Not Entirely Ordinary: No room for junk

We live in a small apartment. When one person is in school full time and the other is a freelance producer, affordable is the name of the game when it comes to living spaces. We have a great apartment, don't get me wrong, but it's not the square footage that makes it great. It's all about location, location, location. We live 8 miles from the beaches in Malibu. That's it. That's all we need.

That said, we have very little space to cram a lot of stuff (as you can see above). Our kitchen has a corner of cabinets that acts as our pantry. If we are not careful, the pantry spills out into all corners and crevices of our kitchen. At the beginning of the month I decided to jump on the New Years bandwagon of cleaning and organizing. I even joined the Apartment Therapy January Cure mailing list for a daily check list of things to do to clean and organize your life and home. It's fun right? I get an email every day, read it, think about how nice it would be to be that organized, then I move on to the next email in my inbox. Baby steps. Cut to a week ago, I couldn't take it anymore...every time I would open a cabinet door, something would jump out at me screaming about how there was just no space. I dashed to IKEA to get some containers and things at a fraction of the cost of somewhere like The Container store. I set a $20 budget, and after forgetting to factor in taxes, walked out with a bag full of organization for $22.

Cardboard Magazine Holders (comes in a set of 5, still trying to figure out what to do with the other 4).

Two sets of basic food storage containers

Bag Clips (Assortment pack of 30)

Two 44oz food safe containters

That's all I needed, and all I could afford on my small budget. You MUST set a budget at IKEA or you could really do some damage.

First up, I took EVERYTHING out of the cabinets and wiped down the shelves. Then I tossed what needed to be tossed and consolidated. In addition to the IKEA goodies, I had some empty containers from bulk food from Costco. I peeled the labels off and they became more storage goodies.

I have my baking flour, confectioners sugar, brown sugar and other baking goods together on one shelf. The next shelf is snacks and cereals. Below that, rice (in a Costco container), grits (in the 44oz food saver), oatmeal (in the other 44oz food saver, not pictured), various Indian spice mixes and all of our oils and cooking liquids.

The shelves below that are canned goods and boxed mixes and pasta. Then for the spice cabinet, all I really did was just clean it up, make it neat.

Here's what I did with the cardboard magazine holder. It's holding my foil, wax paper, parchment paper and plastic wrap.

I know it doesn't seem like much was done, but trust me, it made a HUGE difference. Now we can open our cabinets and not worry about what might fall out and smack us in the face, or worse, hit the ground and become the dog's next snack. And it's also made us both more aware of how messy things can get so now we take that extra step to simply put things back where they belong.