Kitchen Drawers

I'm on a mini roll as far as posting. :)

Today, I'm going to show you how I tackled my kitchen drawers. Sorry I don't have any before pics, but I was well on my way to decluttering before I even thought about starting a blog about my organization, etc.

Before I organized my drawers, I can tell you that my everyday cutlery, a Reed and Barton set that I got from QVC, was in a chest. For the most part, the chest served it's purpose but the knives were too heavy for the lid and had decimated most of the knife storage after a few years. Every time I raised the lid, all of the knives would fall out. Trust me it was not pretty. At first, I thought about buying another chest but I really like having my cutlery in a drawer. So I finally figured out the best way to do this, drawer organizers, which work so much better than the cutlery trays with the slots.

For the kitchen, I settled on the Linus Collection of drawer organizers that are available from The Container Store. Folks I tell you, I never knew one product could make such a difference but these pics that follow are proof. And yes, I've managed to keep my kitchen drawers organized and I completed the organization of cutlery, kitchen tools, junk drawer, etc. about 4 months ago.

Just look at my drawers

Cutlery Drawer

Kitchen Tools Drawer #1

Kitchen Tools Drawer #2

Junk Drawer

The Year of Decluttering

Hey everybody. It wasn't my intention to begin a new blog and then not return to it for two months. I do apologize but I'm sure my fellow bloggers know how hard it is to keep up with a blog even when just starting out.

So without further ado, let's get on to today's topic, the year long project of decluttering my house. It's been my main focus for 2012. This project actually begin back in the fall, when I finally decided something had to be done about this.

That's my garage folks and that's an in-process pic and I can't believe I'm posting that, but it was worse than that when I begin. Now unlike a lot of folks, I've always been able to get my car into one side of the garage but the other side man 'o man. I'm actually almost through with the garage, I just have to get in there and finish it up. Don't have that much more to do but I'm down to things that are really time consuming and I haven't had or should I say set aside a big block of time for getting it done.

Sad thing is my entire house had become very chaotic, due to all the clutter that filled it. I was already struggling when I suddenly became care giver and point of contact for my dad. That was in 2006 and even though the clutter remained, I did manage to stay on top of things for awhile after dad came over. (Dad lived with me for a few months then went into Assisted Living). But by the end of 2008, seems like the avalanche that resulted from trying to stay on top of it all begin and I never did seem to recover before daddy's death in 2011.

I've tried many organizational systems through the years, including the infamous FlyLady, and seemed to fail at all of them.  Oh sure, I did good for awhile, but the goodness never seemed to last. You would think when the only other being in the house is this mostly sweet 11-year old furry wonder

that keeping my house in order wouldn't be such a big deal. No excuses but as mentioned previously, life has been crazy for awhile.

But believe it or not, I'm slowly but surely restoring order to my humble abode. The Container Store has helped out a lot. No I'm not a paid spokesperson for The Container Store, but I do love many of their products. So, in the coming days, weeks, and months, I'll show you how I'm restoring order and trying to keep it that way.