Purge and Clean - Kitchen Edition

So I'd gone through my kitchen and purged some stuff back before Santi was born (I guess they'd call that nesting?) but things still accumulate, especially after having a baby. We had new machines added (bottle warmer, baby food mill), and other new things popping up in the cabinets (first bottles, then sippy cups, kid plates and bowls, etc.)

So a good cleaning needed to be done (pulling things out of cabinets and drawers, wiping down the insides, reorganizing, etc.) and some things needed to be purged or moved to a new place.

Here's the whole room before:

This cabinet was my nightmare. Things just kept getting added to it, without other things being removed. You can see a crockpot (rarely used), rice cooker (rarely used), food processer, waffle iron, sandwich maker (hadn't been used in over a year until recently when we discovered Santi loves grilled cheese sandwiches), storage containers, blender (rarely used), baby food travel containers and water bottles. Ugh.

This is partially our cabinet and partially Santi's. I used to use this cabinet and the one below (which is next to it) for food storage, but it was awkward because it was across from the fridge, stove, etc and didn't flow well. So now it hosts our dishes and Santi's food and some of his dishes/sippy cups.

Spice/baking supply cabinet - yes, we need a house...with a pantry.

Cabinet above the stove - cookbook storage and mug storage

Gadget/catch-all drawer (sorry for the sideways photo!)

Food cabinet

So, I started with the worst cabinet. I pulled everything out to see if it belonged there, or if we needed/wanted it.

I decided to keep everything, even though I was going back and forth about the rice cooker. I hadn't used it in awhile, but thought that might be because we couldn't access it easily. So I put it back in the cabinet, with the rule that if I didn't use it within a few months then it would go.

All organized! I can actually see what I want!

Free space = good!

I moved the shelf up so I could fit all of the cookbooks standing up (I have no idea why I'd never done this before) and took the pitchers we had in the above the fridge cabinet (the one that no one ever goes into, so it's a pain to have anything stored there!) and put them where we can reach them and use them!

Above the fridge cabinet. We don't make a lot of baby food for Santi anymore so the ice cube trays will stay up here for the time being. The other storage containers are only used for fresh fruit (they're specifically for fresh fruit in the fridge because they aerate the food) so they're not used all the time. I also have our lobster pot up there (only been used a few times but necessary as a Maine girl to have one!) and we keep extra vases up here too (there were about 4 more that are currently being washed so they're not in the photo.)

 Not the best, but better. And yes, we need a pantry!

Added a small bowl to hold twist ties and rubber bands

So things are still pretty packed, but we use it all, and it's organized in the best way possible for us. Sometimes even just a little organization helps!