Organized Home Challenge: Week Two

     Week Two of the Organized Home Challenge was about organizing your kitchen cabinets and drawers. Most of my cabinets are in good order so I chose just three to work on: the glassware cabinet, the kitchen linens drawer, and the dreaded junk drawer.
      All of these three drawers and cabinets needed to have the old, unused, or dirty items removed and what was left organized. Here are my photos of the befores and afters.

BEFORE. Unlike things being kept together, bottles that we don't use anymore, and too many coffee mugs and thermoses.

AFTER. Just by trashing the old bottles and then organizing items based on type, it looks so much better! Also, I realized we have quite a few wine glasses for people who rarely drink wine. But they're pretty!

BEFORE. My kitchen linens drawer had too much crammed in there and a lot of the dish towels and washcloths were old and stained.

AFTER. Old dishtowels were relegated to the rag bag and the clean ones and new washcloths were folded to better organize the drawer.

       And the most shameful drawer in my kitchen... the junk drawer. Before, it was just stuffed with everything imaginable. Paperwork, instruction booklets and warranties, phonebooks, address book, batteries, pens, stamps, tape dispensers, coupon books, flashlights, candles (both birthday and otherwise), and more.

BEFORE. Cram it in as best you can was the only rule.

     So I waited until Owen's nap time and then I dumped everything from the junk drawer out onto my kitchen island. I began sorting, putting similar useful things together and trashing anything we didn't need like expired coupons and empty ink pens. I found a large zip top bag and used that to keep our appliance instruction manuals and warranties together and stored that in our important documents file box. That cleared out a lot of space in the junk drawer. I purchased two acrylic organizers from Target for about $8 and used those to organize everything that was left over. Now all the batteries for Owen's toys are kept together by type, stamps and envelopes are kept in the same place as my address book, and office supplies have a home. 

Dumped on the counter, all the mess seemed hopelessly daunting.  But I just slowly began sorting through it all.

AFTER. It's not a junk drawer anymore. It's a drawer with a purpose!

So much better.

     This past week I have really enjoyed participating in the Organized Home Challenge. It hasn't been too hard or time-consuming and the results have been awesome. Check back in next Monday to see my results from Week Three after I tackle our food storage areas. Wait until you see the before picture of my "pantry." Eeep!