the list goes on (I don't have everything at one time just what is on sale or in season.) 
• Toppings for Salads. I also like to have a good supply of nuts and seeds as well as fete or blue cheese that I can quickly throw into salads for my husbands lunches.
• Baking.  Various grains

Of course I will want other things in the freezer as well but these are the most important things that I use everyday and need on hand constantly. For the nuts I want to have a place for almonds, cashews, walnuts and pecans.  For seeds I mostly just want sesame seeds, flax seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.  For baking I use wheat flour, bulgar, cornmeal, wheat germ, oat bran, oats and popcorn as well as coconut and chocolate chips. After looking at my list it is no wonder my freezer gets into a disorganized mess very easily especially when ziplock bags are the basic method of storage.

My next post will have pictures to document this momentous occasion.