For Home: A Simply Organized Kitchen

If anyone's seen my kitchen, you know how absolutely tiny and inconvenient it is. The cupboards are up about 10 feet high (ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration), there's hardly any counter space, and we only have 3 drawers for cooking utensils and random kitchen utilities. In order to create more space, I purchased a large wire rack from the Container Store to hold all of our appliances. I attempted to make it cute by tying curtains the to top - both to help match with the decor and to hid the mess. Let me tell you...it's SO not a cute storage rack. On top of that, we had no organization system and everything kept getting tossed and piled onto the cheap shelving units. Since this is a year of simplicity, I didn't want to take on a huge kitchen remodel (and my apartment is a rental, so you can't really do much anyway) nor did I want to spend hundreds of dollars on some fancy organization system. So instead, I purchased some plastic containers, cut up some paper, and labeled my way into organization. Gone went the Tupperware with no matching lids, gone went the appliances I've never used and will never use (but maybe someone else will), and gone went the hundreds of water bottles I've collected from events over the years. This project took my all of a couple hours to do and just that little bit of time has made me so much happier. This last weekend I had a picnic with a friend and instead of rummaging through the backs of every cupboard to find paper plates and two plastic forks, I went straight for my "paper goods" labeled box and pulled out what I needed. Oh how a little thing like that can really make your life more simple!

Before: Such a Disaster 

 Plastic Containers for Storage and Organization

 After: So Much Better!

 

 All hidden when closed!

 I cut slits into the top of the curtain and tied it to the top of the wire rack.

I added one more level of organization to my kitchen. By adding a colored piece of paper to a frame instead of a photo, the glass acts as a great dry erase board. Now whenever I'm cooking and realize I'm out of something, I just write it on the board. Then when I'm headed to the grocery store, I snap a photo of the frame on my iPhone and then I have my shopping list right with me.