Under the Kitchen Sink Revisited

When you love organizing, sometimes your "me time" is spent playing with the contents underneath the kitchen sink.

For those of y'all who don't know, we moved into a new place in late February. So all that work that I did getting the last under-the-kitchen-sink cabinet all clean and pretty was, well... wasted. Since this move was just across town, our approach to moving was the "just pack it up quickly and dump it over at the new place" approach. Which makes for a quick move... and a long period of reorganizing things later, one area at a time.

The under-the-sink cabinet at our "new" place is HUGE. It is the space under the sink plus about two extra feet of cabinet. Yikes! I crammed a whole lot of... "stuff"... in it when we moved in. And then immediately forgot what was tucked away into the dark and scary recesses of the cabinet. So when I pulled everything out to start organizing, here is what I ended up with:

I told you, there was a whole lot of stuff in there, from cleaning products to bubbles and water pistols. But
enough of the "before" mess, and onto the organizing!

Step 1: Empty Out the Space

• Clean the base of the cabinet and line it with contact paper or shelf liner. The point is to create a nice, clean slate for you to work with. I prefer to "splurge" on the heavy duty latex shelf liner ($5 at Big Lots) because it is durable enough to last through several moves. The cheap stuff from Dollar Tree has the tendency to stick to surfaces and leave little bits of itself behind. Yuck. 

Step 2: Purge

• Go through things and throw away what you don't need. (i.e. nearly empty bottles, fifty different wash rags, old moldy rubber gloves, etc) Keep in mind that not everything has to necessarily go back in this space. Some things may not belong, some can be trashed, etc.

Step 3: Containerize

• If you're like me, you seem to always have a stash of unused organizers on hand. I had several bins, handled caddies, and shelf risers to work with this time. Perfect for making the most of this cavernous space. Most of my containers come from Dollar Tree, but the shelf risers are from Walmart. Keeping things in the same color family really helps it look more organized in the end.

Step 4: Grouping & Placement

• Start grouping like items together. Not only will this help with organizing things, but you'll be able to double-check and see if you need to do further purging. Items you use frequently should be placed for easy access, and items you don't use often (but need to keep on hand for those rare occasions!) can be placed towards the back of the cabinet.

Step 5: Labels

• Labels can be as fancy or as plain as you want to make them. They can be scribbled in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape, or printed out and laminated. Mine are printed on copy paper, laminated, and adhered with a little loop of masking tape. I'm more likely to remember where things go if there is some sort of label. Labels hold you accountable to where you have decided to keep something, keeping you better organized in the long run. 
• Side note: I recently spent around $25 on a laminator and pouches for it, and let me tell you... I absolutely love it. If you are putting off buying one for some reason, just do it. You won't regret it. I've already got my money's worth with Bible class materials alone. 
  

The Finished Result

Start to finish this took about 2 hours, and that includes the time spent typing out labels and laminating them. There is still a little "wiggle" room for additional supplies. Sorry that there is no "overall" picture, but the sliding cabinet doors make it impossible to show the whole cabinet in one shot.

So what are you waiting for? The only one suffering from your messy under-the-sink cabinet is YOU. You are the one that has to get in there and find/use things. So take a little time for yourself and get it organized in the best way possible to fit you and your needs.