Apartment Organization: Step 1 - Kitchen!

I mentioned a few posts back that part of the stress in my life comes from feeling unorganized and overwhelmed, and a quick look around my apartment confirms that I am, in fact, very unorganized. It's a shame, too, because until I moved into this apartment I always considered myself, well... organized.

I've done a lot of dreaming about what I want this place to look like, but for the longest time I've felt like I just didn't know where to start. Then, about a week ago I discovered iHeart Organizing. Take a peek. Seriously. It will amaze you. I've never seen someone's home so well put together. Every room, too! Obviously I don't have the space (or resources) to make my small one-bedroom apartment look like that, but it's a great place to get some wonderful, easy ideas to organize and declutter your space. I've scrolled through months of posts, looking at before and after photos, clicking on links to products and other blogs, and just gathering ideas for my great re-organization. Seeing such beautifully designed and organized spaces gave me just the motivation to finally start what seems like will be a never-ending project.

But I did. I started! I chose to begin with my kitchen, and more specifically, the storage space in my kitchen. Thankfully this area of my tiny little place offers a lot of storage because I've accumulated a lot of, well, crap over the years. I'm actually grateful for the opportunity I've now given myself to go through some of this stuff and weed out the things I haven't used since mylast apartment, and hopefully update a few of the things I use more often.
I decided to start with the drawer that I affectionately call the "junk drawer" so that I could gauge how long this project would take. Boy, was I surprised! So surprised, in fact, that I only made it through ONE drawer tonight - and it's small - but hey, it's a start!

This is what I started with:

It's a huge mess, I know! So I took everything out ...

Wiped it down with one of these ...

And lined it with a little of this.

Let me tell you ... that part was not easy! Sure, the measuring and cutting part were pretty simple. But actually placing the liner in the drawer was not. Trust me, it isn't perfect ... but that's why I chose to start with this drawer in the first place! I'm a little annoyed that there are a couple of small bubbles in the paper, but you'll see in a few minutes that it really doesn't matter anyway. (p.s., in case you're wondering, the liner is removable, so if/when I ever save enough money to buy my own house and move out, my landlord will be happy that I didn't leave a permanent gift in her kitchen drawers!)

This is what it looked like when I finished the lining ...

When I emptied out the drawer I tossed everything into this bucket and took out all of the organizers that I had in the drawer to begin with (and that clearly were not serving a purpose!).

I put them all back in, snapped them together, and viola!

Going through the bucket took the longest, and in the end I tossed about 60% of the junk that had previously lived in my "junk drawer".

This is what I was left with ...

It sounds a little silly, but I'm so impressed with myself! Sadly, this little project (ahem, portion of a project) took at least 45 minutes, but now that I've figured out my plan I think it will all go more smoothly for the rest of my drawers.

Stay tuned ... there's a lot more to come!