Let's Get Organized: Not #3 A Surprising Outcome

Two nights ago I got the urge to clean my kitchen cabinets.  I couldn't sleep.  I cleaned.  I only wish I'd taken some pictures for you.  The whole thing started when my coffee maker made a mess all over my counter.  It ran under the spice rack and the George Foreman Grill and the Olive decanter and the vitamins.  What a mess!  As I was moving this stuff to clean under it I realized it had been too long since I'd wiped any of it off.  Everyting had hair, cobwebs and just plain ol' dust in a healthy--or unhealthy--layer all over.

Let me say I use Windex for everything.  EVERYTHING.  Windex works on grease buildup like nothing else.  So I started spraying everything and wiping it down and that brings me back to the whole reason I decided to do the kitchen.

The thing about this time around is I'm going to be taking my time and really considering my needs for the future.  I'm going be done with school in a few years and those years will be going by quickly.  Do I want to be fooling with all this crap when I'm ready to start my new life?  No.  So to me it doesn't matter how organized it is, if I don't need it, it's that much less I have to worry about organizing--or keeping organized.



This is my "ingredients" cabinet now.  It's next  to the stove
 where I can reach it and even though you can't see here,  I
moved the sweet stuff for baking to the left and the spices for
 cooking to the right.



This cabinet was so full I could see anything.
Now it hold only breakfast, pastas and sauces,
and legumes.



This cabinet has all the "ready to eat" foods in it.
I have a blind spot on the far left.  I put the over-
abundance of plastic silverware there with a big
red arrow to remind me it's there.




This is the last cabinet in the kitchen.  It seemed like a great
place to store medicines.  (I went through a Metamucil phase)
My best wine glasses and rarely used tea cups are on the top
shelf.  I need to drink more tea when I have company.




This is the to the right of the "ready to eat"
cabinet.  It's drinks and snacks.

 This may not look like it's organized like a professional might come in and do, but what I see here is about half what was here and I can see it all to find it and use it.  We were wasting way too much food and space.  I still have the other half of the kitchen to go.  That's the pots and pans and under the sink.  I already took a great deal of the contents of these cabinets to charity last year, so this will just be a matter of going back through it and straightening it up.

Let's Get Organized: Not! #2

I decided to post a bunch of picures of my messy messy house and what I'm up against as I begin to go room by room and get rid of stuff I don't need.  There won't be a great deal of words here just pictures.  I will probably repost most of them as I work my way through the house, but here they are:

The garage:

My bedroom:

The bathroom:

Let's Get Organized: Not! #1

Today, I am introducing a new addition to my family of labels:

"Let's Get Organized:  Not!" 

I've decided I don't want to get organized.  I think getting "organized" in most cases--not all-- is a huge waste of time.  What needs to happen is folks need to realize that there is a lot of stuff they are doing because their parents did, or because they think they have to, or any number off reasons.  What if we had so little stuff that we didn't need to get organized? 

What if it was enough just to put it away?

For example, I stopped organizing my personal files.  To put it simple, I have a basket on the counter next to the phone.  Everything I might possibly think is something, goes in that basket.  In July and January I go through the papers.  If they are still important to me, I put them all in an accordian file.  I don't read each piece of paper.  I don't mark them "received".  I don't do any of that.  I just put them in a file and put them away.  Right now, "away" is in a box on the floor in the TV room, but I plan to change that in the next month and a half.  I think you get the picture.

I used to put everything in a file cabinet with marked tabs for all the members of the family, all the things we own like cars and boats.  Each year I purged them and moved them to a well marked accordian file for that "just in case" moment that hasn't come.  I just don't see the point in that anymore.  It has been six years since I stopped obsessing about personal files and I have yet to return to any of those accordian files on the floor in the TV room.  When I get there, I am going to be moving them to a less obvious place.

A few things I have been putting off, and really need to do are getting ClosetMaids for the rest of the closets.  Years ago, we did the closet in our room.  There was no kit for my size closet the way I wanted it, so I bought one as close to the dimensions as I could and my darling husband fixed it to fit.  He didn't like me very much at the time, but when it was done, we both agreed it was worth the trouble.

I hope that in the future weeks, I can talk about different places in my house that I have "organized" and that I plan on "organizing".  I'm going to include some before/after shots as well, so this should be a pretty exciting series.  I have a four bedroom, two bath house with a two car garage and all the crap that goes with living somewhere for over ten years.  I'll document the progress here as much as I can.