Karla's Kitchen "Kabinets"

A few weeks back when I announced that I was looking for some real-life opportunities offering design, organizational services, my dear friend, Karla, gladly invited me over to help clean up her kitchen cabinets. We only had a couple hours to spend together, but I think we accomplished quite a bit. And I was able to give her a few ideas for future projects to do on her own.

The first thing we did was tackle the pots and pan storage. 

What she was doing was not all that bad, but she happened to mention that her lazy susan cabinet right next to this cabinet was empty. She just was not sure what to keep in there.  And I had seen this genius idea on IHeart Organizing where Jen stored her pots and pans in the lazy susan. Karla thought that seemed smart as well, so we quickly moved hers over.

Consequently, that freed up the first cabinet for something else. So we decided the next thing we should focus on was the tupperware storage situation. 

Karla had been using the bottom shelf of this corner cabinet for her tupperware. 

It was hard to reach items in the back corner of the cabinet and lids or containers were often falling out onto the countertop as she rooted through the contents to get the one she needed. Very frustrating.  . .So we determined that it would work much better to place the tupperware in the base cabinet with the pull-out drawers (where the pots and pans had been).

We sorted through her collection of containers and threw away any that did not have lids or were damaged in any way. Then we placed all the "keep" lids inside a basket (re-purposed from another room in her home) on the left side of the cabinet. Then we stacked the "keep" containers neatly on the right side of the cabinet. 

With the pots and pans out of here, there was also empty space on the upper shelf in this cabinet. We decided to move her loaf pans and pie plates over from the island so they would be conveniently located closer to the stove. 

After she put her daughter to bed, we decided to spend a few more minutes on the cleaning closet. 

I categorized all the cleaning products (carpet cleaners, air fresheners, wipes, window cleaners, etc.) and placed them neatly on the shelves. And we used the two white small stacking baskets that I had brought along for paper plates, cups, napkins, etc. We also took paper towels out of their packaging and placed them on the shelves. Additionally, we purged a few items that she knew she could part with. I offered to take them to Goodwill for her since I go there practically every single week. She was thankful for that!

We also talked about how an over-the-door shoe rack could work fabulously for corralling all her cleaning supplies and then the shelves inside this closet could be re-purposed. Just like I saw on Pinterest, here.

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At that point, we decided to call it a night. I wish that I could have spent a lot more time hanging out and helping her, but I'm thankful for the time we had together. I left her with a few ideas for organizing her fabulous walk-in pantry. Many of those ideas I shared with you already, here.

Anyone else have some disorganized kitchen cabinets? Does it give you hope to see what we accomplished in just 2 short hours?