Week # 4 - Cupboard of Doom

I am very thankful that I did this task last weekend (instead of leaving it until the last minute like usual) as our house was flu-bound and since Monday night, this is the most productive the whole house has been... And TroubleMaker and I are still jammie-bound and in recovery mode.

Thankfully last weekend I made a decision to tackle one of the most disastrous places in our home. When we moved in six and one half years ago, I never thought I'd fill all the storage spaces in our house. It didn't take long for me/us to do it but somethings I've been realizing is that without a 'plan' to regularly go through and purge, clean and organize these spaces, the clutter and stuff just piles up and up and up.

When we purchased our house, this cupboard/closet was one of those spaces I knew had been thought of by a cook - it's adjacent to the kitchen, has lots of shelving and is open and spacious. I knew it was the answer to the "appliance garage" used in so many new kitchens. But not only did it have space for all my small kitchen appliances, it had room to be a pantry for big boxes and baking supplies and it had 'out of the way' shelving for coin jars and other odds and ends.

It didn't take long for me to realize that it could also be a convenient dumping ground for all those homeless belongings every home accumulates... But today was my day - today, all the shame would be put to rest and I would conquer the...

Cupboard of Doom




I knew I'd need help so I got a big folding table and my faithful son, TroubleMaker.

He and I began to empty the Cupboard of Doom. He would ask "Mama, what's this?" and I pulled something else for him to put on the table. When we got to the meat slicer he said in reply "Mama, we don't need a meat slicer." He was quite serious and I realized he was right. We got it second hand more than six years ago from my Mother In Law and I'd never used it. A week or two ago, I asked the guru of organization, The Org Junkie and she had the same advice my son gave me this week. So I started my "give away" pile of appliances and stuff. Once we got the cupboard empty and wiped out, I stared at the empty shelves for a few minutes unsure of the next step.

Then I began to sketch. After all, I'm an interior designer - designing and planning spaces is kind of my thing... And it all came to me! Storage for appliance, food, wrapping centre and a shelf for TroubleMaker's art supplies and his snack shelf! Sketch in hand (and TroubleMaker off playing tractors)
I began to put things back together again. Then, to fund the new baskets and organizational tools I want to get, TroubleMaker and I started to roll up some coins (in the coin rollers I found in the deep recesses of the Cupboard of Doom).

It also dawned on me that organizing is just planning specific spaces... Instead of planning a room for living, I planned my cupboard for living! Last week it was my closet and the week before, TroubleMaker's Dresser... It is all starting to make a surprising amount of sense to me now!

So now, not only do I have a great, organized and easy to use cupboard, I have 'found' money to buy some new things for it! I have a pile of stuff to give away on our local Freecycle message board and my husband could not believe the transformation... He was so shocked, he actually peeked around to the corner into the kitchen wondering where I'd stacked all the other stuff (thinking I'd just hidden it for the pictures). HA! Was he surprised!



To see some other great projects from the Org Junkie's 52 Weeks of Organizing, Check out Week #4! Happy organizing and thank for stopping by!

The Leftover Piles from the Cupboard of Doom Awesome!