Pantry Organizing {52 Week Organized Home Challenge}

This week's challenge from Home Storage Solutions is decluttering and organizing the pantry, spices and food storage spaces. A few weeks ago, I organized my spices because they were an out of control mess! The rest of the pantry really needed some help though so I was excited to start this challenge.

Join the 52 Week Challenge with me and follow along on here as I get organized!

This is the top of my pantry. Stuff was just shoved everywhere before I started cleaning! There were random tupperware containers at the top, even though we have a tupperware cupboard. The baskets were overflowing to the point that if you tried to take them down to find something, everything fell on you or the floor.

After: The appliances are neatly arranged on the right side and easy to get to. The baskets are cleaned out and labeled. So much better!

The middle section of the pantry was probably the hardest! I realized as I was cleaning it out that we had so much stuff in there that I had no clue we even had. A lot of stale chips for one thing. I headed straight to the Dollar Tree to look for some things to help organize this mess.

After: I bought some stacking shelves for the canned goods. It seems to really help us see what we have and organize things better by category. I got out my Silhouette and labeled a lot of things. More for the sake of others. It wouldn't be good to mistake salt for sugar. The medicine area is so much neater too. Everything is in baskets and easy to get to. 

The bottom section was kind of chaotic before I tackled it. We had baking racks in the back that were a pain to get to. The mixing bowls were hidden in that weird back corner and with most of the stuff down here, we always seemed to knock something over when we tried to get something else out.

After: I stacked all the linens on the side - seemed to make more sense for them all to be together. The mixing bowls went into a different cupboard in the kitchen. I made another appliance shelf for the miscellaneous things down here including our waffle iron that was lost in the back. I reorganized all the ziplock bags and plastic wrap type stuff where they wouldn't be in the way of other things. Then I found a great place for the baking racks and our cutting boards (those were in another cupboard and impossible to get to). I also swept out the bottom and found a home for our lunch bags.

Looking at it now, I can't believe we could find anything in the mess before! It's no wonder we would open the door and decide we had nothing to eat. All we could see was peanut butter, tuna and chips. Not a great combination!

How to Clean Stove Burners

I was cleaning the kitchen the other day as I work toward my 52 Weeks of Organization. It's something I'm trying to do this year so that my house doesn't stay in a constant state of chaos. I realized that my stove was DISGUSTING! I mean capital D - Disgusting! It's no wonder that at the last place we lived, we got charged for cleaning the stove when we moved out. Unfortunately, just a simple wipe down was not going to do this time and I did not want to spend hours cleaning this mess.

This is my stove before I cleaned it. Gross, right?! I could not believe the mess when I actually got to looking at it up close.

A light bulb went off! I always use Easy Off Heavy Duty to clean my oven - it saves tons of time cleaning the burnt on gook in the oven. It was worth a shot right?! So, following the directions on my can, I put on my rubber kitchen gloves and gave the stove burners a thorough coat of the Easy Off. I took everything apart to be sure that the Easy Off would get to all the dirty parts.

The directions said to let it sit for 20 minutes.
I turned on the kitchen fan to make sure there was good ventilation from all the fumes - I didn't want to pass out on the floor or anything. After the 20 minute timer when off, I came back and surprisingly most of the grease and burnt on mess just wiped right off!!! There were a few of the really dirty spots I had to scrub a bit but it cleaned up soooo easily. I followed it up with a good rinse too.

The end result was so wonderful! My stove top looks as good as new. This is also a great thing since we rent. I know that whenever the time comes to move again, I can get the stove into tip-top shape and not ever get charged again for a silly cleaning fee. And even better than that, I don't have an embarrassingly dirty stove when company comes to visit!