Organizing and keeping down the costs!

As I've said 3 or 4 times, I recently reorganized about 6 cabinets across my laundry room and kitchen.  Doing so cost me under $30.  There are some great organizational items out there.  Some I've bought, some I want to buy, some I love buy don't have a space in my house for them.  However, I truly believe that purging and organizing is different from "storing" and that if you really put your mind to it, you don't need lots of fancy bins and boxes and crates with labels to get things in order.

I already showed you my laundry room which I spent $0 organizing!  Now let me show you what I refer to as my "junk cabinet."  Not to be confused with my four (yes, 4!) junk drawers- we REALLY upgraded in kitchen size when we bought this house, but I have learned that if you have a space you WILL fill it.

You can see I made a half hearted attempt at organizing with some bins from Target.  But what did I say before?  That stuff can be unnecessary.  In my case, it certainly didn't help much.

This is the ONE area I spent money on.  I did have to buy these containers, but each was $3 or less at Target.  I completely emptied this cabinet, threw away trash, grouped like items together- aka, a diaper bin, a baby medicine bin, a grown  up medicine bin, mailing supplies like stamps & envelopes, "papers" that I like to keep handy (recent bills, medical statements, etc), misc.  Things that didn't fit in the bins- candles, mostly- still get grouped together.  Camera lenses went back into the camera bag, but things like cords, SD cards, etc got their own bin.  The one major difference that isn't photographed is that I repurposed 2 of those jar candles, and one is now next to the diapering pin labeled and filled with Safety Pops!  Below the cabinet, I did two things.  One was to return things to their PROPER places- ie, purse in the front hall- and I neatened up and threaded the cords behind the tray to hide them a bit.

I think that when something has a specified place (I can just call across the room "hey honey, stick that back in the yarn bin!" or "Can you put this tylenol back in the baby meds bin?") it's much easier for it to stay organized.  It becomes second nature and you can find what you need in a snap.

I still have my baby items slash small appliance slash outdoor eating slash empty bottles slash Sodastream Storage cabinet, my tupperware cabinet, my small appliances-serving trays cabinet, my OTHER small appliances cabinet (yes, 3!), and my pots & pans & bakeware cabinet to show you.  Yes, I did all of that in one day!