Day 20. Clean/Organize Drawers and Cabinets

Day 20 of “A 30 Day Guide to Spring Cleaning“.

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We all know that feeling when all you need is to get a certain bowl, or a certain canned good, or sauce jar but you cannot find it. There are 20 other things in the way, or best of all, you go to pull something out of the cabinet and everything else falls out with it. Don’t stress… today we will clean and organize our drawers and cabinets.

If your life is anything like mine, your kids destroy your cabinets on a regular basis ravaging for snacks every 30 minutes. Perfection is not necessary, and not what I am aiming for. I want to give you a few tips to make sure you don’t encourage household pests with your cabinets and drawers, and to show you tips and ideas to make the most of your cabinet space, because let’s face it, there is never enough!!

Also, as we talked about on Day 19, organization looks different for everyone, so be sure to organize in a way that works for you and your family.

Be sure to use the basic concepts of organization outlined in Day 19, you can find the article here.

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What you will clean/organize:

• Kitchen cabinets
• Kitchen drawers
• Bathroom cabinets
• Bathroom drawers
• Junk drawer (come on… you know you have one)
• Other misc. cabinets/drawers

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Supplies needed:

• Organization tools
• Garbage bag
• Recommended:
  • Drawer Organizers ‘paid link’
  • Storage Bins
  • Shelf Basket Organizer
  • Under Shelf Drawers
  • Storage Bins With Lids
  • Cabinet Shelves
  • Silverware Tray Organizer
  • Stackable Drawer Organizers
  • Shelf Liner
  • Envirocloth
• Alternative:
  • Organization tools
  • Soap and water with a cloth
• Optional:
  • Label Maker or chalk labels

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Clean/Organize Drawers and Cabinets

When cleaning and organizing your cabinets and drawers, you will want to follow the same basic concepts of organization as I discussed on day 19. You can view them by clicking here. You will want to remove everything from your cabinet that you are currently working on so that you can start with a blank slate, and this is where the cleaning will come in.

Let’s talk about household pests. The first room that household pests will be attracted to is your kitchen, due to the food residue and crumbs that get left behind. Even when you think you’ve cleaned well, there can be crumbs hiding. Additionally, and the reason I bring this up, you would be surprised how much food residue is hiding in your cabinets. Even if you clean them well, and clean up any spills that may happen, food residue builds up. Especially if you have little monsters ravaging through your cabinets for food! YOU NEED TO CLEAN YOUR CABINET INSIDES.

Step 1: Make a game plan of how you are going to tackle your cabinets and drawers. Where will you start? Are you going to make changes to where items are being stored? Make sure to focus on one cabinet at a time so you don’t feel overwhelmed by the process. If you want to rearrange, have an idea of where you might be moving things to, so you can base your game plan off of where you will need to empty next.

Step 2: Determine what organization tools will work for your cabinets. What will fit in your space? What will hold the items you are storing? Do you even need further organization tools, or are you cabinets shelves already creating enough organization?

Step 3: Remove all items from your cabinet and place them in an area out of the way. Keep items together that you will continue to keep together. Remove any expired items, or items you will no longer need and discard them.

Step 4: Wipe out the insides of your cabinets using a wet envirocloth. If you aren’t using the recommended envirocloth, you can use soap and water with a cloth as well, but be careful not to overly wet your cabinet shelves and create bubbling/water damage.

Step 5 (optional): Now is the time to put down shelf liner. I highly recommend shelf liners as they will protect your cabinet shelves from spills, water damage, wear and tear from sliding items, and they easily remove to lift up and dump out crumbs or food residue that may have spilled. If anything, at least put shelf liner in the cabinet under your sink, you may be very thankful for it one day if you have some type of plumbing mishap!

Step 6: Start placing your cabinet items back into your cabinets. If you are using some of the organization tools listed above, or your own organization tools, determine which items will be placed in which bins/racks/baskets, and organize accordingly.

Ideas:

• Place granola bars, cereal bars, or protein bars in long slim organizers standing up for easy access
• Place spice/seasoning packets such as ranch seasoning and taco seasoning together in a small bin, I have mine in a bin like these red ones.
• Use cabinet wire shelves to create an additional shelf in really high shelf areas, or to place shorter items on one side of the cabinet so you can fit shorter items underneath and on top.
• Use undermount shelf baskets to hold easily scattered items like chips, fruit snacks, potatoes or onions, etc.
• Use silicone drawer organizers, or flexible plastic drawer organizers for oddly shaped cabinets, they will fit next to each other better.
• For deep drawers, use storage containers with lids that can be stacked for maximum space efficiency.
• Use cabinet door organizers for things like plastic grocery bags that you hold onto, or cutting boards.

**TIP: dry erase markers can be used on many different plastic bins to label them, and then you can wipe it off and label it something else later!!!

Step 7: Place items back into the cleaned out cabinet in an organized manner. If your cabinet is oddly shaped (like my snack cabinet that is a corner cabinet and is very small at the back) you will need to determine which items can fit next to each other.

Step 8: Repeat these steps for the remaining cabinets and drawers.

I was actually able to fit all of the snacks into our snack cabinet, and fit the cereal back in it too! Finding storage options that fit in this 90 degree corner cabinet was very difficult, but we made it work with what we could find!

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If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments and I would be happy to get back with you.

Check out Day 19. Clean and Organize Closets/Storage here.

Check out Day 21. Check Fire and Safety Items here.

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