Kitchen Clutter

Before                                                                                          After

For those that are following my de-cluttering process here are the first results of my work.  Week 1 had me de-clutter my counters, my sink, and my kitchen table.  I am happy to report that my kitchen has stayed clean for over a week now and almost every night the sink is clear of dishes.  The kitchen table has stayed clean (and I didn't even need a table cloth to achieve it). 

The kitchen will be my focus for several weeks.  I am having to remind myself to take it slow.  I want to get in there and clear it all out but I have to slow down and follow the plan.  This week I will be working on my cabinets and drawers.  I can't show pictures of every cabinet so just know you will see only under the sink and the plastic container cabinet. 

My biggest challenge is my impatience (I know you find that hard to believe).  I want every room in the house to be cleaned, de-cluttered, and NOW!  I am trying hard not to be overwhelmed by the amount that needs to be done because I know I have all year to do it.  But my first week has been a success.  I pray that the task of keeping it the way it is while continuing to work throughout the house will not overwhelm me.

I know I forgot to put in before pictures of the inside of my cabinets but just know that I really did purge and organize these.  No longer do plastic bowls fall out of the cabinet when you open it.  Not only that but all of the chipped dishes are gone and things have been reorganized by purpose instead of just wherever there was a space to put it.  This week has also seen me clean out the junk drawer (yes dad you can open it now) as well as continue with the up-keep of the first week.  I will continue with the kitchen, moving on to the pantry and the spices.  Believe me this will take me a good week to get it all done.

What do you find when you de-clutter your pantry areas?

7 packages of almonds, 6 rolls of parchment paper, 5 boxes of plastic silverware, 4 packages of napkins, 2 boxes of crackers, and a partridge in a pear tree (just kidding on the last one.  If I had really found a partridge in a pear tree I think I would have just moved).

I never realized that I was hiding all of that in the back of the cabinet on the left.  tI was just a disaster zone and what do I need with 6 rolls of parchment paper?  Anyway, I am happy to report that it is all now organize (thanks to having two days off this week) and I can now shop without buying stuff I don't need because well I just don't think I will ever run out of plastic silverware or napkins.  Funny....when I showed Ben what my work had accomplished he said, "Where are our groceries?"  I told him that what you all see in these pictures is really all we had in the way of groceries.  It was so cluttered with other junk that it just looked like we had a lot of food.

We are not done with the kitchen yet.  This next week I will move on to the refrigerator and the freezer including the deep freeze.  That is the one that scares me if I am going to be honest.  I think it will have to be a two-man job. Ben will be recruited to help me with that one. I will try to take before pictures this time because you really will marvel at how much better these appliances will look when I am done.

Before                                                                                                After

So I have completed the next phase of kitchen declutter - fridge and freezer. I want to thank my entire family for not only their efforts to clean out the deep freeze but their efforts to keep the fridge organized all week.  WOW! We had a lot of nasty food: old meat from deer, fish, and turkey, things that I couldn't even decipher their origins, corn from our garden in 2007.  It was scary.  That is what you get when you put an entire bag from Walmart in the freezer at one time instead of sorting through it.  Believe it or not I once found a bag of candles in the freezer.  Anyway, I feel so much better now that I know what is in the freezer. I hope that we will make a concentrated effort to be more responsible with our meal planning and grocery shopping and buy only what we need for the week.  This will hopefully keep us from needing to do this again (for a while anyway).

I am officially done with the kitchen!  I hope I can maintain what I have done.