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Tiny steps part 1.5

organize my cabinet please

When my daughter was tiny, I used to blame this mess on her love of opening cabinets and “rearranging” them. She is not tiny anymore, however…

Here’s a slightly embarrassing fact about me: I subscribe to a few self-help e-newsletters. And while, more often than not, I delete them without even opening the messages, I do succumb every once in awhile. Maybe they’ll have something helpful to say, I tell myself hopefully.

About a week ago, I opened an e mail from Flylady.net (a cheerleader-y daily get-your-house-clean-and-organized site that I like because it’s all about not being too hard on yourself) and read that my daily task should be to “declutter our leftover food storage containers!” How did she know about my cabinet-from-hell (see above photo)? I did what I usually do, which is to put that task on my imaginary 500 page to-do list and went on with my day. And I haven’t opened another e mail from them since.

This morning, however, I thought about that message again as I dug through the aforementioned cabinet, desperately trying to find a top for the container that housed the cookies my daughter and I had made for teacher appreciation day. (We should probably have given the teachers a bottle of Scotch, but I digress.)

And so this morning, after walking to school in the pouring rain and delivering our cookies to much acclaim, I sat down in front of that cabinet and straightened it the f*^k out.

same cabinet. much cleaner

Here’s that same cabinet, after a mere 45 minutes of loving attention during which time I also learned about cooking on the Gaza Strip by listening to NPR.

It took less than an hour. Here’s what I got out of it:

  • A much nicer visual experience when I open up the cabinet.
  • A huge bag of #5 plastic to recycle at Whole Foods.
  • A huge bag of various containers to give to Ada’s school art department.
  • Only glass or BPA free containers to store our food in.
  • 2 muffin tins, a cake pan and a pan to make Madeleine cookies I didn’t know I had
  • A glorious and almost overwhelming feeling of victory.


  • Fly Lady also suggested putting all the tops into a large zip lock bag – a great idea which I didn’t end up using but thought I’d pass along to you guys.

    After all that, I am now sitting down to my desk to begin the slightly less housewife-y part of my day. But I do it happy in the knowledge that there is just a tiny bit more order in my life. Next time the org bug hits me, I’ll get back to working on my office, I promise…

    Comments (4)

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    1. Josh

      Thank you Jesus. Thank you from the bottom of my tiny infidel heart.

    2. Brooke Williams Admin

      The previous comment is from my husband. Clearly this cabinet has been a bit of an issue in our house…

    3. Pingback: Clutter-be-gone! | This is authentic

    4. Pingback: Tiny steps, part 2 | This is authentic