This is what I do

This past week at Weight Watchers we were taking about spring cleaning your fridge.  We talked about good things to go into and out of the refrigerator or pantry.  I wanted to take time to share something that I started this past February and changed up a bit just a few weeks ago.  This has been a big change for us.

Before pictures...

Yes, it was a MESS!   We could not find anything.   My husband used to come and once or twice a month go through and just dump boxes and move things around to try to organize.  Not that I didn't try, but this was really a source of frustration.  

Now, here is the after (back in February, I've done some tweaking sense already and I will share below).

Ok, so the fridge is still WAY too full but both are so much better!   Now, I am not a Tpperware consultant or anything, but that is the direction I went.  For the fridge, all of my fruits and vegetables went into fridge smarts (the entire middle shelf) so I put a lot of items in the drawers at the bottom like cheeses, meats, and yogurts.   Things are much easier to get to and even more importantly everything can been seen.   Usually, my fridge is not THAT full so it is even easier to get around in than it looks.  You get the idea though.

My other project that turned out even better than the fridge was the pantry!   It was a mess before...as you can see.  I purchased two sets of modular mates and then went a little label crazy.  Above is my first attempt.  If you look closely you will see that the modular mates are all labeled and color coded also (all of the snack stuff is green, breakfast is purple I think.  I put the labels on construction paper and then laminated them.  I attached Velcro so they would be interchangeable.

I ran into a few problems.  First of all I cut too close to the labels and the laminate fell off and the label got bent and warn way too fast.  I also had too small of pieces of Velcro.  I had bought the smallest pre cut circles an it just wasn't enough to hold the tag in place.  I also didn't like the look on how each tag was a different size.

THEN, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I revamped the pantry.  Here is how it looks now.

This did not take me long at all.  Maybe 45 minutes to change things around because I had things pretty much in place and just changed the labels.  They are still color coordinated so things get put back into the right area but they are all uniform sizes.  What I did was buy the small multi-colored sticky notes so I didn't have to do any cutting.  It made laminating them a lot easier because they stayed where I put them when I put the sheets together.  I also made sure to cut them leaving plenty of laminate around the name tag.  The last thing I did was put the point value, at least for the snacks.  I might add the point values to some of the other items too, but so far have not really seen the need.

I also attached a close up picture of how the tag comes off to show how interchangeable these are.


We are able to find things a LOT easier now.  I am much more unlikely to buy multiple identical items (before this my husband will tell you about the time he searched and found 6 bottles of taco sauce various places in the pantry, along with other times too but that was the worst), and I find I am much more likely to recycle because I am opening and dumping boxes all at once instead of as I go along.

So, I am not sure if you are looking at this post with envy, eye-rolling because you think I have too much time on my hands (which both projects took me under two hours and saved us countless time in searching and reorganizing), or maybe you have something similar which I would love to hear about.   This change has really made a difference in our household.