I can't do messy as a continuous state. Temporary mess, that's fine. Mess that you have to deal with for the foreseeable future, no way. So I bought a collection of shelf organizer racks at the Mart of Wal, and went to town. I swapped out the casserole dishes from a bottom-shelf cabinet with the baking pans that were in the big bottom drawer. It was driving me nuts having to dig out EVERY casserole dish we owned, EVERY time we needed one, just because the one you needed was always on the bottom of the stack. Once swapped, the casserole dishes fit perfectly one per organizer rack slot, my cupcake and baking pan collection and five different bundt pans were actually accessible instead of all jumbled on top of each other, and the world was at peace once more. Once I got all the rest of the cabinet squared away, I was pretty happy with my day's work.
These racks/dividers are four dollars and change at Wal-Mart. Miracle tools.
Top shelf has vertically stacked cake pans on the racks, no more digging through them in a big old drawerful of pans and other baking related odds and ends.
All the muffin/cupcake tins, square brownie tins, and even my heart shaped tins stack up pretty and neat. Underneath are the pizza baking stones we never use got from The Pampered Chef waaay back when people used to have Pampered Chef, Tupperware, all those kinds of parties.
The whole cabinet. Most used bundt pans in the front, as well as the nice serving bowls there. Stuff like springform pans for cheesecakes and older glass bowls we don't use much get back-cabinet duty.
There used to be a ton of junk mail, old phone books, lunch boxes, you name it under there with the casserole dishes. It was kind of a catch-all whenever we needed to clean the table off in a hurry. You all have one of those spots, for those 'Quick, hide this mess, your Aunt So-and-so just drove up!' moments. Now you know it's been majorly cleaned and organized if I'm getting down and taking a picture of inside my kitchen cabinets to put on a public post for the world to see! It's like you're all going to be digging through my cabinets haha!
This is a huge drawer built under the oven. Formerly the home of the baking pans, pie plates, etc. Now it holds only casserole dishes, all lined up so you don't have to take every single one out just to get the one you needed. Just slip out the one you want, slide it back in once you take it out of the dishwasher. This might be my greatest idea for my home to date. (Yes, we have ENTIRELY too many casserole dishes. Never in my memory have we actually used them all, or even half of them, at once. Maybe it's like a collection thing?)
The cookie sheet/mixing bowl cabinet. Formerly the cookie sheet/muffin tin cabinet. Now our pans stack up without sliding all over the catty-whompus tins that leaned every which way up under there, and we have room for the mixing bowls we use all the time. The mixer is up on the shelf there as well, along with parts to the turkey fryer and the meat tenderizer contraption thing only my dad can put together.
My mom had the bright idea to use little Command hooks inside our cabinets to hang things like our strainers and frying pan covers...way better than them running around loose taking up space.
Lucy got curious as to why I was down on my knees with my camera looking in our cabinets haha.
She also hung one in our measuring cups/baking tools drawer for hanging our measuring spoons on. No more digging around in the bottom of the drawer for tiny spoons!
And it worked great for hanging up the weird kitchen utensils that don't really fit into drawers well and are too strange shaped to lay flat in a cabinet, like the ginormous cheese grater we have here.
This is technically in our pantry, not our kitchen, but it still counts. More command hooks to hold all my baking racks.
And plenty of storage to hold all my cake decorating goodies!
Needless to say, I am much happier with our kitchen now! Organization is amazing.
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