Kitchen Decluttering - An Update

I don't know about anyone else, but in our household the kitchen is the worst room in the house for accumulating clutter and towards the end of last year it got so bad that even OH was complaining about it, which is not like him at all.

As a consequence, this year I've been trying to resolve certain problems in this regard, by slowly working my way through them one at a time.  I cleared the main windowsill early in the year and then did some work on another clutter spot, namely my kitchen table 'office', by buying some drawers which keep the clutter at bay and so far this new system seems to be working well.

I attempted a February Food Challenge to use up lots of food that had been around for a while and was filling a shelf in one cupboard, in the hope I'd free the shelf to house all the pet 'stuff'. 

Whilst waiting to use up the food, I decanted the dog food, biscuits and treats into jars, that had been languishing unused in another cupboard, creating a much tidier and easily accessible worktop system which seems to work well on a daily basis.  Here's a picture of the jars now in use.

 

 

I was still, however, left with the problem of  a trug full of doggy items, toys, medicines, grooming products, etc., that  I needed to find space for.  It had been sat in front of the microwave for ages and required moving every time I wanted to use it.  Not very satisfactory.  In the end an impromptu reorganisation of 3 or 4 kitchen cupboards created enough space for a whole designated pet shelf. 

This has really liberated my worktops, to the point where I may even attempt a bit of baking and bread making in the near future.  Here's the shelf in question, looking especially tidy.  (Not sure how long it will stay this way).

As a consequence of all the rejigging and reorganising, I managed to create my pet shelf and still keep my food overflow shelf, which I must admit is really useful, especially if I get tempted by any great offers from Approved Foods or in the supermarkets.  Here's a picture of it.

Spurred on by my efforts, the other night I decided to tackle the broom cupboard.  I didn't take a before photo I'm afraid so you can't see the comparison. I did manage to re-house a few pet items to the 'pet shelf', remove some paperwork I'd stuffed on the top shelf , get rid of a few unnecessary items, sorted through the bag of cloth shopping bags hung on the door and sent a few to the charity shop, and managed to collapse my shopping trolley so that everything fitted in a lot better.  It looks a lot neater now and is much easier to negotiate on a daily basis.  I'm not sure it will make me do a whole lot more cleaning though!

There are still a few problem areas left to tackle, namely the top of the fridge,  the recipe book cupboard and the baking drawer (for someone who doesn't bake very often, I seem to have an abundance of items in here), but I live in hope of one day having a clutter free kitchen.  I'll keep working on it.