organize my house

It’s difficult for me to get my freezer organized with a large assortment of Tupperware. Will try using glass canning jars for broths, soups and sauces. Having uniform sizes should help organize a shelf or two and use less space.

It’s going to take a few months to use up my freezer and switch to the new containers.

.. inside the upper cabinets of my pantry area has helped organize kitchen notes. So much nicer than a pile of papers in a drawer and parts of packaging taped to the outside of Tupperware.

I added the cork board several weeks ago. Just needed some flat thumbtacks for this project. (Cleaning the inside of the cabinets is still on my list of things that need done.)

... of my two favorite cooking magazines really doesn’t take up that much space but it’s easier to find the recipe on their website than in my stacks of magazines.

I have decided to go through one magazine a day until I get rid of them. Won’t take long to go through a 30-50 page magazine. 120 magazines = 4 months. Our local library will accept magazines up to 5 years old, so half of my collection will be donated to the library.

It will be easier to access the recipes on my iPad and by getting rid of them, that will be two cubic feet less of things to keep organized.

Update: 2/120 ready to donate.

T-Shirts are something we wear often and take up quite a bit of room in the dresser and closet. I decided to fold my shirts vertically, so that I see every shirt without digging through the drawers looking for my favorites.

There’s so much more room in the dresser and a pile of shirts on the closet floor were also folded to fit in the drawer.

Still need to work on hubby’s area of the closet or teach him how to fold his clothes.

It’s been a while since I have entertained at my house and haven’t spent much time in the dining room. I cleaned out the hutch this evening and surprised how much stuff I no longer need.

A lot of gifted items from decades ago. Bread basket liners, cloth cocktail napkins, silver bowls, tablecloths, place mats, plus dozens of napkin rings, several serving bowls and tapered candles. Now that I have more space in the hutch, I can store the dishes that I still use.

... complete with 100 days of organizing. I am trying to do more than one project a day when I have time so that I can skip the busier days.

The house is staying much cleaner since I have focused on getting organized. The small desk near the kitchen is usually messy. Now that there is enough room in the drawers for everything that belongs, nothing has been left out and no longer a place to leave other things.

Breaking projects up into smaller tasks is helping me accomplish more instead of waiting until an entire project can be completed. I organized part of the freezer and will wait a month or two until we use up more food to organize the rest. I found five containers of chocolate cookie crumbs, seven containers of parmesan cheese, 2 1/2 packages of raw shrimp in the freezer along with homemade ravioli (2x), homemade tamales (5x) and way too many containers of homemade chicken broth, soups, frozen milk, cream, cubes of Greek yogurt and a large assortment of frozen fruit. There’s not enough space to organize right now or to use one color tupperware on each shelf.

Looking forward to getting organized so that my life is a little calmer and I can focus on other projects. Lots of home improvement projects to finish once everything is back in place.

...is always a challenge to keep organized. A few years ago I added pull-out shelves to the baking area of my pantry and switched to glass storage jars. Fewer containers means I need to reduce my basic pantry staples instead of placing some tupperware containers on top or behind the glass jars. This project has taken several days, but think it’s finally organized.

There’s limited space for baking chocolates and cocoas. No space for the white chocolates, mini M&M’s, Mexican Chocolate discs or a pound of Gianduja (hazelnut) chocolate. No more 11-pound blocks of chocolate. Will buy some items seasonally and use up instead of storing the extra ingredients.

I got rid of a few items like specialty flours that had been stored in the pantry and used up the oatmeal. Most of the flour and oatmeal is stored in the freezer. Moved the dried fruits to the breakfast area of my pantry. Will go through my sugars later.

My baking pantry:

Shelf 1: Flavorings, Sprinkles (limited to 6 glass jars), baking powder, cream of tartar, gelatin, sure-jell, arrowroot, malt powder, coconut milk powder, coconut cream powder plus a jar of coconut manna.

Shelf 2: Twelve jars. Table salt, kosher salt, sea salt flakes, baking soda, cornstarch, cinnamon sticks, muscovado sugar, Demerara sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar, pearl sugar, sparkling white sugar.

Shelf 3: Eight jars: Sugars (organic, light brown, dark brown, bakers sugar, turbinado x2), powdered whole milk and malted milk powder. Also have cans of coconut milk, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and a container of dried egg whites.

Shelf 4: Twelve jars: Chocolate (unsweetened, bittersweet, semi-sweet & milk chocolate). Baking chips (bittersweet, semi-sweet, milk chocolate, mini semi-sweet). Cocoas (black, Dutch-Callebaut, Dutch-Valrhona, natural)

Shelf 5: Six Jars: All-purpose flour (2), sugar, powdered sugar, unsweetened chocolate & semi-sweet chocolate feves. Also keep my liquid sweeteners next to jars – agave, honey, blackstrap molasses and Steen’s cane syrup.

I still need to organize my freezer where I keep nuts and all flours except all-purpose flour.

Once I get more organized, will try to consolidate my baking ingredients to four shelves and only use the larger jars during holiday baking. Maybe 7 or 8 sugars instead of 14 and a smaller quantity of flour in the pantry.

... should help me get caught up with this goal. I haven’t had a lot of spare time lately but will find a few minutes every day to do something. 100 projects by July 28th is a good start.

(Updated)

Kitchen & Dining Areas

• Wet Bar Cabinets
• Kitchen island
• Kitchen closet
• Cabinet above refrigerator
• Baking section of pantry
• Cooking section of pantry
• Snack section of kitchen cabinet
• Breakfast section of kitchen cabinet
• Small desk downstairs (nook)
• Chest of drawers (nook)
• Kitchen sink cabinet
• Produce bags folded (for kitchen scraps)
• Drawers next to dishwasher (3)
• Corner kitchen cabinets
• Freezer

• My bookcase
• End tables in family room
• Basket at bottom of stairs

• Nightstand
• Shoe organizer in closet
• Dresser drawer (3 sections)
• Armoire (3 sections)

• Box of books (donate to library)
• Box of books (add to paperbackswap and remove from hubby’s office)
• Box of CD’s (donate to library)
• Box of CD’s and cases (recycle)
• Boxes of documents (take to shredding company)

• Medicine Cabinet (downstairs)
• Medicine cabinet (upstairs)

• Laundry room cabinet (beach, bath & kitchen towel shelves)
• Shoe rack in garage
• Fold grocery bags (triangles)
• Freezer (door)
• Freezer shelf #1
• Freezer basket

Soon:

Bathroom cabinets

Bathroom medicine cabinet

Cabinet upstairs

First aid kit

First aid kit in car

Laundry room cabinet – bottom half

Spice drawer + small cabinet next to stove

Freezer shelf x2

Business magazines (recycle)

Cooking magazines (donate to library)

Desk drawers (scan papers)

... space in the upstairs cabinet was a bigger project than I planned. I needed several storage containers that were being used elsewhere and in the process of getting the containers, I started re-organizing closets in both offices and my garage storage. While everything is out, I am also working on creating a home inventory, which is very time consuming.

The only way my house is going to stay organized is to downsize our storage areas by finishing sewing and DIY projects, plus selling the new merchandise that is stored in my side of the garage. I will work on that while hubby reduces the office paperwork. Downsizing will be easier once everything is organized.

While rearranging hubby’s office yesterday, we decided that the storage drawers I was using for my fabric would be perfect for hubby’s office. I needed something for the fabric and a new place to store it, since I don’t want plastic containers out in the open. The containers are coming from the garage and my new storage area will either be in a cabinet at the top of the stairs or my office closet.

Time to donate a few things from the cabinet and closets, finish some DIY projects and empty a few more storage containers. I will organize the office closets and my side of the garage to find needed space and containers.