{create} an organized kitchen

The number one thing I've learned from this huge cleaning and organizing task is: figure out what works best for your household. There are so many amazing and inspiring organizing ideas out there. But when it come right down to it, I needed to look into our cupboards and ask myself two things. 1. How do we use this space?  2. What can I change to make that use more efficient? Once you wrap your head around HOW you use the space, organizing it for efficiency seems to fall right into place.

Without further ado, here are the results of my kitchen purging/cleaning/organizing efforts.

Left is the before. Right is the after. So cluttered. I didn't get rid of a lot from this cupboard, I simply moved things around. Some items went to different cupboards where they make more sense. Others were simply combined and/or grouped with like objects. The first words out of Chris' mouth when he opened this cabinet? Um, where's the alcohol? (See top of left photo). I think I scared him! :) I just moved it all to the left side of the cabinet and created more of an actual *alcohol cabinet*.

Left is before. Right is after. Not a huge change here, but it's noticeable in our every day use. We had so many drinking vessels! First, we pared them WAY down. Then we rearranged. For example, Chris is incredibly tall and is the only one who uses the juice glasses, so I moved them to the third shelf and made room on the second shelf. See? It's all about what works best for your household.

And speaking of what works best for our household. Chris' absolute favorite *wine* glasses. He rarely touches the *fancy* ones with stems. These make an appearance at every party and are actually requested by guests. There's only three ... so the first to arrive get the glasses :).

Left is before. Right is after. This was so jam packed that I actually found things I forget we had! I found an incredibly cute bowl we received as a wedding gift. It's going into the decor rotation stat.

I also found this crock pot! Isn't is amazing?! We have a new/bigger crock that I use weekly, so I completely forgot about this gem. It was one of my parent's wedding gifts back in 1976 (!). They received three crocks, so this one went into storage in our garage. They unearthed it when I first moved out on my own. It had never been opened. Isn't that amazing? Still works like a charm! And has way more personality that modern crocks.

This last spot is a biggie (and really hard to take pics of!). The two above pictures and the below are the before of our one full closet outside of a bedroom. It sits right next to the kitchen, so it stores everything from small appliances, to cleaning supplies to toilet paper. We  really need to make better use of this closet in general (ie. install shelves!), but as it were, it's a disaster.

So I rearranged. And threw away (or recycled). Moved somethings that we never use (but actually need to keep!), downstairs to our lovely new shelves, and cleared out a huge amount of room.

The best of all the best? With all the floor space I created, our vacuum now fits! This is seriously exciting, folks, as it's been an eyesore in my craft room for the last two years.

And so I'm done. So. Done. And very excited to move on Friday! 

So, we have our Wyooter Hooter glasses. I'm curious, what's one thing that makes your home distinctly YOU?? 

Thanks for visiting friends :).