Pre-Holiday Kitchen Organization

It feels like I have been hiding a dirty little secret—clutter! While my house looks neat and organized on my blog and social media feeds, behind my kitchen cabinet doors lies clutter and chaos. When The Container Store approached me to work with them on tackling an organizational project, I jumped at the chance. First, because my messy kitchen was making me less effective and with the craziness of the holidays coming up, I wanted to get this central area in our house under control. Second, because I love The Container Store for all things organization.

In this post, I will be sharing some before pictures that are really embarrassing, but I am happy to share that the end result is incredible! I feel lighter after purging the excess we were holding on to and excited to go into the holiday season (lots of hosting, baking and cooking!) with my organized kitchen! Hope this post inspires you to tackle that project you have had on your mind before the holidays!

Preparation

• Take time to measure your cabinets and shelves (don’t forget the depth). Do the same for your drawers.
• Empty the contents of each cabinet/drawer at a time. Have separate receptacles for donations, trash and items you want to keep.
• Clean as you go with a nontoxic cleaner.
• Use a liner to protect your cabinets/drawers. I really liked this one and this one. They are easy to cut down to size.

Determine Your Problem Areas

I had a few problem areas in my kitchen that I wanted to focus on. Here were my main ones:

• Snack cabinet
• Under-sink cleaning supplies
• Pots and pans
• Baking chaos

Snack Cabinet

Our house does not have a pantry area. Our snacks were in a cabinet that is hard to get to and the kids would climb up on the countertop to access them. We have had a couple near-misses with falls (socks and granite can be a dangerous combination) and I knew I wanted to have the snacks kid-level. Also, my husband’s family is coming over for the holidays and I needed to have a kid-friendly option quickly.

The Container Store had these easy to install pull-out bamboo shelves that I knew would be perfect! Now we have a pseudo-pantry that is kid-level and organized! I was able to store all of my pantry-staple items using these jumbo bins. These bins are perfect for pantries and come in different sizes. I used the smaller sized bins to organize the snacks.

It helps to reduce the amount of packaging by emptying bulk items into containers or canisters. Doing this makes it easy to see what I have on hand and also keeps the “pantry” cleaner.

 

Under the Sink

The area around and under my sink was cluttered and filled with half-used cleaning supplies. After getting rid of anything I was not using, I lined the bottom of the sink with waterproof material and installed another pull-out shelf. This one is made of metal which is perfect for under the sink where it may get wet. Another organizing hack is to use a lazy Susan to store cleaning supplies you regularly use. This makes everything accessible.

I used a various sized plastic bins to store items used less frequently. Taking garbage and compost bags out of their boxes also helped with space saving. Lastly, I replaced our old compost bin (that was on the counter) with an odor-proof one from The Container Store that I was able to keep under the sink.

Pots and Pans

The bamboo pull-out shelves were added to the cabinet under my stove and allowed me to store my pots and pans, making for much easier access. These bamboo shelves come in different sizes and allowed me to makeover so many of my cabinets. I now have a designated area for our lunchbox/bento boxes making my mornings much smoother since everything is confined to a space. Plus, there will be no embarrassment on my end when my mother-in-law opens my cabinets! Check out the before and after in the next two pictures.

Baking Chaos

In our house we bake a lot during the holiday season! We make treats for our neighbors, friends and more! The areas where I stored my baking tools and ingredients were an awful mess. I wanted to eliminate a bit of the chaos before all of the holiday baking began, so I set off to streamline these areas.

My ingredients were stored in a really deep cabinet under the kitchen island. This meant that a lot of times things would get shoved in there and forgotten. I was buying extras of items I already had and unfortunately wasting a lot. When I purged this cabinet I found an unopened package of flour that expired in 2014. Terrible! I moved the location of the ingredients and used these glass containers for my flour, sugar, etc. I made the labels using my cutting machine and it makes all of my cabinets more organized.

The baking tools (mixing bowls, pans, etc) were moved to another bamboo pull-out shelf and I used these organizers to hold my muffin pans and this bin to house all of our cookie cutters. We had a lot of cupcake wrappers floating around and making a mess. I used another glass container to house them all in one place. We are so excited to start our holiday treat making this year and got an early start this week!

 

 

When we are home, we spend most of our time in the kitchen. Having it clean and organized feels great and also makes us more efficient with our time and resources! Tackling this project before the holidays was key for me and makes me consider doing a few more projects before our guests join us. Head over to The Container Store to get some more inspiration.

 

What area of your house would you like to organize before the holidays?

 

With love,

Shahla

P.S. I am dropping some more organized cabinet pictures below, because I just couldn’t help myself!