Project Simplify - Kitchen

This week, Simple Mom, has challenged us to clean & declutter our pantry & fridge. I shared a little bit about the current state of each and my plan of attach on this post.

First...the Pantry!

Here's what is looked like at the beginning of the week - not horrible, but not great either. When I was cleaning it out, I found 3 half used boxes of lasagna noodles. My lasagna recipe only uses half a box and instead of ever checking, I just bought a new box each time I made lasagna...whoops!

And after some cleaning. I really only did a lot on the top three shelves. The bottom shelves got a little more organized, but nothing major. The basket on the top shelf has some snacks for my toddler in it so that I can easily pull it down and let her pick what she wants.

Next...the Fridge!

Here's the before - I needed the clean out some leftovers and the shelves were way overdue for being taken out and washed.

And the after. I ended up throwing away about half of the condiments because they had expired. We mostly use ketchup or mayo, so the mustard that I get when we're having people over ends up hanging out in the fridge forever. Also, why did we have four jars of salsa?!?!

Week 2 is DONE and my fridge hasn't looked that good since we got it!

Project Simplify: Pantry & Fridge

This week, Simple Mom, has challenged us to clean & declutter our pantry & fridge. The organization of my pantry & fridge comes and goes based on how much my husband or one of the kids decides to "fix" it. My husband pretty much thinks that means pushing everything to the back of the pantry. My step-daughter moves things to where she thinks they go - although I have mostly broken her of this habit because then I can't find anything. And the three yr-old puts EVERYTHING on the canned goods shelf, because that is where she can reach.

A before picture of each place...

I actually do have quite a few plastic containers meant for holding some of this stuff, I've just gotten lazy recently and haven't been using them.

The leftovers need to go and it's probably time to check through the condiments for expiration dates.

Plan of attack:
Throw away any food that is expired.
Pull everything out of pantry & clean the shelves
Return items to pantry - put things in the plastic tubs instead of being lazy
Pull everything out of fridge and quickly clean the shelves (maybe just move things around so as to not worry about spoilage).
Return items to fridge in orderly fashion.

We'll see how it goes...

Project Simplify - Kid's Clothing

Simple Mom is hosting Project Simplify this month and the first hotspot was kids' stuff.

That worked out well for me because the consignment sale that I like to consign at is the last week of March, so this got me going with my organizing & pricing early! However, in the interest of being honest all of the clothing that is NOT in their rooms is now in tubs around the perimeter of our master bedroom.

Here's what we started with in each girl's closet:

After Pictures:

I didn't get as much accomplished as I wanted too; the week somehow got away from me - it was suddenly Friday! But the clothing that doesn't fit is all out of their closets. And most of it is priced and ready to go for the consignment sale later this month. And soon, all of the "winter" items that I have to hold on to until the next sale will be folded and stored nicely in tubs...maybe.