So, yes, I did wimp out and not do my dining room.

My kitchen took me four hours, though!  FOUR HOURS!

It’s partially just because I’m kind of anal about my kitchen.  I like when it looks a certain way and the clutteryness (I know that’s not a word) of it recently has been driving me crazy.  And we had stuff in our pantry from like when we moved in, or things that Devon swore he was going to eat but hadn’t.  And it was just…bad.  So I finally just said, “screw it” and got rid of it all.

So I, admittedly, let my kitchen go in the past few days because I knew I was going to deep clean it this week, so I was just kind of “meh” about it.  So some of our before pics are gonna be like “OMG, you’re hoarders!”.  No.  It just hadn’t been organized in awhile.  Although I did have a box of giveaways to our local pantry and a bag of expired things after cleaning out everything.  So, it is nice to be able to give stuff to people that need it and it always feels good to purge.  

So, the before:

So yeah….lots of cluttered stuff.  Like the top of our cabinets just had like housewarming or Christmas gifts that we hadn’t put away or done anything with.  Grocery items that we just hadn’t found room for, etc.  And yes our kitchen is small, but I do love it.  It’s a great little kitchen, it just needed to be better organized.  And if you see, in the last picture, yes, that white appliance (not the dishwasher) is our washer/dryer.  It’s a combo machine, so you can see why we don’t really have an actual laundry area in our house.

Sooo……four hours later.  The bulk of my time was clearing out all the clutter and reorganizing the fridge and pantry and all that.  And I’m a top to bottom cleaner, so I started with the crap at the top of the cabinets, then cleaned out the pantry and fridge, then wiped down all the surfaces, then scrubbed the floor.  Once all that was done….no way in hell I was doing the dining room.

But I’m happy with how my kitchen looks now.  It feels more useable again.

So…..after:

I created a little snack bin for the top of our fridge instead of having all those boxes and containers up there.  They take up so much room and are so unnecessary.  So anything in individual packs went in here and it was just a cute little basket that I got from Home Goods (love them!).

So much space again!

Again, more space!  And better organized instead of everything just being thrown around.

Still one of my least favorite closets.  But I did get that pan organizer from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and it helps to not have all our pans just hanging around on the bottom of the closet.

All straightened, nothing at the top.  So pretty.  To celebrate, I refused to cook last night and Devon and I went out to dinner.  I wasn’t making any kind of mess in that thing after spending four hours cleaning it.

Now today, I will do my dining room.  I promise.