Challenge #3 - Kitchen Cabinets Part 2

As promised, here's the upper cabinets in the kitchen!

Before 

After

This first cabinet is above the plates/bowls/cups, and to the left of the sink. This is where I keep my casserole type dishes, my measuring cups, and where I moved the salad spinner. In the before picture you can see the extra white baskets that I moved to the utensil drawer, and several measuring cups I dejunked. I was doing pretty well with measuring cups, but I started to notice that a 4-cup measuring cup would come in really handy since I was starting to make larger and larger batches of everything. My husband got me a great 4-cup measuring cup for Christmas, as well as a 2-cup. So... I didn't need the old 2-cup, and I realized I really didn't need the 1-cup either, or the smaller set of measuring cups. I already use smaller measuring cups as the scoops in my flour & sugars, so if I really desperately needed a 1/4 cup ONLY for something, I could pull it out of that.

These are also all of my casserole dishes. I have one 9x13, one smaller oval that I think is about 7x9, and inside the oval one are two shallow serving dishes that nest in each other. On the top shelf I also have another 9x7 pyrex, and two 6x7 pyrexes, nested together, and two round pyrex bowls, one smaller without a lid.

We also have the remaining baby food in this cabinet. For a while we had a lot of baby food here, which is why our salad spinner was stored below... but our toddler is eating more table-food now, and we're not buying the baby food anymore.

Before 

After

To the right of the sink is our "catch-all" cabinet. It was kind of being overrun by random things we didn't know what else to do with. But now it's a bit better. The top shelf holds extra dry-goods that don't fit in the cabinet I'll show next. The middle shelf has our supplements, as well as straws and plastic utensils. I wanted to fit the straws & utensils on the bottom shelf, but they were too tall. the bottom shelf has ziploc bags in three sizes, as well as napkins, paper lunch sacks and coffee filters, which we often use for holding goldfish or other finger foods for snack time. (We don't drink coffee... so we don't use them for their intended purpose anyway.)

Before 

After

On the other side of the kitchen, to the left of the microwave is our dry-goods cabinet. This was also starting to get stuffed with random extras, including some raw nuts that were starting to go rancid (oops!). We straightened this cabinet, and even changed what some of the bins were holding and made room in a large one for some homemade pancake mix, which my 7 year old helped me mix.

Before

After

Above the microwave is another cabinet, that is too high for me to reach without a step. I laughed when I opened the cabinet for the before picture, because almost everything was missing from it. This cabinet normally holds the only two vases I own (one large plastic, and one small glass bud vase), a round bowl meant for centerpieces, and three pitchers. Even in the after picture, one of the pitchers was being used, so it wasn't put away.

Before 

After

And to the right of the microwave is the spice cabinet. As I was cleaning out the "catch-all" cabinet, I found 12 small empty spice jars that I had purchased a while ago from the bulk foods section of our grocery store... planning to transfer spices from much larger containers to save space... but then I never got around to actually doing it... until this project! I was able to downsize several spices that didn't even fill the new smaller jars, and a couple huge spice containers were able to be moved to the garage pantry shelves after filling a smaller jar. There is so much more room in this cabinet now, and the spice carousel actually spins freely without things falling off the back. :) I also had so much room that I was able to put the spices only on the outside of each level, and put other things in the middle. The top level only has extra toothpicks in the middle (we ended up with several extra small boxes of toothpicks after my husband helped with a cub scout activity), and the bottom shelf has cupcake wrappers and sprinkles in the middle.

I did keep a couple of the larger containers on the lower shelf for a couple reasons: We use things like the taco seasoning WAY too frequently to be refilling the tiny containers, and I ran out of smaller jars. :)

My recipe book is on the top shelf, along with one cookbook. I have a few more cookbooks in the garage, but I rarely reference them, and with limited space, they just didn't make the cut to the kitchen cabinets. :) The black recipe binder has most of the recipes that I use frequently, and we do a lot of normal dinner cooking without recipes at all... just winging it. If we do need a recipe for something, it is more likely that I will find something online, and won't even think to check the books I already have.

Before 

After

Finally, the cabinet above the fridge. I ended up donating the magnetic letters which I haven't been willing to use for the past 3+ years, as well as a Christmas tin that I'm not sure why I held onto in the first place. The round pyrex bowl with lid was moved to the first cabinet I showed above. The rest includes a box with a set of designer stem glasses that were a wedding present from my parents (his & hers Mickey & Minnie glasses that we use for very special occasions), and a set of 5 glasses (used to be 6) that were also a wedding present and have a frog icon stamped into the glass, and three mugs that I use for hot chocolate. I rearranged these so that I could also fit a bag of corn chips in the cabinet. We usually just toss the bag on top of the fridge, but the kids like to climb up there and make a mess with the chips when they know they're there... out of sight, out of mind, right?

Also, on top of the fridge you can see the broken panel from the utensil drawer, that I still need to fix.

And that concludes the kitchen! I still need to organize & straighten the pantry shelves in the garage a bit more, and that is an ever evolving process as we continue to add more to our food storage, and try to move things out of the kitchen.

For those that were wondering, my crockpot doesn't fit in any of the kitchen cabinets, and I don't use it nearly as often as I should... so it is usually stored on a shelf in the garage.