16 October Featured Space: Kitchen - Disastrous Drawers {part 1}

I have a little secret.  OK, to me, it's a HUGE secret.  That secret comes in the form of three drawers that live in my kitchen.

The kitchen is often referred to as "The Heart of the Home".  And in our case, that definitely holds true.  It is where we spend the most time together as a family, chatting, cooking, eating, doing homework, coming and going....

Because SO much goes on in the kitchen, I thought it would be a good idea to feature the space, again.  Especially because we have more organizing in the works to make the space as efficient as we can for this busy family of five!

So back to these three drawers I mentioned.  These three drawers are definitely the most opened and closed drawers in the whole house, and they are also the most unorganized and embarrassing drawers.  EEK!

Don't believe me?  Oh, it's shameful!

See?!!  Told ya it was awful!

Lets take a closer look shall we?  Not only are the drawers messy, they are not that safe either... like out our knife drawer:

Yeah, knives half haphazardly tossed into a drawer divider?  Not the best idea.  And can you say, gadget overload?  Who could find anything in there?

Oh, but it doesn't get better....

This drawer is all for our baking goods:

And this one is for more kitchen utensils {and apparently some potholders}:

Can you imagine the nightmare this was causing us on a nightly basis?  I really think I have lost sleep over this situation.  The only thing these drawers had going for them is they were still able to open and close, some of the time...

Until now.  I took a stand against these drawers of chaos and did something about it!  And the result is incredible.  And anyone else out there facing this situation can do it too!  It's REALLY easy!

I just emptied the contents of every single drawer into a large basket {with the exception of the knives}.

So now the drawers look a little something like this!

SO much better already.

Because the "Less is More" mentality worked so well when I was purging down my clothes to fit into my bedroom closet, I decided to apply the same concept here.  We obviously had WAY too many things in the small drawer space.  That was obvious.  And deciding how to pare down was actually pretty simple.

The basket lived in the kitchen with us for a total of two weeks.  It wasn't great living with a large laundry basket in the kitchen for this amount of time, but the end result was worth it, so stay with me.

Each time we needed a utensil for cooking or baking, we went to the basket.  Once we used and washed the utensil, it went back to the drawers.  After two weeks, whatever we didn't use, it was time to say goodbye to!

No need for the "EASY" button here, anyone can do this, no assistance needed!

And yes, I did this last month.  I wanted to try it out and live with the lesser amounts before I gave this tip... and so far, we haven't missed ANYTHING we got rid of!  Our "donate" box was a large box full of random utensils and gadgets, like ones that only have one specific use {like a garlic press, it's nothing a knife can't handle}, or duplicate items {like four varieties of measuring cups and spoons that no longer made a whole set} and other miscellaneous things that we never needed or used that were just taking up all that valuable space!

We tossed some things too {like cookie cutters with rust on them, ew!}. 

And if you are a little skeptical on the two week theory, you could always keep your donate box an extra two weeks just to make sure you don't need any of those goods before you haul them away!  And I can't forget to mention, there were definitely a couple of kitchen staples that I had to make a decision on, like a potato masher and soup ladle. If you know you will absolutely use it throughout the year and have nothing that you could use to substitute in it's place, then it stays. You definitely have to make some of your own decisions in the end, but the two week basket trick sure is an eye opener!

So stay tuned to see how I made these drawers just dreamy {there is a little sneak peak on the sidebar if you hadn't seen that yet}!  And if you have an insane utensil drawer secret too, can you let me know so I don't feel all alone on the crazy utensil drawer island?  Who pledges to take on the two week challenge also, to live a less cluttered, more organized, "less is more" life?

Hey peeps!  Wanna see the finished product?  Check out the drawers here and some additional storage ideas here!