Terrific Tuesday - Fridge and Pantry Redo

A few weeks ago I posted about a ladies organizing blog.  Well she got me inspired to start organizing my house even more than I already have.  It's hard to start, because at the beginning there are so many projects that need attention that it gets overwhelming to know where to begin.  So I just broke it down by room, and then within the room wrote lists of all the areas that needed to be deep cleaned and organized and am going to do one at a time!  Right now since I am focusing so much on getting healthy and and cooking good food, I wanted to start in the kitchen.  More specifically I started with the fridge and pantry.  My hope was that the organization might make the eating and cooking healthy items easier.

We are working with a tiny fridge and zero cabinet space, so it was a difficult project to begin with.  No matter how hard I tried to organize the fridge, I could never get everything to fit and within a day or do everything would have shifted and been thrown everywhere.  Pantry space was non existent in these apartments. When we moved in we bought these free standing cabinets to put on one wall and those have been our only storage for our food.

Here is the before picture of the fridge...Okay not really before, because I forgot to take one, but here is while I was emptying it and cleaning it out.

And here is the after

I created a few boxes to keep things organized and easy to grab. 

There is a box for Eric so that I can put his snacks and lunch items in it.  It makes it easier at nights when I am packing his lunches to be able to reach in one place and grab what I need.  Then he can also grab snacks when he gets home and not worry about eating something I'm using for dinner or anything. 

Then I have a lunch box to keep all my healthy stuff.  This way if I have to quickly pack a lunch in the morning I can, or when I come home for lunches I have more time to relax, because I'm not taking as much time prepping my lunch.

  Then I made a healthy snacks box.  From now on when we go grocery shopping, I'll be doing prep time right after.  What this means is I will prepare fruits and veggies and whatever else and separate them into little baggies for the week.  This way all week we already have pre packaged healthy snacks to grab for lunches or if we are craving something when we are at home. 

The first week I did baggies of watermelon and strawberries and then baggies of baby carrots, sugar snap peas and cut up cucumber slices.  

 Then after the first week I went and got some little containers to do the snack prep in.

 Then there is a box for all the cheese and lunch meat to keep them in a contained area. These are nice to have out in their own place since we use them often.  Before they would always end up at the bottom of the drawer and I would have to go digging.  Now when making lunches or cooking dinner I can pull out the box and see all our types of cheese right there.

 Lastly I did a dinner box.  This way if something needs to marinate or thaw I can put it in there the night before and it will be ready.  Or this way I can rotate the food out and make room for the new groceries and don't have to dig to the bottom of the drawer for something I need tonight. 

The bottom drawer is now strictly for our fruits and veggies and everything fits so much nicer and is much easier to get to!

Now our pantry I have continually tried to organize and re-organize. It isn't as bad as it could be, but you can see my pathetic attempts to separate and organize have failed. 

Here is the before

And here is the after

 I drilled in some Dollar Tree organizers into the doors to free up space from the spices.  I got a few lifts from Bed Bath and Beyond to help maximize the space.  Then I upgraded everything to a tupperware container so that everything was uniform and similar sizes, instead of have 10 different size boxes in there that never fit.  I still plan on labeling everything, I just haven't gotten that far.  I bout tupperware for things we use a lot like quinoa, brown rice, cereal, oats and so on. 

 Eric and I both h ave our own snack boxes in the pantry now as well.

Well there you have it!  I think it's pretty great with the little amount of space we have to work with!