Organized Home Challenge #2: Kitchen Drawer/Cabinet Organization

I was successful with the kitchen countertops/sink challenge last week. From Monday through Sunday, I made sure my kitchen was completely clean every night before I went to bed. Even after last night's major cooking marathon for our delicious Superbowl Snacks, every dish was washed before I went to bed. Of course, there were lots of clean dishes left out to dry, but putting them away (and unloading the dishwasher) this morning was easy. This is a habit I can keep up!

This week's challenge is to declutter and organize kitchen drawers and cabinets. For the most part, that'll be easy. The only drawer that needs organizing is my junk drawer. All the others have organizing trays and are kept in order whenever I put things away. I may need to scan them to see if there are items in there I don't use and don't need to keep, but there won't be many of those, if any.

The cabinets are another issue. I know for a fact I have things stored in some of my cabinets that need to be purged. That will be my big project this week. Luckily we already have some garage sale boxes started, so I can just drop them in there and be done with it. Then there's Billy's coffee cabinet. Mugs seem to multiply around here! I remember we sorted through mugs when we moved into our house 2 1/2 years ago, but we've since run out of space again... Another big cabinet project is going to be the one with all my spices.

One of the organization steps on the linked page is to place the items into drawers/cabinets into strategic zones according to where they will be used. Thankfully I did that when I was setting up my kitchen after we moved in, so that part is already done! And since I already use dividers and trays in my drawers, and most of my cabinets aren't cluttered, I don't have to try to come up with ways to sort/store them to save space. Whew!

It's going to be a fairly easy week, so I think I'll add one more thing to my kitchen drawer/cabinet list: wipe down the outsides of them. You know the dust that collects - and the residue from spills and splashes? Since my countertops and sink look nice, I want the other surfaces to be clean as well. Looks like I've got a plan!