Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Step It Up

One of the reasons I got slowed down doing the cabinets was that I was trying to do a bit of organizing along the way. With the mother gone, it was the perfect time to rotate some things downstairs and to get rid of others entirely.

I bought a bunch of organizer shelves, slide drawers and other products and brought them home for a trial run. Because the mother loves to put knick knacks in the already full cabinets, too, I was intrigued by this three-tier, stairstep expandable shelf organizer which seemed like it would be ideal for the spice cabinet. (I got it at Lowe’s for about $1 more than this online price.)

This thing really comes in handy. I never got around to organizing the spice cabinet while the mother was gone though I had bought this handy new shelf, a nice but smaller stainless tiered spice shelf and two new stainless round spinner shelves to replace a set of aged plastic ones in oh so lovely harvest gold.

What I did get around to organizing was the under-the-sink cabinet.

On a whim, I tried the expandable shelf there and man, did it work great! The shelf will expand to 26 inches, so it was a great choice for the 23-inch deep cabinet. I was able to arrange, by category, a variety of cleaning products. And the beauty is, I can not only see all of them, I don’t have to move five or six to get to any one of them.

Look how much stuff it holds. You can see each little step if you look closely.

It really opened up a little space together with a set of stacking shelves that I put along the other side of the cabinet. The mother didn’t even balk.

Over the weekend, I bought another of the expandable shelves to replace the one I’d used elsewhere. On Monday, the mother decided to do the spice cabinet.

I quickly put the shelf in place where I’d intended it to go. While you can’t see the shelf, you can see that it is multi-level. From the right side, it's easy to see three graduated rows of items.

Can you believe that this is after some stuff had already been taken out by me and the mother even removed a few more things Monday? Clearing up some of that space made the other two shelves completely functional. (I’m loving the new stainless spinners. Aren't they fun?) On the bottom shelf is the three-level spice rack. The mother doesn't like this, but she's dealing with it. She says it takes up too much space.

So, if you have a lot of items to store, even in a relatively tight space, this is a product that can do it while still giving you the functionality that you need.

Other than online, Lowe's was the only store I found this shelf at. I think I paid $15 for each of them. They are worth every penny.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that is some organization. To be organized there really is no price tag to place upon it. Knowing where "stuff" is, is priceless!


Michele

Vicki said...

Very nice! I found a magnetic spice rack that goes on the side of my refrigerator. Now some empty space on the side of my fridge is freeing up counter and cabinet space. I got it at the Container Store.

Victoria said...

That looks a lot better. Believe it or not, organizing is sort of an obsession of mine. LOL. Everything has to have a place, label and color coded basket in my house. I say this as my husband shakes his head.

Anyways. I got tired of looking at my various containers of herbs- since the companies that make them cant seem to keep to one uniform container. So I went to IKEA and picked up a ton of these spice jars and labeled them... Its been my best investment thus far for my kitchen. I love it!

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40064702

Karen Anne said...

I keep my under the sink stuff in two Rubbermaid dishpans(?). They're easy to tilt forward and when I reach in for things, everything else is so wedged in the container that its held in place and doesn't fall over.

Karen Anne said...

I forgot, my original plan with the Rubbermaid was that if there's some water leakage I don't notice, anything that rusts or leaks will do so into the dishpan and not on the floor, making cleanup into just a tossout.

Lauren said...

My SpiceStack works well for holding a lot of spice bottles in a relatively small space. Plus it's easy to choose just one spice and not knock over a lot of others in the process. Check it out at www.SpiceStack.com. Happy Organizing!

NV said...

Michele -- That's exactly right! Someday, we'll have it all together. Someday ...

Vicki -- That sounds cool. The mother would never go for that, though.

Victoria -- Another cool product. Amazing how many of them there are!

Karen Anne -- A good plan! I think that worked for us, too. We had this giant Lazy susan under there. It just took up too much space without letting everything fit.

Lauren -- Wow! Yet ANOTHER cool product. What will they think of next?