Organizing again

I hosted Easter dinner for our extended family this year, so I did a lot of cleaning last week.

Remember that bookcase that I said in my last post that I keep paper on? Well, I didn't take a picture of it for that blog, because it was a mess! It had collected so much junk just since school started. I cleaned it last Friday by emptying all its contents on the counter and going through all of it piece by piece. I had so much paper recycling when I was done! After I finished cleaning it, I regretted not taking a before picture, because there was such a difference. So here is the after:

The trays on the top are the paper trays. The top one has notebook and handwriting paper and the bottom has printer paper. There are envelopes beside the trays. Then beside that I keep my kindle and books that I am either going to read soon or am working on currently. On the second shelf there are workbooks and notebooks, markers and extra Bibles for small group. The bottom shelf has coloring books and crayons/colored pencils, our sponsored children's letters in the small 3-ring notebooks and other important papers in the larger ones. And then the sorter with construction paper I showed in the last post is on top.

When my parents were helping me with the final preparations for dinner, I had to get in my large utensil drawer to get the "little jiggly thing" (for lack of a better term) that goes on the top of my pressure cooker. My dad happened to be standing beside me while I was looking for it and he said, "That is the first thing that I have seen disorganized in this house!" 

My kitchen drawers are always a constant battle to keep organized, but this drawer in particular is a real problem. It holds so many things of odd shapes and sizes and I use all of it, just not all the time. I have tried to declutter and organize it in the past, but had sort of just given up on it. But after my dad's comment and the fact that it took me almost half emptying the drawer to find what I was looking for, I decided it was time to come up with a solution! This time, I made sure to take before, during and after photos. But after I started on one drawer, I realized that it would be best to just organize all my kitchen drawers. I feel like I organize the other three drawers all the time, yet they collect clutter and get disorganized so quickly.

So here is the drawer that started this:

I think the only way to really organize anything is to empty everything and start from scratch. At the point that I took this picture I had already decided that I would organize the drawer beside it also. It is amazing how much stuff that was in these two drawers!

Here is the before of the drawer beside it. I organize this drawer often, but it is a catch all.

I realized that there was no way that I would be able to properly organize the large utensil drawer without finding a new home for the pieces in the drawer that I only use once in a while.There is a drawer in the cabinet that houses our craft supplies in the top and extra baking pans in the bottom. This drawer didn't have much in it. It used to hold regular place mats that match our plates and dry erase place mats that has preschool activities on them. We obviously do not need the dry erase ones anymore. So I decided this would be a perfect place to put this extra stuff.

So here are the after pictures:

You can see the bottom of the drawer!

This picture doesn't do justice to how much better this drawer is organized. I had so much extra room, I was able to put the egg dye stuff in back, which I didn't have room for in the kitchen for before.

This is the extra stuff that I took out of the utensil drawer. Included in this drawer is: knife sharpener, corn cob holders, pumpkin carvers, cookie cutters (in the bowl with the red lid), cheese grater, extra can opener, corer, ladles, tongs, cherry stoner, and my place mats.

Then I moved to the silverware drawer. But somehow I forgot to take pictures of it. It wasn't really too out of order, so the before and after pictures wouldn't be that dramatic.

After the silverware drawer was done, I moved on to our "office drawer". This is the drawer that is beside the counter and we use it all the time.

This is the after:

And then I decided that if I was decluttering the kitchen, I might as well deal with the last source of disorganization in my kitchen.

This is another cabinet that I have attempted to declutter many times. Some of these many, many cups have been in our yard sale before and the kids "rescued" them back out. We seem to collect cups all the time, either as gifts to the kids or promotional items from Josh's work, and my kids don't want to let go of the old ones when we get new ones. This time, none of the cups I have removed is coming back!

As I was cleaning, I threw very little away. But there are many things that are going in my yard sale pile. I decided to take a picture of all that I am putting in my yard sale.

I am so happy with the end results and I am glad that I finally became motivated to find a solution to my large utensil drawer.