Cleaning and Organizing my Cottage Style Kitchen

Well hey friends it is actually a beautiful sunny day here in Michigan in January with temperatures up into the high 40s which for us is very warm this time of year and I just have the itch to do some organizing especially after a busy holiday season of baking here in my kitchen and so I'm not gonna go crazy but I want to organize some things that have kind of been bugging me for for a while one of them being just some of my pantry items I want to clean that area out I also want to organize my spices today and maybe tackle a few more drawers and cabinets we'll see but I just thought today was the perfect day with the sun shining and this weather it's given me a sort of the itch to do some cleaning and organizing so I'm excited to take you guys along with me I think the first thing that I'm going to do today is empty out my little pantry area and just get all of the jars off the shelf wipe them down and maybe get them labeled all right so for these canisters I'm going to add labels to the front of them and I'm really excited to show you how I am going to do that so let me tell you a bit about this at-home photo printer and cutter all right friends I want to take a moment to share with you the Leanne Pixcut S1 photo printer I've shared this with you before we love this machine my kids use it all the time for scrapbooking it is so convenient to have on hand let me tell you a little bit more about it if you're new here so the Leanne Pixcut S1 is the world's first smart printing and cutting all-in-one machine for home use it's designed to transform beginners into craft masters in just 30 seconds and combines photo printing and precision cutting into one compact device so as I began to organize my kitchen I wanted to come up with some labels for some of my ingredients and baking items some of my spices and I immediately thought of this photo printer it cuts out the photos for you and creates stickers and labels and they have so many different designs and templates in their app or you can upload your own so it's very simple to use I just found one of their designs and kind of tweaked it to fit our own needs and then you simply print it and the machine does all of the work for you guys this is a printing and cutting all-in-one solution the AI auto cutting makes creation accessible for beginners and the zero margin crop maximizes sticker usage automatic material feeding ensures workflow and you get high quality results that are waterproof UV resistant and scratch resistant guys there are so many different ways that you can use your Leanne Pixcut S1 of course today I'm using it to make some labels for my kitchen but like I said before my boys have a fishing scrapbook that they love to use this for of course you can use it for all kinds of DIY projects education teaching tools parent-child activities personalized gifts for weddings birthdays and so much more so guys if the Leanne Pixcut S1 looks like something that you would be interested in I will link it down in the description box below for you I will also include the link here on the screen so that you can check it out our family loves using this thing and I know that you will enjoy it too really it's so simple even for someone like myself who becomes a little bit overwhelmed with anything techie it's so simple to use so make sure you check it out I'll have all of the information down in the description box below okay so I wanted to ask you guys about something do you see how yellow my airstone is right here this is where we always keep our bananas and I seriously wonder if after all these years something about the bananas is turning my stone yellow it's so strange and you can't really see it once I put the crate back up there but I don't know isn't that so funny it's just the funniest thing anyways these shelves are so dirty and I've actually had people tell me before that I should be storing my onions in a cool dark place and they shouldn't be stored up here but I haven't come up with another solution yet so maybe one of these days I can clean out one of my drawers and that can be my onion drawer maybe I should do that maybe I should just make that choice right now oh man anyways let me get these shelves cleaned up so we can get all this put back together well friends the pantry feels nice and fresh and clean after lots of holiday baking and I cannot believe how long that took I think that I remember like back when I first became a mom I would set up these huge goals for myself like I'm gonna organize the entire kitchen today and then I would get so discouraged and I think I've learned you know just the older I get I learned not to set up these high expectations but just to start with very small little goals and if I accomplish those I feel so good but I have somewhere that I need to be here soon so I don't know how much further I'm gonna get today I would love to tackle my spice cupboard and I'm trying to decide if I have enough time to do that but all of my spices in my cabinet are just a mixture of it's a lot and if you've been following me for a while you know that I can be a little bit type-a some call me a perfectionist although God has been working in me I honestly believe that's why he gave me four boys to really help me to let go of that OCD and to embrace the imperfection however for a while I have just been wanting my spices to look a little bit more clean and organized and similar and so I thought that I would order some like clear glass jars off of Amazon and get them to all look the same um I don't know if I ordered enough though so obviously let me turn the camera over here so you can see some of these huge Costco spices I feel like I searched and searched for bulk spice containers for like these big guys up here and unfortunately I only found plastic options and I'm like I don't know I don't know if I want to buy it like they looked exactly like these containers on Amazon so I'm like I'm not gonna transfer it from one perfectly good container to another plastic container just for the sake of I don't know I'm undecided if you have found a solution for the big I thought about just using glass mason jars but they don't have the nice shaker tops you know so anyways Chatty Cathy today I'm gonna try to tackle these small spices and continue to brainstorm a solution for the large ones so that's what I'm gonna do now might be biting off more than I can chew probably am but let's get these over to the table and start organizing okay so turns out I had a lot of expired spices so I threw away some I'll probably find more and I have a lot of like spices that I have two or three of that I can combine so this is probably a good thing that I'm going through all of these these are this is a spice that that I bought farmhouse spice set 25 24 spice jars and they basically look just like this so I had a few empty if you ever purchased the spices from Aldi or I don't know what brand this is oh this is Meyer I don't know I know some states don't have Meyer Walmart's organic spices also come in this glass jar so anyways I didn't want to throw away some of these empties because I thought if I run out of jars I can save these and just peel the labels off and they'll match perfectly I am just going to start tackling this and I think I'll be happy when I'm all done the hardest part I think will be trying to pour the spices into these jars so I'm going to have to get my little funnel oh look at that it comes with a funnel well that's cool that is so neat thank you for that I feel like there are labels that come with this I want to say I hope so if not I can always make more all right yes so I will start working on that okay so quick update this rubber funnel that they gave me it essentially just all of the spices stick inside of it so I would have to rinse this between each spice jar and then dry it obviously because you don't want your spices sticking to it I mean even after shaking this over the trash can it is still just filled with basil so I have this metal metal one that I thrifted a long time ago I'm gonna see if this works better all right so this is going a little bit more slowly I can't win kind of have to shake it I guess to get it to go through well so that worked a lot better but at this point I'm sort of feeling like I'm just going to dump it in because I'm gonna be sitting here all day I'm just gonna try to be really careful and pour them in by hand wish me luck alright guys so I've done quite a few spices you can see here they look beautiful but I will say I'm thinking about this practically and there is a few issues by the way for the most part I've been able to just pour the spices right into the jar without any issues it's more so some of the fine spices that can cause issue but so obviously when you do this you no longer have expiration dates you could use maybe like a dry erase marker and this is kind of a white plasticky piece inside the lid I've done that before when using jars to store spices and ingredients so you could easily put the expiration date right at the top here and then just erase it whenever you refill your spice jar however you would have to wait until your spice jar was like completely empty before refilling it because in a lot of cases like there are some spices for example like this basil leaf it's larger than these jars so now I've got some extra basil that I kind of have to hang on to and store still because I'm cheap and I don't want to just throw this away but they look beautiful so you look really pretty they're all the same I love the way they look and all that I'm doing with these that you know these jars that look exactly like the ones I bought so I'm just peeling off the label and replacing it with one of these labels and it's been working really well every once in a while I get a little bit of like sticky stuff on the jar and I just use some some lemon essential oil I've got some over there I dab it with that and it comes right off and for the most part I've been able to find every single spice that I've had so far anyways it's going well taking longer than what I thought it would I will be honest so this is probably all that I'm going to get to today and I feel bad about that because I wanted to do a whole lot more in my kitchen for this video all right I'm gonna keep working on this and maybe I will wrap this video up another day well friends I'm really happy with the way that the spices all came together obviously I'm not loving these containers up here so I'm still looking for some bulk spice containers if you have some that you love please comment down below so I can go grab them but I love the way the bottom is looking and it feels so much more clean and organized so really happy with those I think today was another reminder that it's okay if we just accomplish one or two small goals in a day as homemakers and that's totally okay I didn't organize my entire kitchen today but I got a few things checked off my list and I feel really good about them so I'm happy about what I was able to accomplish and if you are new to my channel I would love for you to hit that subscribe button I typically share a lot of DIY and homemaking videos recipes and once the weather warms up some gardening ideas with you guys so if that sounds interesting to you I'd love for you to hit that subscribe button and I will see you guys next time thank you for joining