Kitchen Pantry

 

Of all the things that I have done in my life, I regret one thing: not taking a before picture of this pantry. If you would have seen the before, only then would you know the extreme impact of decluttering and organizing this pantry. The picture above is pristine, I know, but it does not show how many things were stored in here. For example, there were 5 cans and bottles of gravy. You think that's funny? Look at your pantry and tell me you don't have cranberry sauce from last Thanksgiving. There was also a large basket on the floor that housed a lot of Nutrisystem, but we ended up throwing that away along with the 8 other trash bags of expired food and one box of donated canned goods. 

Since these shelves are pretty deep, the main problem with functionality in this closet was the visibility of all the food items. I suggested that we use Lazy Susans from Bed Bath and Beyond for canned goods and bottles. This way, Cindy and Greg would easily find items and save money by not buying doubles of something. Something as simple as Lazy Susans created a more functional pantry. There was no need for labeled containers, or fancy shelving, which is what I feel like people tend to resort to in times of pantry disorganization. The more simple a solution is, the better!

 

We then separated the food into sections to the left and right of the Lazy Susans.The categories that work best for this family ended up being pasta, breakfast, snacks, Nutrisystem shelf (my personal favorite, since it's now all in one place and organized by meal), plastic bags and storage, baking, party supplies, and cooking supplies. Some minor adjustments that we made were adjusting a shelf to fit cereal boxes, fixing a crooked shelf, and removing the basket on the floor! Ta-da!

On to the Kitchen!: Kitchen Cabinet Makeover

After several months of organizing and decluttering Cindy and Greg's house, Cindy was ready to tackle the kitchen. For a family of five, the kitchen is by far the most active room of the house, where food, parties, birthdays and holidays commence. Each week, our goal has been to tackle a section of the kitchen, since it is pretty large with A LOT of cabinet space (Again, something that I sorely miss living in New York). So we began with this cabinet area below. Without a single purpose, this area of the kitchen was home to dog food, supplies, spices, pot and pans, old appliances, flower vases, you name it. But it had potential: cute open-face cabinets, above-cabinet storage space, counter space, and a wine rack below. 

 

The new purpose for these cabinets would be to house baking dishes, and decorative dishes. It would also house dog supplies on the bottom right, so that they would all be near each other. This is practical because these cabinets are further from the stove, so there was no need to store everyday things here except for dog food and supplies. A major change was coming up with a solution for doggie insulin shots. We later agreed to use an old coffee can so that it didn't look out of place on the counter top or even in the cabinet. Some other ideas we came up with are Clorox Wipes plastic containers and baby wipes boxes.

Most of the items stored in these cabinets were old, expired or multiples of things, so most of them were recycled or thrown out. There was significantly more space for dishes and decorative dishes! And we narrowed down the spices to about 10 bottles.

 

Once the open-faced cabinets were cleared out, this was all that was left! They are now used to store coffee mugs and decorative dishes. But the cabinets still looked unfinished. I suggested an idea that I saw on Pinterest that was reposted on BHG.com. Let the creative juices flow! These cabinets have radiator covers instead of glass! I thought it would match the eclectic, homey feel of the house and the kitchen. We went to Home Depot and picked out a sheet of this radiator cover along with a can of silver spray paint, wood glue and wire snips.

All we had to do was cut the sheet to fit each cabinet! It was actually pretty simple! Our next goal was the pantry! That'll be in another blog post this week. Over and out!

Master Closet Make Over Plans

Closet Plan for main wall

  

I have been excited to organize the master closet from Day 1. And again, I don't have a before picture, but maybe I can describe it for you. Before we worked on decluttering and organizing this gorgeous closet space, it was basically a storage room, and a dreaded space in the bedroom. Most clothing that they wore was in the dressers in the bedroom. There was a window covered up by shelving, and some drawers that were left off of their tracks. So it was really dark, without the natural lighting and with one of the light bulbs burnt out. We joke about it now, but the dogs didn't even know about the closet until we decluttered it.

But the interesting part of the closet is that it was potentially gorgeous, like a super model in her awkward puberty years? The actual bones of the closet were installed by California Closets, with whom I have a very strong love/hate relationship with at the moment. There was a lot of storage space, but it wasn't really fit for either Cindy or Greg.

It pained me to hear Cindy talk about how unhappy she was with the space, when all I saw was how amazing the space was. But then, she was the one who had to live with the closet, when I just saw it when I visited. So after warming up with the bedroom and the linen closet, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work! I started by sending her my vision for the space. She told me that she wanted funky colors, but in a Victorian style. Something feminine and neat, where things were easily found.

So I turned on my handy three-year-old Dell laptop and opened up my best and only program for interior design planning--Paint. Hey, you gotta use what you got! I emailed her the plans for the closet which included damask wall paper, wall scarf storage, exposing the window and a giant floor to ceiling mirror. And then I realized that wall paper in a closet was pretty expensive and impractical. At least for this space. 

So here are my gorgeously composed Paint interior design plans. The results will be in another post, perhaps tomorrow. ENJOY!

 

Organizing Update: Bathrooms

Bathrooms. The place where cosmetics and toiletries go to die. And since moving to New York, the bathroom is my least favorite place in a home. HOWEVER, this magical bathroom has an unlimited amount of space for his and hers supplies, towels, laundry and more! This past week, Cindy and I worked on decluttering two of the bathrooms in their lovely home. The first, being the master bathroom. There are two large under sink storage cabinets, four drawers, and a whole linen closet. I need to take some better pictures next week, but I have some pictures that show how many unnecessary things we people keep in bathrooms. For example, everyone thinks that medications belong in this space. Unless you keep a glass for tap water next to your sink, I think not. The only medications that should be up here are for cramps and other bathroom-related issues I won't list. The picture above is before we decluttered one of the cabinets. And the picture below is the after picture! That is all that is left from above. And we haven't gotten to organizing everything. We decided to leave the organizing step for later so we can get to decluttering more of the house.

 

Oh look, it's me! We worked on putting the bed sheets that were folded at the bottom of this linen closet in the master closet. I'll post more on that later this week. So now, the laundry basket is placed in this space, and out of the way, to create a more open layout in the bathroom and to better expose one of the windows. Yeah, I'm wearing Scooby Doo boxers...

 

 Finally, we went to the girls' bathroom to declutter years of "growing up" products. Two flat irons, a curling iron, scruncis, and lots and lots of Proactiv and hair products were thrown out, clearing two cabinets and resulting in just the items you see below. The blow dryer and flatiron that were left over went in a drawer below the sink storage area. It fit perfectly. 

In total, we were able to create two donation bags of bed sheets. In total, there were five or six donation bags of bed sheets from other areas. The next week, Cindy was able to donate some really nice silk bed sheets and a couple of other pairs of bed sheets to a family friend that lost their belongings to a house fire. They were able to go to someone that would use them right away. It's been amazing to see what has resulted in this decluttering and organizing binge I have been on. I have been able to give my belongings and help gather Cindy's belongings in order to support a family friend after a house fire, thrift my clothing to start an herb garden, and support Cindy in creating 20+ donation bags for people who could really use what we see as old clothing and clutter. It has been the most liberating experience, and it's only the beginning! And to see the sidewalk lined up with another 20+ garbage bags of the expired or broken clutter from the Cindy/Greg household was amazing. I see it sort of like getting rid of negative energy and giving more space to positive, new energy. 

 

So far, I want to say there have been between 20-30 donation bags, 20-30 bags of throwaway items. 

We have decluttered and partially organized parts of the bedroom, the master bathroom, the master closet, the hallway closet, the girls' bathroom, one of the bedrooms and are on to the kitchen.

I'll admit that I have been really bad at taking before and after pictures, so I promise I will do a better job. I get so excited to just get to work that I don't really have an accurate showing for it. But every time that happens, I realize that this is what I really love doing. It sounds silly when I say it out loud "I'm so excited to declutter the bathrooms!" But it really feels great to be supporting someone clear space in their home for more things and, on a more spiritual hippy-dippy level, more opportunity. So thank you again and again to Cindy and Greg for giving me the opportunity to start in their home and trusting me with their belongings. It's going to look like a homey showroom when everything is done!!