Over the years I’ve lived with a lot of different roommates and I’ve returned from visits to Rogers City with a lot of Mom’s tasty cooking. Both have been great, but I’ve ended up with a cupboard full of containers. Since my brother Isaac is moving out this week I figured it was a good time to clean up the mess, so I pulled everything out of the cupboard.

Imagine what this looked like it the cupboard! I’ve organized the cupboard a few times over the years but it was never long for it to become a fight to close the door after emptying the dishwasher. With so many mismatched containers they never stacked well and it was a pain to find the lid for anything.

The first step was matching each top to a bottom. As I did this, I set aside things I wanted to keep. I decided to keep some of the quality containers where the lid fit really well. I also kept sets where I had a lot of the same container, which makes it easier for stacking.

As you can see, a lot of this stuff fits really well together. When I put it all back in the cupboard I was able to break it down even further by putting the large bowls inside each other and the same thing for the cylinders. Now the big bowls can hide away on the bottom shelf until they’re needed and the stuff I use regularly can stack nicely on the pull-out shelf.

Isaac can pick through the rest of the stuff and take whatever he wants. I’ll throw out a lot of what is left and take the decent stuff back to Mom so she can send me home with food when I visit. 🙂

What a hodge-podge of containers! Everything is a different size, there are lids without a container, containers without a lid, and containers that are cracked.

Being organized feels so much better!