Organizational Drift

Once upon a time, my kitchen cupboards were organized.  Then two things happened.  One, we let three years go by without changing a thing.  Lots of stuff happens in three years!  Glass measuring bowls break.  You get a new (larger) crockpot as a Christmas gift.  Your husband helps you put away clean dishes somewhere other than where you normally put it away (where IS that casserole dish?).  You have a baby.  Which brings me to number two.  Once Connor started crawling and pulling up, suddenly everything needed to be rearranged and locked away for the sake of baby-proofing.

Not that this has gone quickly, but every week or so I manage to get one more cupboard a little fixed up to make room for baby items and keep sharp and breakable things behind child-locked doors.  Our lower-level lazy susan was the most recent to get a full overhaul.  Here's my process for decluttering and reorganizing in the kitchen.  *Fair warning: lots of unedited pictures in poor lighting follow.

First I completely empty the space to be organized.

Empty susan.

This allows me to see exactly what I'm working with.  You can see the lazy susan held an assortment of bowls, measuring cups, colanders, and some odds and ends.

Gotta get worse before it can get better.

Next the space gets a good cleaning.  I am so grateful that the trays on our lazy susan are plastic.  Makes it super-easy to clean them with a soapy cloth.

How did this manage to get sticky??

Then I take stock of what I have and think about what would make sense to live in the space.  In our case, I decided to make the top shelf all about blending.  I was tired of our blender and all things protein smoothie cluttering up our countertop.  Plus its attachments were scattered throughout our kitchen- some in the pantry, some in the island.  Now the most frequently used blender parts are front and center on the lazy susan and our counter is no longer covered in protein powder dust on the regular.

The view.

Smoothie powders and blender cups.

We decided to use the lower level for items used in cooking, plus the large blender attachments.  Now our large measuring cups and bowls and colanders are arranged in order from most to least frequently used since the lazy susan only opens in one direction (thanks to baby-proofing door locks).

Measuring up

Not a strain (see what I did there?)

So much better!  My next step will be relocating an iced tea pitcher and a couple of glass serving bowls.  Maybe I can find some time to get to it next week?  Ha!