34 Week of Clean: Week 3

There's two things you need to know when it comes to my cooking/kitchen.

1.) Pepper is the bane of my existence
2.) My cabinets are NOT designed for people under 6 foot tall.

I should explain, as these two go hand in hand..  I can NEVER find the pepper.. I usually have no problem finding any of my other spices, but pepper almost always eludes me. Salt tends to hide from time to time as well but it's very rare I add salt to anything, that I usually don't care.. However, pepper is essential and that lil rectangular box tends to grow legs and walks.

The biggest problem, however, is that I am short - 5'2 - and my kitchen is not designed for short people. The cabinets are not very deep to begin with and they are pretty high off the counter. So beyond the first shelf, I can't reach anything. If the cabinets were long, this wouldn't be an issue, as I would just put everything I need on the first shelf, but the cabinets are about 10 inches wide and 10 inches deep. Even the cabinets under the drawers are tiny so I have to turn everything on its side to fit. There is one cabinet that is normal size that we can use for plates and cups, but outside of that, it's a creative process to use our cabinets. To store everything, I have to use the other shelves that are way above my reach. In order to reach the other shelves, I have to use a step stool.  It's military housing: they obviously didn't think about the design LOL

Because of this, when the pepper comes up missing it quickly turns into a game of grab the step stoll and start climbing all over the kitchen to see where the heck I put the pepper last time. Everything gets moved round in the cabinets while I am cooking so while the pepper may have been on the bottom shelf of the right cabinet two days before, somehow it ends up in the cabinet on the other side of the window.  To compound the issue, the stepstool over the years has lost its rubber feet, so it slides easily across the floor.. My husband is always scared that while I am climbing, it will slide out from under me and I'll tumble to the ground. Finding the pepper has become hazardous to my health.

Not the most planned out kitchen design

Three weeks ago, I joined up the 34 Weeks of Clean Challenge hosted by Faith, Family and Fridays. I figured it would help me start getting my house cleaned better than just wiping surfaces.  I hate cleaning. Deep cleaning?? Not a fan of it. I've got dust bunnies that have already had families and are planning for their retirement in Florida soon.

This week we were challenged to clean our kitchen cabinets and drawers.. The goal was simple: "clean out and off all those surfaces and pare down what we don't need or simply do not use anymore.  Remember- we are trying to clean AND declutter!".  No problem I figured..

HA!!

First, I decided to go in and start taking pictures of my cabinets.. as I opened the drawers to take pictures, I realized that out of 6 drawers, 4 of them had become "junk drawers".. Originally, we had 1 junk drawer.. Everyone has one..  Over the four years we have lived here, I guess we accumulated one junk drawer for each year.

While it is embarrassing, I'll post the pictures.. This is what joining something like the Clean Challenge is all about, right??

Wow, I didn't realize how much stuff we accumulated.  Not only that, but the dirt/grime that has accumulated along the lip of the drawers is unreal.. I swear I clean those from time to time (but obviously not often enough).   

And I should also show what the cabinets look like.. Not too bad, could use some organizing, right??  The issue I was having was that because I was constantly climbing up and down, my spices were constantly getting moved around. Some where in my small drawer, the rest were in one of the two cabinets. And the elusive pepper?? Good luck finding it..

Sorry for the poor quality.. The Sun was not cooperating. LOL

I have ALOT of spices..  Hi Ashleigh!!

Well,  after lots of work,  my kitchen is much more organized. I still have a junk drawer, but the "junk" in it is stuff we actually need (but I don't know where to put) as opposed to anything that happened to get shoved into the drawer.

The dreaded step stool that my husband swears will be the death of me!

Notice the lack of spices??  That's because I found a use for one of those 4 junk drawers that I cleaned out :)

And most important:

The Pepper now has its own designated place!!!

If your interested in joining up with the 34 weeks of clean, head over to Family, Faith and Fridays and sign up - it's still early in the challenge.. Just click the link below to join :)