I consider myself a pretty organized person, although I'm sure if asked, family members would say it's more like being a bit obsessed with it. That maybe true I don't know all I do know is clutter - in any form - drives me crazy and when I need something I want to be able to just find it. I normally don't buy something if I don't have a specific place or use for the item, so I had no clue what was coming with the purchase of the container I'm going to tell you about.
I love the Flip-Top containers from Better Homes & Gardens and have purchased several different sizes for my kitchen. I started with the 10 and 7.5 cup mainly to store raisins, cranberries, walnuts and pecans. These are kept on the counter for easy access as I use these often in baking, tossing into salads and munching. So naturally when I spotted this one with the dog paw handle I had to get it for "The Boys" - not that it matters to them what their treats are in - the blue paw is so cute and it's big enough to hold two boxes of chew bones at a time.
Their bones and cookies have always been kept in a cupboard in the box they came in which worked fine but I thought this was just so cute and I could keep it on the counter for easy access. Well .... that would have been fine if not for the fact that on the day I bought this there were several other sizes that caught my eye - I'm sure you can see where this is going, too bad I didn't - so I bought a couple different styles for their cookies.
The purchasing didn't stop there, oh no, I then picked up several more sizes - why couldn't that day have been one were they didn't have fully stocked shelves - for dry goods. This included flour, two kinds of sugar - raw and organic white - brown sugar - again organic - and baking powder.
One of the containers was a 23.5 cup that was intended for bagels but I thought it would be perfect for flour. I use a gluten-free rice flour from Bob's Red Mill - also use their baking powder - which we buy in 5 pound bags and standard containers are too small to fit the entire bag. I even found some adorable little measuring scoops to go along with each container - Oh yeah, needed those - that's the organic white sugar we use.
Ok so fast forward home and all the dry goods, bones and cookies are now in their snazzy new containers and arranged on the counters in the kitchen. "All Good" right, well not quite, when I took a step back and looked around all I saw was a sea - and I mean giant ocean - of flip-top containers, this also said - to me anyway - too cluttered, too crowed just plain too much.
After several rearranges on the counters I decided the best option was to put everything in a wood cabinet in the kitchen, and yes I know the door knobs are uneven, it's been that way for years and probably will always be that way. So I emptied everything out of the cabinet and put all the new containers inside.
Perfect, everything was in easy reach not to mention all the baking items were together, the dogs bones and cookies were together I even had space for the two tea containers - I'll explain why those are there in a minute.
Just in case you're interested, on the bottom shelf are two collapsible fabric storage cubes from Better Homes & Gardens, being half the size of the normal fabric cubes they are perfect for small spaces. These two are holding extra napkins, I also use these in my craft cabinet.
Ok back to our story, turning around I suddenly realized "Not so Perfect" as the table was covered with everything I took out of that cabinet. This included things like serving dishes, crock pot, bean pot etc. which I now had to find a home for.
There is a pantry type closet in the hall off the kitchen which I thought would work fine, I cleared everything out and arranged all the dishes, bakeware and larger appliances. It also included extra plastic containers, glass cookie jars and several baskets holding utensils I don't use all the time, its arrangement still isn't perfect - well for me anyway, I'll get back to it eventually - but for now it works.
By now I know you've already figured out what happened next and if you guessed the table was covered with stuff from the closet you're so right and once again things needed a new home - this is like giving a mouse a cookie, round and round. Pretty much everything from the closet was a type of canned item so the obvious place was a lower corner cabinet that has lazy-Susan shelves in it and that worked out fine except for a few larger spice type items which led to a reorganization of the spice cabinet.
Compared to everything else that day this project was really simple, the spices were originally in a smaller cabinet to the left of my sink and the one on the right - which is larger - was only holding odd stuff so I switched them. Doing this was actually a good thing as it gave me an opportunity to go through the spices and get rid of out of date bottles. Oh, the two tea containers were up in the spice cabinet but in order to spread everything out evenly - another one of my quirks - I put them in the wood cabinet.
In the end everything worked out but it definitely reaffirmed that before purchasing something you really need to stop and think "What's going to happen when I get this home"
