Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Today I looked at the cabinet under my kitchen sink and gasped. How on earth did it end up looking like this?!? I'm supposed to be organized! Then I thought back to the last time I had cleaned out this cupboard and suddenly drew a blank. When was that...? I honestly could not remember, which probably equates to never. At least not since we moved here. Eight years ago. Yikes.

As you can see, once upon a time, I had made somewhat of an effort to contain stuff. I see a couple of bins and a grocery bag container. There's too much stuff in the bins though and there's even more junk hiding behind. This cupboard is in serious need of a makeover! Well, ahem, that happens to be my specialty, you know. So I had at it. I love me a good organization project!

First the little dude and I made a meandering trip to Target. You know, the kind you can only make when four out of the five kids are in school. Yeah. I love those trips. The others? Not so much. ;) Anyway, I digress... Where was I? Ah yes, Target. I love that place! Knowing that I already had two big bins to work with I was on the look out for some stacking shelves called shelf helpers and some smaller bins. Target did not disappoint!

When I came home I got to work. First I pulled everything out of the bins and decided what was a keeper and what was a tosser. I filled a garbage bag with tossers. Eight years became painfully obvious at that point. As you can see the bins were nasty. Years of things being spilled in the bottoms had not been kind to them!

Thankfully, they were good quality bins and all they needed was a good scrubbing. :)

After I cleaned the bins I continued on to empty out the rest of the cabinet. There was a friendly little Easter sticker waiting for me in the back. Hello little Easter egg! How on earth did you get there? It's a mystery. After all the dirty work was done I got to the good stuff. Placing!

An under sink cabinet is tricky I discovered. There's plumbing and a garbage disposal to work around. I had to rearrange things a few times until I found the most accessible and logical way to place things. I used one of my shelf helpers to place the garbage bags. Always try to place like items together. It'll make it easier for everyone to find/ put things away later.

Here's my favorite Christmas present of all time right here. I LOVE my label maker. After all of my items were placed in their appropriate containers, I whipped out this bad boy. Most organization projects aren't truly complete without labels. I can't emphasize this enough! Obviously, you don't want to label everything but an under the sink cabinet (or anywhere not out in the open for that matter) is a perfectly acceptable place for some labels.

I opted to place the labels on the tops of the bin handles. Since the cabinet is under the sink, it will mostly be opened while looking down into it. This will make the labels easily seen.

And here's the finished product! The extra garbage bags are tucked away neatly in the back but still easily reached thanks to my shelf helper. Another shelf helper sits on the other side and contains the extra hand soaps and has my handy rubber gloves (I don't like touching raw meat) underneath. The dish products are now in a little bin of their own instead of being lost/ spilling out every which way. And all the miscellaneous cleaners that I don't use as often are grouped together. 

It looks so much better and I'm confident my husband will be singing my praises tonight when he reaches under the sink to find the dishwasher detergent. That's right. My husband does the dishes at my house. Every night. Jealous? You should be. ;)

And that folks is how I conquered everything but the kitchen sink.