Observations on Organizing

I am finding that Sunday is a great day for organizing projects. It's a low key day, and it helps me put something in order before the week starts. Last week I cleaned out the recipe box, today was the kitchen spice drawer. 

Now, some of you may prefer spice racks, or those rotating things, me,  I prefer a drawer. Spices aren't pretty and they take up a good amount of space. I like to keep them hidden, but accessible. Also, depending on what you cook, you will find that you don't need half the spices that come in those rotating, or revolving spice.... thingys. 

For us, a drawer is the way to go. I have only four drawers in my kitchen. One for silverware, one is for utensils, one is for tupperware, and one is for spices. But, you know what happens to drawers over time....one big pile of mess. Even organized people like me let things go and need to re-organize eventually, because 

A: I have a life and B: things change and evolve as you live in your house longer. 

When my husband was doing the cooking he didn't mind a chaotic drawer so much, but now that I am doing most of the cooking, I couldn't take it one more day. 

He also bought way too much Chili Powder and Paprika. 

Here is the before and after for this project:

Spice Drawer Before:

                                                                


 Spice Drawer After

Here is the breakdown of what I did:

1) I took everything out and put it on the counter where I could see it. There was too much of some, not enough of others, while others had become gross or past the expiration date.

2) I tossed all the containers full of anything that looked funky or had expired. 

3) I consolidated multiple containers of one spice into one larger container where possible.

4) I tossed the tiny little spice jars that aren't worth filling they are so small into the recycle bin.

5) I wrote down the spices I needed to replace after said tossing so I get them at the store next time I go.

6) I vaccuumed the drawer bottom and arranged the remaining spices in a way that I could see them. 


Ultimately, all I needed to do was empty, identify, consolidate, toss, and put back.

This is the esssence of organizing. No fancy containers, no mega closet systems from Martha Stewart. Now those things can be helpful in some cases, but they can also be pricey and make more work for you so that you never want to start what might be a very simple hour long project. 

Your needs should determine how you should store things. The storage system shouldn't determine your needs. 

Organizing is about making your stuff work for you, and different people will come up with different systems depending on what they need. The purpose of organizing is not to make a complex system that looks uniform and perfect, but to put arrange and store things in such a way that makes your life easier.

In our case, keeping spices in a million tiny containers doesn't make sense. It's cheaper to buy spices in bulk, especially the ones we use all the time. The larger containers fit nicely into a nice deep drawer like this one. Why spend the time and effort to transfer it all into pretty containers that aren't big enough anyway? You don't need fancy labels-grab a sharpie and some masking tape. 

We keep some spices in the store bought containers, and supplement with some cleaned out salsa jars. These are great for some of the Indian spices my husband likes to get that tend to come in larger bags. The tops screw on and you can see inside. 

So, when you need to organize something, ask yourself, what is the ultimate goal of the project?

For this project, mine were:

1) To plan meals more efficiently knowing what spices I had and what I needed.
2) To access spices easily in order to make cooking easier and less stressful.

My newly organized drawer may not have matching containers, but they fit and I can read them. I can see everything I have. They aren't even in alphabetical order! 

So, before think you need to go out and drop a bunch of money on a "system to organize", try just getting in there and cleaning it up a bit. Then later, if you still need some containers you can get some. 

Or just eat some salsa.