This post is part of a 31 day series – 31 days to Love the Home You Have. I am blogging through the 31 day challenge in the back of the book “Love the Home You Have” by Melissa Michaels of The Inspired Room. You can read all the posts in the series so far here. And to make sure you don’t miss a post you can sign up to have every post delivered to your inbox , or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram to get even more home decorating ideas and inspiration to help you fall in love with your home.
In the last few years I have made some simple organizational changes in my kitchen and I cannot tell you how much better my kitchen functions, stays neat, and keeps organized.
First the pantry…. oh the pantry. I am a person who buys when things are on their lowest sale price (typically BOGO sales especially at Publix) and keeps things on hand that I know we eat on a normal, regular basis. And then I base our meals off of what I have in the pantry, adding in perishable and fresh ingredients that I buy that week. So my pantry is always well stocked which can create disorganization and waste if you aren’t careful. I typically would organize it, clean out expired goods but yet 2-3 months later and it was a disaster again. Then I started seeing pantries where people used baskets, bins, and glass jars to keep things grouped together and organized and I added them to my mental list to watch for at yard sales and thrift stores. It wasn’t long before I found several glass jars and several baskets for just few dollars – some even 50 cents secondhand. I also picked up some wood chalkboard tags and chalkboard labels at Michael’s in their dollar section.
It took some time but eventually my pantry went from this… (and this is actually neat – usually you couldn’t even see the floor.)
To this… and I think I actually have replaced all the white bins now with baskets. I shared a post previously on 10 simple tips to an organized pantry
Keeping things organized in baskets or bins by the type of food helps so much with organization! And glass jars or clear containers eliminate so much of the boxes that are bulky and hard to store.
Then there is the coffee station. I have found that keeping a small canister with sugar and another with ground coffee (we use a reusable Keurig cup at lot of the time) keeps things easy to access, yet neat.
This past January, I did a big purge through my kitchen and got rid of several boxes of things. Which allowed to me to better organize my cabinets. I also added a few wire shelves to make things easy to stack and access.
You can get 2-3 times the storage space in your cabinets just by using wire stackers. You can find these anywhere – some I bought at Wal-mart, some at the Dollar store.
Using basket or bins inside of your cabinets can help keep things organized too. I moved all the kid cups and bowls down low so they can get their own cup out but the basket keeps it all contained.
And make sure items in your kitchen are where you need to access them! Having the coffee cups on the other side of the kitchen wouldn’t make much sense. But having them right here above the coffee maker makes them easy to access.
I also completely reorganized my spices into matching glass jars. I had been wanting to do this for a long time. And finally making room in my cabinets and finding some glass jars that would work was just the motivation to get it done.
You can read all the details on where I found the jars and labels and more in this post.
When my home is in order and I can find and access what I need in seconds, I feel so much better about myself and my home! Am I the only one? Searching for something everywhere that you can’t find because of disorganization or digging in a messy drawer or cabinet is frustrating and sometimes maddening at times. And I definitely am not loving my home at that moment. Although the problem is 100% me and my lack of organization or cleaning not my home. 
Challenge: I encourage you to create order in your kitchen. When you have time – whether it is before the holidays hits or in January when the organization bug hits, go through each cabinet and drawer getting rid of things you just don’t use or haven’t used in a long time. Move things around to be in a better location and easily accessed if need be. Look for clearance or secondhand baskets, bins, and glass jars to help you organize your pantry. And then work on keeping it that way – I know that can be the biggest struggle for me.
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