Under the Kitchen Sink

Another snow day means another organization project! If you're from New England, I'm sure you got dumped on yesterday just like me. Nothing like some snow, then rain, then more snow, then digging your car out of 4" of ice! Well, I decided to take the time to clean out under our kitchen sink. A few years ago (yes, years) I accidentally flooded my kitchen. Apparently I left the kitchen faucet running over night, and the sink was so full of dishes that the water just cascaded off a plate near the faucet, onto the counters, the floor, into the half bathroom. Water was everywhere! It was horrible. We cleaned up the water everywhere, except I never actually emptied the cabinet under the sink, where the water sluiced down and into. Again, sometimes I wonder if I'm insane and not fit to live on my own.

This is pretty much what I started with. I had already started taking plastic bags out (yes, this is pretty much an in progress shot, not straight from the beginning... how sad!). We keep grocery plastic bags to clean the kitty box, but as you can see they got pretty out of hand. No one needs that many.

I started out by simply just taking everything out. I came across a few things that shouldn't have been in there in the first place; raid, motor oil... Then I got rid of all the bags, trash, expired cleaning agents.

This is what I was left with. A lot of rust stains and melted dish washer tablets. I surprisingly didn't find any mold except for on some cloths that were kept in the back for polishing our dining table. I also didn't find any scary bugs, which I totally expected.

I took the razor blade I use for cleaning my ceramic cook top and scraped the whole thing down (not hard enough to ruin the cabinet) and everything came off easily. Then I just took some of my Mrs. Meyer's lemon verbena cleaner, gave it a good spray, and viola! Its like a whole new cabinet.

I had a few Dollar Tree baskets kicking around, so I loaded one up with sponges, clothes, Swiffer pads, steam mop pads, and the like, and the other contains the actual cleaning supplies. How awesome is this?! $2 and an awesome, useable space for my cleaning supplies.

Anyone else have a snow day? Any organizing projects lately?