Ivy says:
Now that summer is in full swing, and I usually have more time to get things done because now I have helpers who are normally in school. So, I’m doing a project a week to get my house into shape! You can follow along as I do the projects and do them with me, or you can tell me what you’re working on this week!
This week’s project is to clean out all my kitchen cabinets and drawers. Yikes- this is a scary proposition as I have one terrifyingly messy “junk drawer” that will be interesting to clean and organize. The neat thing about taking a week to do a project is you don’t have to spend hours and hours on your cleaning. Today, I will clean the refrigerator and wash it thoroughly. Tomorrow, I’ll do the dishes and pots and pans cabinets. This shouldn’t be too hard, but I’ll be sure to get rid of any items I’m not using, pull out all the dishes/pots and pans and wash down the insides and outsides of the cabinets as well.
Wednesday is the great drawer day.
I’ll pull everything out of the drawers and reorganize and wash the drawers down, inside and out. Thursday is pantry day- all the foodstuff in cabinets will be checked to make sure it isn’t too old, organized (is anybody else’s spice cabinet a mess? Mine is.), and of course, the cabinets will be washed, inside and out.
Friday, I’ll clean all the appliances- microwave, dishwasher, stove, oven, toaster, and all the other little appliances that sit out. Finally, on Saturday, I’ll catch up with anything I haven’t finished, and I’ll do my usual thorough kitchen cleaning- sinks, mop, etc. Sunday I’ll rest, natch.
The weekly projects will be like spring cleaning in a way, but not all tasks are going to be cleaning. Some things I hope to accomplish this summer are to stain my deck and make some reusable grocery bags. Is there anything you’d like to see me do this summer? Leave a comment telling me what, and I’ll see what I can do!
how about before and after pictures? 🙂
Can do! That’ll be more motivation for me to do a really good job. 😀
My spice cabinet is unholy. I’d like to know how you solve that problem. I’ve been thinking of getting one of those small plastic lazy susan things for mine.
awesome! pictures don’t lie! 😉
“Is there anything you’d like to see me do this summer?” – Uh, do my place next?
By the way, is it any good to put contact paper or something on the cabinet shelves? I have an older house with old wooden cabinets, and I’m not up for painting them right now.
I’m definitely following along with you this week. We just moved…and I desperately need to get the kitchen finished. I’ve gotten immobilized by the fact that this kitchen has 5 fewer cabinets, 3 fewer drawers, and no pantry. But it’s time to quit being overwhelmed and start being creative about how to fit all this stuff in. Thanks for the push!!!
Thanks for the inspiration! I’m going to start doing this tonight – it’s been bugging me for so long!!!
Did the pantry clean-out a couple weeks ago. Best find: a partial box of raisins that expired in 2001. The fun fact is that we moved across the country in 2005, so I must have paid to move half a box of expired raisins or I bought them when they were already expired. The coupon on the box had an expiration date of 2002. Even better, it didn’t have a bar code!
For those of you with spice cabinet issues, here’s how I solved mine. First, empty it completely, throw out whatever is too old to be any good, and take stock of what you have. You probably have at least 4 bottles of oregano, right? Get it down to where you only have one open bottle of any given spice, whether that means throwing some out or combining the contents of bottles. Once that’s done, make a list of what you have. Tape that list to the inside of your spice cabinet door. My spice cabinet has three shelves, so I keep my most-used spices on the lowest shelf, next most-used on the middle shelf, and least-used on the top shelf. And my list is broken down by shelf. I can open the door of my spice cabinet and know by looking at the list if I have the spice or not. Once you do the legwork, it’s very easy to maintain, because you don’t go through bottles of spices very quickly. Once a year or so I rewrite the list so I can start over with a piece of paper that doesn’t have things crossed out and written in. And yes, I have lazy susans on each of the shelves, but I think that only helps because it’s organized to begin with. It’s a system that’s worked for me for years. Then again, I’m a little OCD about some things. YMMV 🙂
All of my spices are in a shallow drawer – most are in tupperware spice containers – but only because I’ve owned the containers for about a thousand years.
They’re labeled and grouped – and they lay on their side, label up so I can see exactly what I have without ever digging.
It took me about an evening to complete (over a year ago) – and they are still organized!! – an amazing feat in this household.