getting organized

My sister recently posted about a functional use of making a list and it reminded me to post about how I'm currently using lists to stay organized in the kitchen as well.

First dilemma: Too many spices, in too many types of containers!

So if you're like us, you might have a bountiful supply of spices which is great for cooking however there are multiple down sides:

• We have spices in magnetic fridge tins, in little plastic baggies (courtesy of Sprouts' wholesale bins) and then regular spice bottles. It has been mayhem trying to keep track of everything.
  
• Sometimes we end up with a certain spice in both a magnetic tin and a regular spice bottle and plastic baggie.
  
• In the rush to leave to the grocery store,we don't have time to rifle through everything to see if we already have a certain spice for a recipe.
• When I call Rich from the grocery store to ask if we have a certain spice, I inevitably hear the groan of "do I really have to go through everything to find out?". My answer is always yes but we hate having to do it!

So one day (it was my superwoman day several weeks back), I decided to take charge and organize our spices in a way that is functional. Ready? First, I took inventory of everything we had and created this spreadsheet which I then posted on the inside of our cabinet door.


ps - sorry for the crappy pictures. I took them on my phone because I can't remember where I put my SD card for my nikon.

Isn't this awesome? I know now by quickly looking at the list if we have a certain spice or not and if so, where it is. WooHoo! Next I tackled our spices. Previously we had just a myriad of spice bottles on the second shelf of our cabinet and you had to get on tippy toes to push around bottles to find what you wanted. And our plastic baggie spices were collected in a heap - not good and definitely messy. So I got these boxes from IKEA and put them to work. ps - check out the hand made labels. :)






See them on the second shelf? So now I just pull them down, find what I need easily and put them back. And the magnetic tins - we've had these for a while and I got them from IKEA. They're ok but not easy to open/close.


One of my projects is to create nice labels for them. Right now I made simple labels from a sticky note pad. Functional but quite crappy. :)

And last but not least, I decided to also create lists for our kitchen appliance cabinet. We had a set of cabinets where the cabinet doors open up to reveal a junk of kitchen appliances! We have a lot and don't like keep them out on the kitchen counters as that is quite messy. However things get kinda messy in our cabinets because things don't ever find themselves a permanent home. So first I organized a permanent home for each kind of appliance and then created a list to stick on the inside of each cabinet door so it reminds us where to find things and where to return them after use/wash.



I love all of these lists because they keep our kitchen organized and in order!