Recently I went slightly crazy organizing the house. I think my good friend, Lara, thought I had lost my mind when I was showing her all the insides of my cabinets. Do any of you get crazy-organized before a baby arrives? I have done this each and every time during all three pregnancies now. I think it's my last ditch effort to have total control over my life until chaos ensues with life and a newborn.
I love feeling organized and I am feeling pretty good about the state of our house right now. Here are just a few things I've been up to with my home organization.........
The Kitchen
Kitchen Cabinets: I only did a little organizing in the kitchen cabinets, but I love having things placed in containers. I think it makes the cabinets so much more pleasing to the eye. I also think you can store so much more when you get rid of the bulky boxes.
Kitchen Drawers: Ok, you might find this crazy, but I measured all of my cabinets, shelves, drawers, ect., before I went shopping for any containers. I wanted to make sure I got the perfect fit and didn't over-buy or under-buy. I headed to the dollar store (Dollar Tree) in my area for all these different drawer containers. I find they have a great selection of organizing supplies, some even come in sets of three, and for $1.00, you can't beat it!
Corner Kitchen Cabinet: This cabinet has always been a little awkward. It's really deep and in the corner of our kitchen. Things have tended to get lost towards the back. I found these two shelves in my in-laws basement that they were using and I think they make the cabinet feel so much larger. I've always loved having our cereal in these plastic containers. It makes it easy to see how much is left and keeps it fresh longer.
Spices: I keep the majority of my spices in the double-tiered, lazy-susan pictured in one of the earlier cabinet photos. But for the spices I reach for frequently, I keep them stored in this rack that is attached to our kitchen walls. We found this one at IKEA several years ago and it has been great!
I keep all my cooking utensils in this tall white container (to the left) and our oven mitts in one of my favorite white woven stone bowls. I always have a cookbook out and we keep our olive oil and white balsamic vinegar on the counter as well.
Kitchen Hutch: This is one of my favorite additions to our kitchen - the hutch. I bought this about four years ago from the JC Penny catalog. It was not a very expensive piece, but it has provided us with so much additional storage that it was well-worth whatever the price was back then!
We keep our pasta stored in plastic and glass containers on the main shelf. Baby bibs are concealed in that brown box and the little silver platter on top is a great catch-all for hair ties and little things that just end up out of place. Our dinner plates are kept here and are easy to access. I added a hook to the side of the hutch to hang all of our aprons (the girls each have one and I have one as well).
I keep some things we use less frequently in the bottom cabinet of the hutch. I've got our salad serving bowls, decorative plate chargers, ramekins, creme brulee dishes, individual casserole dishes as well as some cocktail napkins and paper plates.
The Downstairs Bathroom
Downstairs Medicine Cabinet: I kind of feel like we are getting personal here, showing you the inside of our medicine cabinet, but we're all friends, right? Again, I got these sets of three little baskets from the dollar store as well as the one long basket. Total cost of organization - $3.00 - totally worth it!
The Family Room
Media Storage: I've stored all of our movies under our entertainment center. I know it's hard to believe, but yes we still have a VHS player, therefore, we still have VHS movies. Don't worry, we're not totally in the stone-age......we have DVD and all that other stuff too. But if you are in the market for movies, I'm telling you, they are practically giving away VHS tapes at your local thrift stores.
I purchased these plastic bins at Wal-Mart and they fit the VHS movies perfectly. We already had the photo storage boxes which work great for DVD, video games and VHS. The one wicker-basket are pretty much all my husband's movies and the rest are all kiddo movies.
Someday when I'm being really organized, I'll use our DVD burner and burn all the VHS onto DVD, but who knows when that day will come.
Side-Board Storage: This is where my OCD measuring came in handy before I went shopping. I found these three baskets at TJ Maxx and if I wouldn't have measured, I probably would have only bought two because they looked so big in the store. But I pulled out my handy "Notepad Holder" and saw that three would fit exactly in our side-board. We keep diapers and wipes in one basket and right now the other two are pretty open. It's always good to have additional storage for the future so we're not constantly having to try to figure out where to put things.
Dining Room
Corner Hutch: I love this little corner built-in, in our dining room. It's very reminiscent of the 1930's-1940's (which was when our house was built) and is original to the house. I keep all our non-everyday glassware in here arranged by type. I also keep some special occasion dishes on the bottom shelf as well. It the bottom cabinet, I've stored our margarita glasses as well as some other special occasion tableware.
So that's what I've been up to lately........nesting, BIG time! I'm trying to take full advantage of this amazing energy burst because I know it will soon be disappearing and I will be heading into the "I'm done being pregnant mode" during my final month. I'll soon be showing your our "Nautical" themed nursery. It's not quite finished yet, but it's coming along.
What kind of crazy nesting activity have you all gone through? Anyone else go organizationally crazy?
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