52 Weeks to a Clean House: Week 2 - Kitchen Trouble Spot

Popular place in my kitchen for piles.

I have a great book called "One Year To An Organized Life" by Regina Leeds. Her January project is the kitchen. My kitchen has a few trouble spots, but this area by the phone is the big one, and the area I dreaded tackling the most. So, I decided to do it early in the month, in hopes that cleaning and organizing my kitchen will get easier as the month goes on.

Trouble spot and cabinet above.

The cabinets above and below my hidden counter space needed some TLC, too. I thought this project might take about three hours, but it took longer than that. Thankfully, my daughter was helping me today, and we went through folders and binders and got rid of two garbage bags full of papers I no longer wanted or needed. We also had a pile for the shredder, and re-arranged things to work better.

Then there was the junk drawer...

My junk drawer doesn't really contain junk, but is a repository for pens, pencils, tape, scissors, calculators, and other office supplies. In going through this drawer, I decided to relocate batteries and the address book, because they don't really fit in the drawer.  I also learned I don't need to buy tape for awhile!

"Junk" drawer after cleaning.

While going through papers I found this article I had apparently saved out of good intentions.

Article I had clipped from a magazine years ago.

I threw the article away. Keeping clutter about getting rid of clutter seems counter-productive.  

Lower cabinet with jumble of books.

I love cookbooks. I don't really know why. I don't particularly love cooking. But I seem to have amassed a collection of cookbooks over the years. I use them regularly, because although I don't love cooking, I do cook dinner most nights in our home. I found several cookbooks to discard, and then re-organized my remaining books. I moved half of them to the upper cabinet where they are easy to reach, and kept the ones I don't use as much in the lower cabinet. I also threw out old phone directories from church and school... there were several years worth of those hiding in my lower cabinet.

Upper Cabinet "after"

Lower Cabinet "after"

I am calling Week 2 of my "52 Weeks to a Clean House" a success. We are all relishing the new orderliness of this space. Hopefully, I have set things up so that it will be easy for our family to maintain. Maintenance is a skill I will definitely be working on this year! And a special thanks to my daughter whose positive attitude and assistance throughout the day helped make this project a success!

Yes, that is my kitchen "trouble spot!"  Looks better, right?

Good luck, everyone, as you tackle your goals this year! You can do it.