The kitchen, it is cleaned. (Now onto the laundry room!)

(In case you missed yesterday’s post, I’m working on restoring some order to my house this week.)

I really, really did not want to start with the kitchen, which is exactly why I did it first. Better to get the worst over with right away, I say!

It’s not like my kitchen was unusable, but things had definitely gotten a little disorganized and messy.   It was hard to find things in the cabinets and items were prone to falling out once you opened the door.

The number one spot my kitchen accumulates clutter is here, on top of my cookbooks.

It’s just so very convenient to shove stuff in there, where it is almost immediately forgotten about. 😉

I went through almost every single cabinet in my kitchen and decluttered, organized, and rearranged.

I also decided to move a few rarely-used items (Hi, Crock-Pot!) to my laundry room/storage room.   I figure if I only use something a few times a year, it makes no sense to have it consume precious storage space in my kitchen.

I’m not sure why things like this are so slow to occur to me.

Along those lines, I decided to change up the way things are stored in a few cabinets, and boy, I really have to work hard to make myself realize that the current storage method isn’t set in stone.

Just because the tea has always sat on that shelf does not mean it must remain so for eternity.

Isn’t that amazing??

(Not really.)

The part I was dreading the most was the fridge.

I knew it contained some rotten food, which is both disgusting and depressing.

And I was right…I have some doozies to share with you on Food Waste Friday this week.

Like, Kristen-from-2008 doozies.

But I did use up some things yesterday, and the fridge is actually not quite as full as it appears here because a lot of what’s taking up space is three heads of lettuce.

My produce delivery somehow came three weeks in a row instead of every other week and very little of anything has been eaten at my house during the plague, so I’m a little backed up on greens.

Also, I was not expecting a delivery yesterday, so I bought spinach at the store.   Shortly after I arrived at home, the produce box arrived and it contained ANOTHER head of lettuce (What the what??) plus a spinach bunch.

Seriously, how many greens can a girl consume??

I guess I’m about to find out.

Mr. FG and I both ate salads yesterday, and I read that Romaine lettuce does actually work in smoothies, so I’m gonna give that a try.

(Obviously I will also use spinach in smoothies.)

Ooh!   I also cleaned off all the papers on the side of my fridge.   I deposited checks (yay smartphone!), filed coupons, paid bills, and recycled a bunch of things.

I got all the Christmas candy neatly put away in cabinets, so my main kitchen counter is much clearer now.

And my other counters are in pretty good shape now too.

Now that it’s done, I’m super happy that I decided to tackle this job first.   And since I spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen, I really get to feel the effects of a good clean/declutter.

Today, I’m going to do my best to tackle my laundry room, which is just in a really dreadful state right now.   I don’t spend as much time in the laundry room as in the kitchen, but I do go in there really frequently to put things away, change loads of laundry, and put stuff in/take stuff out of the chest freezer.

Right now, it’s sort of hard to even walk in there, so I would really, really like to get that room into more useable shape.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know how it went!   And I’ll probably post some in-the-midst photos on Instagram (my username is thefrugalgirl) today as I work.

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I know some of you are tackling your houses this week too…tell me how it’s going, so we can cheer you on!

If you’ve blogged about it, feel free to leave a link in the comments, and if you’re wanting to share pictures but don’t have a blog, you could upload them to Facebook, make them public, and then share the link here.