similar sweater. wide leg pants. loafers.
I’ve talked on here a lot about small wins and progress over perfection. You guys, these are such important things to embrace when you are running a household. Especially if you have kids. One of my intentions for the new year was to really get my house back to a place where it was functioning really well. I kind of let things sliiiiip in a major way half way through last year. About the time when we started the great traveling extravaganza. (AKA: I was out of town so much and only at home for 2 weeks at a time for like 3 months in a row.). My entire house was in upheaval, I was doing survival grocery runs for MONTHS(!), and my laundry system went to, well you get the picture… I knew I wanted to get it all back in order, stop surviving and start thriving again, but that is a big job and it felt impossible with everything we’ve got going on.
Then I decided to take my own advice, progress over perfection, focusing on small wins. I made a list of all the projects, areas of my home and systems I needed to revamp and bring order to and just start working on them one at a time, week by week, until I brought our home into order again. I am happy to say that this “small wins,” little by little approach has been wildly successful. Today I want to share one of the small projects with you, because it has made me so happy and it has brought SO MUCH PEACE to my kitchen, a place where I spend A LOT of time. Organizing my spice cupboard has been so amazing for improving the functionality of my kitchen, and helping me feel more at peace while I cook. It’s also saved me a ton of time because I’m no longer rooting around in a messy spice cupboard looking for the paprika. And bonus, it looks pretty!
Here’s how I did it:
First of all, I have to tell you about my Dymo labelmaker, because I am obsessed. If you don’t have one, stop what you’re doing right now and go order it. Like literally I’ve never gotten so much joy out of something that only costs $15 before and they are so handy! I bought one of these to help with a different project (more on that later) but it turns out I am a huge fan of labels, and this thing is seriously addicting. Once you start labeling, it’s hard to not want to slap one on everything. I mean, I even considered labeling my kids but they were like, “no mom, we don’t want to be defined by labels.” (Whatever…) ;-)
Anyway, I’ve been meaning to tackle this space for ages because, look at that hot mess:
BEFORE:
Yikes.
The problem was, I don’t have a ton of storage in my kitchen, and also, I’ve never had a great system for keeping my spices. So I did a little what I call creative procrastination, where I put things in the back burner of my mind and let my subconscious work on it for awhile until I get a better idea. That and with a little help from Pinterest and some seriously talented ladies on Instagram, I came up with the idea of transferring all the spices into these pretty little spice jars and labeling them! Yay, more labels!
AFTER:
Look at that! Isn’t that so much better?!
I bought this stepped spice rack and a few wire baskets for organizing the other cooking supplies, and I removed one of the shelves to make the space more functional. What a difference a little creativity and elbow grease makes in a space. Now I can find what I am looking for so fast and every time I open the spice cupboard I feel so happy.
I can’t believe how long it took me to get to this little project, especially considering how high the joy return is on my time investment. So consider this your friendly Tuesday reminder to get in there and look for ways to have small wins around your house. I promise you will be so glad you did!
