Starting The Year Off Right

I have set quite a few goals for myself for this year. Mostly small ones, like meal planning, eating healthier and making better use of my time, and I have set a few bigger ones as well. 

One of those bigger goals is to organise my home in a way that works for me.

Decluttering and organising my home is something I have been working on for a while now, but there were still a few areas that I hadn’t gotten to yet. One was my pantry. It didn’t matter how often I cleared it out and reorganised it, it always ended up a mess and I was fed up with having to move six things to find the one thing that I needed.

So I started looking for a way to organise things that looked good but didn’t cost a fortune. I finally decided on these black wire baskets.

L. T. Williams stacking basket $12.00 from Big W and this smaller one from Kmart which cost $4.00.

So my pantry went from looking like this

to looking like this.

It’s still not perfect, but it’s so much easier moving one basket to get to the one behind rather than moving multiple things. I also added another shelf riser for the canned goods, which has made them much easier to access.

There were also a couple of cupboards in the kitchen that, while they weren’t terrible, could use some improvement. The spice and oil cupboard and the cupboard where I keep the baking trays.

The spice cupboard wasn’t too bad, but like the pantry, I had to take things out to reach what was in the back. 

 I took before photos, but I cannot find them so here are the afters.

For the spice cupboard, I bought a bamboo Lazy Susan from eBay and a plastic one from Kmart so that any spills were easy to clean up. They made such a difference to the amount of space in this small cupboard.

The bamboo one holds all the herbs and spices we use regularly with the less used ones to the side. The plastic one holds oil, soy sauce and other condiments we use in our cooking.

I used this adjustable kitchen rack from eBay to organise the baking trays; it has made such a difference.

I also organised the pantry cupboard in the laundry, which not only holds the dog food and cleaning goods but also the overflow from the pantry.

Much better!

The bathroom cupboards are next on my list and, after that, the garage. The garage is one space I have been putting off as it was my housemate’s space and he was not the tidiest of people, so it is a mess in there. That will have to wait until autumn when the weather is cooler though as it is just too hot to do it now.

Have you set any goals for the new year? Is organising and decluttering one of them? Let me know in the comments below.

*I apologise for the less than perfect photos, but the lighting in my kitchen and dining is terrible.