the kitchen monster!!!!!

My husband took me out to the one place I asked him to take me for my birthday, IKEA!!!!! Yes it is a sickness, but it helped me with today's blog.

Yesterday, I gave you some quick and simple cleaning tips to get your kitchen super shiny and clean on the quick!!! so let's top off the clean kitchening by organizing all the junk in our kitchen drawers. Our kitchen can become a veritable junk drawer in itself, and to counter that trend in kitchens I'll share some secrets from my kitchen.

First, your counters, as I said yesterday, you need to de-clutter your counter tops. Nothing should be stored on your counters unless it is used DAILY or is absolutely essential to the decor or flow of your kitchen. take my counters for example;

there is nothing there that isn't used everyday, with the exception of the 2qt pot and it was only out because I was cooking when I took the picture. Everything has it's own place on the counter and it's never too cluttered.   all of our daily tools have a place and are displayed as nicely as I can get them on a limited budget. The scissor holder is a mod-podged formula can, the spoon holder was a big birthday splurge at $5.99 at ikea!!! The old spoon vase we had was just that, a vase, and because of it's height, it corralled all of the spoons together at the top which made it hard to put one in or take one out, this has a short body and wide top that allows all of the spoons and spatulas to breathe easy, and makes them all handy and tidy looking!!!



We used Command hook on the back wall to put the pans that the hubby uses every day within easy reach and to fill that space a little. I'm big on baking so we used more command hooks to hang the measuring cups/spoons in a handy dandy location and the oven mitts so my mitts stay safe, the only thing that is ever on our stove unless we are cooking are our salt and pepper shakers which we keep readily available lest we need something to season with, our s&p shakers are princess house. we keep the dog food bowl out of reach from the munchkin because he likes to sample the flavors.

again, another command hook to hold our dish scrubber and bottle brush, and a lil decor, some sunflowers (which were actually my bridesmaids bouquets from our wedding) and our dish drainer which is used every day. and then stacked up underneath that cabinet you see nearby. the teal things on the dish drainer are my rubber gloves and then there's the lil munchkin's rubber duck that got a rinse today!

now for a look inside the cabinets and drawers!!!!

 of course our top drawer by the sink is for cutlery and so to keep it all together we have a cutlery tray, which we got at target when we were first married (that's how essential it is!)we keep our steak knives at the top but one day soon we hope to own this which would really help keep our serrated knives from rubbing together making them...not serrated

 the drawer below that has all of our baking/cooking tools, we corralled the little stuff together in a rubbermaid storage box and then put all of the parts to our blender in an ikea food storage tray. Of course, the things we use daily are the most easily accessible like our cheese grater.

the bottom drawer has been divided using cardboard cut from an old diaper box (neat idea!) to divide our towels, place mats, and trivets/ cookbooks

I really hated our old sponge dish which not only looked awful, would drain onto the counter and leave a mess, so we went to ikea, and got us this dish, which is technically a soap dish but the drainage designed for wet soap works just as well on a wet sponge





What?!?! yes those are dishes in my sink but that's a view of our sponge storage for excess sponges, dish plugs










across the kitchen, is our spice drawer, cookie tray drawer and knick nack drawer, all well organized with a spice tray from ikea and some dipping bowls from target

just above our spice drawer is out "pantry" we have a small casa so this is about it, everything within reach, labels out and most frequently used items well within reach!

This is by far my favorite cabinet!!!! Ii got this plate organizer at the container store and the bowl stacker at lakeside trading co. and voila, all of the frequently used dishes well at hand and the infrequently used ones at the back so I don't have to "go around" them to get to the ones I use most...which are plastic because of the kidoo










We got this handy dandy plastics dispenser at ikea and basically with the exception of a few drawers that are organized very similarly to the first (this is becoming one loooonnnnnggg post) that's about it

so there you have it, utilize boxes and tupperware you already own to corrall things and when in doubt shop places that are CHEAP, or DIY, join me tomorrow for my bathroom under-sink overhaul!