Day 3: Labels

Hi everyone, how are you doing this fine Thursday?  I hope you all are doing well.  If you’re just joining us here, we’re on Day 3, of the 31 days series.  You can check out Day 1 here and Day 2 here.  The quick version is that so far we’ve made our plan of attack and printed out inventory sheets for when we tackle the pantry this weekend.  Since taking time to be prepared can make a project like this run smoothly, I thought I would continue on with the prep work and share with you all the labels I made up.

Before I get to labels, I thought I would share with you a funny little story.  A few weeks ago when I decided to focus on the kitchen for the 31 Days series, I was full of ideas and excitement. I was having to hold myself back because I wanted to jump in and do it all right then!  I spent hours talking Travis’s ear off about all my ideas, getting his feedback because he uses the kitchen too.  Then last week Travis says to me,   “Would you mind if I organized the kitchen during the my days off this week?” …. I didn’t know what to say to that at first.  He idea was to organize the kitchen the way he wanted, and then I could go through it and tweak it and pretty it up.  Or, I could totally change it all up on him.  (His words!)  And yes, I feel truly lucky and blessed that I have a husband who wants to jump in and help with organizing projects.

And you know what I said?  I said yes!  Of course I said yes, who would say no to that?  I had many reasons for saying yes.  First and foremost, as I’ve travelled this journey to be a more organized home maker, Travis has been nothing but supportive.  Even when I started projects he knew would end badly, he was supportive.  He put up with things  changing on an almost monthly basis, and he let me go my own way.  Offer advice when asked, or when he saw that I was ready to cry because I felt like all I had done was make a big mess, but he’s never asked to organize a room.  Also, if I’m being 100% truthful, he spends more time in the kitchen than I do.  Ok, that’s not truthful, he spends more time USING the kitchen than I do.  He bakes the bread, the cakes, and the yummy pastries, I do cookies and muffins.  He loves to cook and experiment and try new things, and I prefer to use the same old recipes I know by heart.  So, to me it made a lot of sense to see how the chef of the house would like to have his kitchen set up.

So, Travis got to work and got almost all of the kitchen reorganized before life came and bit us in the butt with stuff that took up a whole day and a half of his days off. All in all I’m pretty happy with the direction he took, more importantly he’s happy with it, and if it’s not where I would have put things, I have to admit the flow of this kitchen is much smoother now.  There is a downside though, one that Travis and the boys have put up with time and time again, only this time the shoe is on the other foot and I’m getting a taste of my own medicine …. I don’t know where everything is!  I find myself opening up all the cupboards to find one thing.  I have a HUGE new appreciation for what my family goes through whenever I reorganize a room.

And that, my friends, is where the labels come in.  You see I had already toyed with the idea of making labels for the cupboard doors, but after experiencing the “I can’t find anything because my husband just rearranged everything” feeling I knew for sure that it was going to be needed.  I printed them on plain old paper (they are not made to size for label paper, let me know if that’s something you think I should do) cut them out and taped them to the OUTSIDE of the cupboard doors.  This way I can see what’s behind those doors, and so can the kids!  They only have to last until we learn the new layout, and I don’t think that is going to take very long.

As you can see, there are two pre-filled out sheets and one blank.  Feel free to download and print all of them, as always just click the picture to get to the PDF.    Here’s a blurry picture of them in action.  (I really need to find where I put the memory card for our other camera lol)

So, there you have it.  Day 1 we made a plan, Day 2 we got ready to take inventory, and now we have some labels so that as we go through the month, possibly rearranging the kitchen cupboards in our quest for and organized kitchen we can label where things are so our family can find the items the need.  Tomorrow I’m switch gears from prep work and organizing to cleaning.  I’ll be sharing my daily kitchen cleaning routine and some of the homemade cleaners I use in this busy room.

Does your husband help you organize?  If so, how?  If not, would like him to?