I haven’t had much time lately to work on unpacking the boxes left in the garage, but I finally organized my spices:
All I really did was write the names on the tops and group them together by type, but it has made them much easier to find and use and it provided me with a good way to inventory my supply.
Here are some little things that I’ve done recently that have made a big difference to me:
Cookie Cutters: I had something like this:
I had been storing it in it’s original cylindrical container. My problem was that it was often hard to find the exact cookie cutter I wanted. Here’s what I did:
I sorted them by type/holiday (they were color coded so it was super easy to do) then I put each set into a separate OneZip bag. I have used them several times since and have been pleased at how much easier it is to get out exactly what I need.
Crayons: My problem has been that I have a two year old who thinks part of coloring is dumping the crayons all over the table and floor. I have tried giving her a few crayons at once, however, I find that if I just reach my hand in and grab a small handful, she ends up with a very limited color palate with several similar colors and not a very good range. It was a tedious task to search through the bucket for a proper palate of crayons. Here is what I did:
I sorted out several groups of basic colors with a full, but simple color palate and put them in a OneZip bag. It’s amazing how much easier this simple task has made my life.
Also, I recommend doing this if you have one of those kids who likes to peal the papers off the crayons thus making a large mess of little bits of crayon paper:
I had a chance recently to organize someone else’s laundry room. I know it’s strange, but there’s something I really enjoy about organizing—I think it’s the problem solving. Anyway, I know a few of my friends appreciate organization tips when I post them, so if you’re not one of those people, feel free to just skip this post.
Here are the two things that made the biggest difference:
1.) Before:
You may not be able to tell from the picture, but this laundry room has a long, tall counter. The things in the back were virtually unreachable and there is a lot of wasted space in the height of the counter. My goal was to make this space 100% useable (meaning that you can easily reach everything under the counter and none of the space is wasted).
After:
I wish I had a picture from the other angle, but the solution was relatively simple. I measured the space and we purchased two long deep containers. They fit perfectly all the way to the back and easily slide forward in order to reach the items in the back.
2.) Before:
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this room was hard to navigate because there were two internal doors and a door on each side of the room and the doors conflicted with each other so that you couldn’t open most of the doors completely and they were always bumping into each other.
After:
We removed the internal doors and it was amazing how much that simple change opened up the room and made it more useable. The space felt much larger with the doors removed.
I think it’s beneficial to consider the differences in how one would organize single use 
items differently than multiple use items.
Definitions: Single use items are things like a can of soup or a box of macaroni and cheese. Multiple use items include things like spices and oils.
I avoid giving places to single use items in my kitchen. They should ideally be placed in a pantry or other such location. The house that I’m living in now does not have much of a pantry so many of my single use items are located on shelves in the garage (which is right next to the kitchen). Although I could re-arrange to try and fit more of them into my kitchen, I prefer to have an easily useable, uncluttered kitchen. I would much rather take the extra steps to the garage to acquire food items, then regularly have to move items or dig for items in my kitchen. The Real Estate in my kitchen is too valuable for 
items that fluctuate in amounts as much as single use items.
It’s much more valuable to take the time to organize the space where you keep multiple use items. If the space is well organized, items will be used and then return to their places. Single use items are more likely to fluctuate in amounts . I’m more likely to buy 10 cans of beans on a sale then 10 containers of cinnamon. It’s much harder to keep a space organized if the amounts of different items fluctuates greatly.
Question: Can you classify the pictured food as either single use or multiple use? Leave your answer in the comments section.
General Container Considerations:
The test of a well organized space is if it stays organized over time and use. It should be easier to put things back where they go, then to put them back improperly. Accomplishing this is not as black and white as some of my other tips. I often have to ponder the items and the space that I’m organizing and sometimes try a little trial and error. If I organize a space and it doesn’t stay organized then that’s a good hint that I need to rethink my organization scheme and try something else.
Here are the ideas that I have which fall into this area:
For me the least accessible/useable shelves have always been top shelves, corner cupboards, and the cupboard over the fridge. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever find a way to make the cupboard over the fridge accessible/useful without the use of a chair, but I have come up with some good ideas for the other two problem areas. 
Top shelf items should either
Although I cannot reach the top self, I can usually reach a handle or container. Click here for another example with explanation.
I only have one solution to making better use of the corner cupboard space and that is to use a container. 
Corner cupboards tend to be deep and only the items in the front are easily accessible. When a corner cupboard is filled with items, you would have to move front items to get to back items, however, a container allows you to reach the back items by simply pulling the container forward (much like how a drawer works), thus allowing you to easily access the deeper space. You can also make use of the corner by using can rotator which allows you to load the top and access the bottom items.
I enjoy organizing. I think it’s the payoff at the end. I find a problem with how things are and I think about it until I have a solution. Once I reorganize something, I find great joy in looking at the place I reorganized. I recently embarked on a project to reorganize a kitchen for someone. As I worked through this process, I started mentally making notes about the things I think are essential to organization and I thought I’d share them here on this blog.
Consider the ‘real estate’ in your kitchen. An item’s usage should determine it’s ‘real estate.’ High use items should have prime locations which are the easiest to access and most functional to their use. The drawer below is the perfect example for this post.
This drawer is located under the breakfast bar which separates the kitchen from the dining room. It is the perfect location for food storage containers for the following reasons:
This drawer previously housed a collection of office supplies (rulers, pens, calculators, glue, ect), kite strings, phone books, and cookbooks and many of the items in the drawer were inaccessible under other items. The majority of these items were what I would consider low use items (at least low use for a kitchen).
