Operation Organization: Kitchen Edition

I have been slowly purging and reorganizing my kitchen cupboards, I have no idea why, but this seemed like a great summer project. It.was.not. although I am quite happy with the end result!

We have a small pantry, which I am hoping to build out to have deeper shelves and a full door, rather than the small folding doors we have currently. There is a foot and a half of unused space  (where the calendar is in the picture below) and this would increase our storage space exponentially. I would like it to look something like this...

In the mean time however, before this project began it looked like this.

                                                             Ya, I know. Totally gross.

To start this project, I looked at every single item in there and purged 1/3 of it (mostly expired & unused items). Next, I planned what I needed in jars versus cans or original packaging and then I went shopping! Our Dollarama sells great glass jars with screw on lids so I started with purchasing way more then I thought I needed (but did). While these were running through the dish washer, I took every single item off the shelf, cleaned the shelves, lined them with no slip mats and rearranged the sizes of the shelves.

Then I transferred as many items as I could to the jars. Already, things looked so much better, I love seeing what I have at a glance and how much of it.

Here's me, mid purge when it was +35'c on my holidays, in my kitchen, with no air conditioning. Argh. This makes a wayyyy better fall project!

Next up was my large baking ingredients like flour. You will see in the before picture I had a monster jar. Well that monster jar held too much flour and knocked my shelf down a few times, so I tossed it and replaced it with 3 smaller ones from Target.

Once all the jars were filled and in place I bought chalkboard labels from Michaels (scrapbook section), sharpened my chalk with a knife and began labeling everything. It was/is so satisfying,  I am such a organization nerd.

For my jars and bottles I organized them by size and type, stacking up any doubles. I placed all the  bottles on a slant and spaced apart so I can see what everything is at once, without moving anything around.

TA DA! The AFTER!!

This is my favourite part of pantry!

BEFORE & AFTER SPLIT SCREEN

Side note: I'm sorry my pictures are not the best quality. I was going to reshoot the after pictures and maybe I still will, but the before are stuck being crappy. I need to move on from my iphone pictures #goals

What's in my: fridge? (the non-celebrity version)

I always think its fun to see what other people have in their fridges, so I thought I would share mine with you today. Like everyone else, our fridge has been slowly overtaken by condiments, and mostly those that we needed for a recipe once and haven't used since, or all those fun hot sauces people brought us back from vacations (thank you to those friends but *EAR MUFFS*) we've never even opened most of them. I think our fridge is reaching 75% condiments.

New to my summer goal list -  Operation: Take Back the Fridge

My preference is to have a fairly empty fridge, so that I can see exactly what is inside and make use of everything. I also feel overwhelmed when it is full. My mother always had  has an overstuffed fridge and this makes me crazy *sorry mom.*  

Before I show you mine, I must declare that my fridge envy award goes to Yolanda Foster:

Is this real life? #fridgeenvy

On second thought, I feel like it may have been a bad call to show hers first. If that was my fridge I would be so healthy, but also probably miserable...let's be real, she clearly doesn't abide by my golden rule - A cookie a day.

 Argh I guess time to share my fridge, this is pre-organization last night:

Overly cramped side door

Messy Inside- condiments galore! 

AFTER my sort and purge (still not sparkling like Yolanda's haha)

Not a dramatic transformation via picture,but you should see it in person - like whoa ;)

Just how I like it! Not much there, but able to see everything

Things you can always find in our fridge:

- Coconut milk
- Greek yogurt
- Extra old cheddar cheese
- 1-2 cartons of eggs
- Berries of some sort
- Hummus
- Salsa
- Extra butter ready for baking
- Granny Smith apples
- Limes/Lemons
- Spinach
- Veggies (usually broccoli and whatever is in season/looks good - currently beans, zucchini, carrots,)
- leftovers of current meal
- lunch container ready for the next day
- as my grandma would say, some sort of snacker-dacker - currently peanut butter protein bites (recipe here)
- And if I'm being honest - usually a bottle of Kim Crawford, a bottle of Baileys and some club soda

(The blue ball thing you see in the crisper is a vegetable life extender...not sure if they make a difference, but I like to pretend they do.)

So I guess this post leaves my open to do a series of what's in my...? Maybe up next, what's in my purse, because we all know a women's purse is a bottomless pit of randomness!