Medicine Storage

Last Christmas, yes almost a year ago (can you believe Christmas is only 3 months away?! Me neither!!), while we were staying with my in-laws I got sick with a really bad sinus infection. It was not fun, but I got to see my mother-in-law's medicine cabinet and I was in awe. She had everything labeled neatly and divided up into categories. It was then that I knew I wanted to do that to our medicine. So now, about 10 months later, I finally have an organized medicine cabinet and I am pretty excited about it!! 

We have this awesome corner cabinet in our kitchen that has doors on both sides. It's about the only cabinet I like in our kitchen. It has always been the home to all of our vitamins and medicine, but it used to be really ugly and look like this:

With some inexpensive bins and a double-tiered lazy susan from Walmart, along with some washi tape labels, it's a whole new space!

Check it out!!

Here is the view from the back, this opens up into our eating area.

Here is what it looks like from the front, which opens up in the kitchen.

I put our most-used vitamins on the lazy susan for easy access each day.

 Washi tape has been really popular lately and there are so many uses for it, as evidenced all over pinterest! I learned about using washi tape for labels from the ever-famous and ever-wonderful iheartorganizing blog. Such a great idea! They are so easy to remove and change up.

I just sorted out all of our medicine and categorized them according to what we had.

My categories are:

Sleep Aids and Motion Sickness (I realize the way I abbreviated it on the label is kind of funny, but I wanted it to be shorter!)

Vitamins (These are the ones we don't use very often, but I can't bring myself to throw them away. YOU should always throw things away that you don't use, though! ;))

Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat

Tissues and Chapstick (We have about a million little packs of tissues and TONS of Chapstick!)

Fever and Pain

First Aid

Please ignore the fact that our white trim on the edge of the shelf fell off. I don't even know if it was there when we moved in or not. I didn't even notice until I was uploading the pictures. Oops. I know it looks super classy.

Am I the only one that didn't know that was how medicine should be stored??

I hope not. 

P.S. I am in the process of reorganizing my whole kitchen, so a kitchen cabinet tour will be up soon!
Be sure to follow and check back soon for that!!

Happy Thursday!! :)

Day 5: Silverware Drawer

This seems really simple to organize. You buy one of those little divider things and you just use it... right?! Well, not so fast. I bought one of those trusty little trays right after I got married and this is how my drawer has looked for the past year:
 

 A giant mess.

 

You have to buy the RIGHT kind of divider. DO NOT get the kind with the little slots at the bottom that the silverware can slide through. It will pretty much ruin your life. Not really. But, you get the point. It won't be good.

 

So, I finally got this one and I am a much happier camper!

I added some fun patterned scrapbook paper that I already had, removed some of the random items that had ended up in there, threw away the random take-out plasticware, and arranged the silverware in a better way.

 These simple changes made a huge difference.

I put serving spoons in the top section in the back, because I don't use them very often. Then, I separated the large and small forks and spoons and put them in the first 2 sectioons. Then, regular knives and steak knives go in the last 2 sections.

I also store some sticky notes, scissors, dry erase markers (we have a dry erase board/cork board on the wall next to our fridge), and my favorite pens in the front of the drawer.

And there ya have it, a neater, prettier, more orderly silverware drawer!

Thanks for reading! :)
I'll be back tomorrow with my closet makeover! You don't want to miss it!



Day 4: Refrigerator Organization

Doesn't this sound like an exciting post??
Not really.

I wish my refrigerator looked like this:

(from iheartorganizing.blogspot.com- only my favorite blog EVER!)

 

Sadly... it does not!

It does look a lot better now though than it did earlier today!

 

 

I just made a few simple changes.

 

I added a snack bin. No, we don't have children. Yes, we are 5 years old.

 

 

I tried to group everything by category.

 

Drinks go on the top shelf.

 

Snacks, dairy, bread go on the second shelf.

Cheeses and raw garlic go in the deli drawer.

Eggs and a random leftover fit perfectly on this little shelf.

Then, meat and some berries go on the bottom shelf. I am going to try to rinse and store fruit like this from now. I think it will cut down on messes and save a lot of time.

And, of course fruits and veggies go in the crisper drawers.

I just tried to categorize the condiments as best as I could.

 

And then I added these little babies:

I have become a label freak. I love labels. Rule of thumb: Label everything you possibly can with really cute labels and it is bound to look pretty!

Eventually, I would like to invest in some nice glass storage containers, as well as some glass pitchers to store milk and juice. I also saw a bunch of refrigerator bins at Bed, Bath, and Beyond today that would work really well, but they were really expensive. I could probably find some cheaper somewhere else, but for now, I am happy with using all of these things that I already had!

Do you have any refrigerator organization tips that would be helpful??

Taming Under the Kitchen Sink

Oh my goodness, I am so embarrassed to post these before pictures. It looks like a bomb went off under there... please try not to judge me.

I don't know why it took me so long to tackle this project.

It took about $10 and an hour and now I don't have to cover my eyes every time I need something from under there!

So... here it is... the dreadful before:

With just a little reaaranging, a few bins (some that I already had), some labels that I already had, a tension rod, and some command hooks... it's a whole new space!

And...

After:

 Yeah, my OCD came out a little and I folded neatly some of the grocery bags that were shoved under there. I threw away a lot of them, who needs 50,000 grocery bags anyway?!

 This helps clear up the space around the sink and also let's the brush air out and prevents gross mildew!

I was able to move the small appliances that were cluttering it up to another cabinet and move my cleaners from the pantry under here. It looks so much better! There is even a little growing room to store more paper towels! That makes a crazy girl happy. :)