I’ve been following along with some of my favorite bloggers as they declutter and simplify their living areas. Both Simple Mom and Modern Parents, Messy Kids are tackling their kitchens right now and I was thrilled for a chance to tackle some of the problem areas in our kitchen.

Yesterday I showed you some of my progress with our food storage cabinets. Today I tackled one of my Big Bad Kitchen Wolves, the kitchen counter tops. We’ve been in our home for about a year now and while we’ve made great strides in making it our own, we are still struggling with finding enough storage space for all of our things. Certainly some of this is about having too much stuff but a lot of it is simply that we don’t have as much storage furniture as we’d like to.

Our kitchen is a prime example of this – as the heart of our home, we use our kitchen for cooking, eating, homework, craft projects, coloring and more. It’s where we bring the mail each afternoon until it can get sorted and it’s often the home for things we use often but haven’t defined a permanent place for yet. The counter tops are the work horse of this room, serving a LOT of purposes and lately it’s become simply overrun with STUFF and I knew it was time to really whip it into shape!

Here is the counter around the kitchen sink. I’ll admit, I purposely took the picture before doing dishes to make the big reveal feel more impressive! But if we’re going to be honest, my sink looks like this a lot. Too often I’d say. And if my sink is this cluttered, the counter tops hardly stand a chance and the room feels messy before I’ve even begun to think about tackling everything else. Most days if I can just get the sink empty, I’m happy, and I’ll likely ignore the rest of it.

So the first order of business was to get my sink clean and empty and get the dishes done so that I could focus on the rest of the mess. I bought some new tupperware recently and have been slowly hand washing all the new pieces before introducing them to the tupperware cabinet. I’d do a small stack here and there in between the rest of our dishes and have been humming and hawing on the final stack. Well I finally got the rest of it cleaned today in addition to the rest of the dishes, so now they can start being productive members of the household and not just take up valuable counter space!

So here’s my final result in this corner. With the dishes out of the way I was able to clearly see what I was dealing with – like empty peanut butter jars and wine bottles that I’d never bothered to deal with, knives with no home and other random odds and ends that I didn’t even know were there.

So the things which stayed are : the blender (for now), the spice rack (for now), our digital food scale – now in a new location, we’ll see how I like it there. The kitchen timer – this moves all the time but it’s small, so I don’t care. The knife block and cutting boards, our cooking oil and spray, salt and pepper and utensils, a jug of water that I like to use when I’m cooking, a container of toothpicks so I can tell when my cakes are done – and a spoon rest. I honestly still feel like this is almost too much but it is organized and most of it gets used a LOT so for now I’m okay with it.

So this is our main prep counter where I do most of my assembling and cooking and plating. It’s also the unofficial mail center where I leave letters for the hubby to look at – and it’s where my son puts his homework each afternoon briefly before storing it back in his backpack when he’s done. Homework out means it’s not done yet.

This picture doesn’t look too bad – the kitchen aid lives there because it’s too heavy to move around. That spot is where I use it when I’m baking and that’s where it stays. Other residents on this counter included bills that were ready to be filed, a sack of potatoes, a bird house / piggie bank, crayons and a bowl of fruit. And the toaster oven.

So this was mostly about sprucing up and a quick tidying. I put the files in the file cabinet, I moved the crayons to a new home but also brought in my son’s school supplies -a little yellow caddy that holds his pencils, glue, etc. I put the potatoes in the fruit bowl and put the bananas on top. The scale, timer and green water pitcher moved to the sink counter as you saw and the brita water filter moved also. The red plate was put away though I may put it back simply because it’s pretty – maybe it can hold the mail until it’s sorted?

This is the microwave counter, also known as “everything else” – it’s not in high usage so all our other miscellaneous stuff ends up there whether I like it or not it would seem. That picture frame? I need to hang it. But does it need to be on the counter in the meantime? The top of the microwave is covered with stuff that may or may not be necessary. My iPad is buried somewhere under all the stuff – I use it for looking up recipes while I’m cooking.

Much better. This counter now holds: the microwave (obviously), tissues and our microwave plate cover. The brita water filter, our sugar jar (I think this might work better than it’s old home, we’ll see), a bowl for holding odds and ends like tape and things that need a home soon and a napkin holder that I converted into a pen holder. Lastly is the iPad (look you can actually see it!) and our hand vac.

So the end result is I still feel like we have maybe too much stuff, but I also feel like we do use most of it and that now it’s organized and accessible, which is awesome. Now the key will be to keep up with it and not let it slide back into Before Pictures world…

I’ve been following along with a couple of my favorite bloggers as they declutter and simplify their living areas. Coincidentally both Simple Mom and Modern Parents, Messy Kids are tackling their kitchens right now and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I have been feeling my kitchen become more and more in need of a good sprucing for awhile now, so this was as good an excuse as any to start kicking my kitchen’s butt and getting rid of the clutter and mayhem.

I have actually tackled several areas in the kitchen this month – both food storage and cooking utensils and  tupperware. But I didn’t do a great job at keeping up with before & after pictures in all these areas so I can’t show you everything I’ve been up to. But I did get a picture of some of my biggest offenders – my baking cupboard and my cupboard for snacks, lunches, tea, etc. (I have another cupboard for dinner items that is still in pretty good shape from my last reorganization and a smaller cabinet for cereal and oatmeal canisters that is also in good shape)

This is our baking cabinet – home of sugar, flour, salts, oils, seasonings, etc. It’s a slightly small cabinet trying to do a lot. I know it looks fairly straight forward but this cabinet is always getting on my nerves. I hated reaching all the way into the back of the cupboard to get my cooking spices (think oregano, paprika, chili powder) which I keep separated from the “baking” spices like cinnamon and nutmeg – but I wasn’t willing to move the baking spices to the back either. Our collection of oils had gotten very cluttered and haphazard and our flour collection was taking over the whole cupboard.

So the big obvious change is that now I have the cooking spices on one side and the baking spices on the other, both front and center. I organized our flour collection behind the baking spices and have things like salt and powdered eggs behind the cooking spices. The top shelf now houses the baking soda and powder, sugar and oils – other items we use a lot that I wanted more accessible. Vinegar and a few odds and ends are in the middle area because they are either large and bulky or not used very often. Not a lot of huge changes but it’s more organized now and I’m content.

So like I mentioned before, this cabinet houses all of the snacks, lunch items and tea – the things we use just about every day that aren’t for dinner – as well as my instant oatmeal packets. Our cereal and oatmeal canisters are in another cabinet that literally wasn’t big enough to hold my little oatmeal packets, too. So I moved them here and I actually like them here. It’s more convenient for me and right above the microwave.

BUT, rather than making a real home for them, I shoved them on the top shelf (where my super short self can’t actually reach) along with other snacks that never got a real home like the banana chips and pretzels – you know the healthy snacks I should be eating, as opposed to the cookies and Skinny Cow treats that were all kushy and comfy front and center. And my tea collection was taking up so much space that it was crowding out everything unnecessarily seeing as I drink the same two or three teas all the time and pretty much never drink the others.

So the changes here were obvious. It was all about getting my priorities organized. My breakfasts joined the lunch foods and the tea on the bottom shelf – so I can make my oatmeal, brew some tea and pack MM’s lunch all at the same time – makes sense. The tea collection got a good hard looking at and the teas I don’t drink often got moved to another cabinet for now. Now my apple cider and hot cocoa actually have some room to breathe.

I also moved a couple of my tea assortments up to the middle shelf for my not necessarily daily teas but still often enjoyed. They get the middle of the middle where I have a hard time reaching. This middle shelf is other wise mostly the same in purpose – kids snacks on one side and mine on the other. But now my snacks are only the healthy ones – all the munchies have moved to the top shelf where they belong so I have to put in a little effort for my indulgences. I also moved all of my husband’s popcorn and seasonings to the top shelf on the other side. He’s tall so reaching won’t be a problem for him and I seriously never touch them except to move them out of my way. Perfect. Top middle holds our decaf coffee that we never use but still want around for when company comes over.

So that’s my progress. Not major changes but much needed ones. I’ve basically just fined tuned organization methods I set up shortly after moving in, rethinking the home for a few things and discarding a few others. The result: a happy Jen!