We’re at the point in kitchen renovation where we need to put the kitchen back together. I was tired of eating out of the myriad boxes in my living room.

Being on a budget, I looked for simple and easy ways to make our kitchen work better for us. Our pantry is long (about 1 meter) and narrow. It’s such a pain. So much of it is inaccessible.

I cleaned out a bunch of the clutter as I unpacked the boxes. My mom gifted me these cool white baskets (which you can find on Amazon here).  She previously used them to store fabric. I put my label maker to good use and labeled the white baskets with the following categories:

• Soup
• Sauces
• Baking Goods
• Rice and Noodles
• Oils and Fats
• Canned Tomatoes
• Canned Goods
• Soup
• Snack Box
• Snacks (I use this for the overflow of snacks)

I also reorganized the spice cabinet, and I’ll be moving some of the bulk spices to these glass jars from the plastic bags they came in probably later this week.

Moving on to all of the drawers in my kitchen. Yeah. Nine Drawers of various sizes. I lined them with Contact Paper from Dollar Tree– which BTW, is so much cheaper than Amazon or the big box hardware stores. I also lined the cabinets that hold our dishes. I did not line the pantry shelves- They are really long and narrow and I can’t reach all the way to the back.

To contain all of the STUFF in each drawer, I picked up some of these skinny drawer organizers, and the drawer organizers in the picture, which are wider and medium-sized.

The Silverware has a drawer caddy (not shown in the photo, but it goes in the empty drawer), but the rest of the drawers were just a disaster. Now the cooking utensils will be corraled, the batteries rolling around the junk drawer will be contained, and all of the yummy drink powders and drink concentrates (like Mio) are corraled.

So for less than $50, I was able to reorganize the kitchen and spruce it up a bit.

After the kitchen is done and the water heater is installed, we’re having a cleaning service coming to do a post-construction clean up. There is drywall dust all over my freaking kitchen and living room. It’s so gross.