Sunday, July 13, 2014

KITCHEN ORGANIZING: UNDER THE SINK CABINET

The FIFA fever and the weekend is over. Which team were you cheering for? I was for Argentina. Mr. Tweaks and Sanjan were for Germany. Anyways, spotting David Beckham was a site for sore eyes.

Let me tell something about me:
I have a very strong sense of smell. If kitchen trash is left in the bin for more than couple days, the smell gets to me. The garbage has to go out everyday or the least every other day.

Mister had to see my this face almost everyday when my sense the smell heightened during pregnancy.
via

We had this small stainless steel step trash can for kitchen garbage which I always kept inside the cabinet. It was not easy to operate with the lid opening and hitting the pipes under the sink.
via
So, I worked on this issue during last Christmas break. So what I am sharing has been working for me for the past six months.
I had shared my kitchen photos with you all in an another post. The cabinet under the sink below is where I keep my trash & recycle bins, trash bags and other cleaning supplies.
One weekend, I cleared everything from the cabinet and painted the inside with a left over paint from this and this project. I was little short of paint so could not cover the back wall of the cabinet. 
I rolled out wall-paper cut to measurement at the bottom. I found this big roll of wall-paper which is stain and water resistant for $2 at Lowe's.
Before I started to fill the cabinet, I went to garage to check on my "to use sometime later" stuff and found few trays. One among them was this tray similar to what I had for this project(I used the same "before" photo).
I painted the tray white and covered the bottom with shelf liner. And filled with only those cleaning supplies that I need.
I realized the only stuff I use are dishwasher soap, dish washing liquid, Clorox-all purpose cleaner, Pledge-wood/other surface cleaner and a room spray. All these fit inside the tray perfectly.
Inside the cabinet is this big garbage disposal motor which occupies 3/4th of the cabinet. So I can use only the front part of the cabinet.
I had this black disposal tray left from a party we had. I will get back to it a little later.
We replaced our old refrigerator with a stainless steel couple years ago. And when the delivery guys were taking the old for disposing, I removed all the trays and vegetable drawers from inside. This one is the shelf from the fridge door.
The shelf fit in perfectly between the white wooden and black tray.
I filled the fridge shelf with cleaning brushes. Since the shelf is a plastic I am not worried about damaging it with water residue from the brushes.

I bought two of these small trash bins from Dollar store. Purchasing a big one does not make since we take out the garbage every day.
I made these two labels on MS word, one for recycle and one for garbage and printed them on a regular white paper. (There was a little confusion about the colors. Mr. said green for recycle and blue for trash. I goggled and found the colors both ways).



Applied a nice thick layer of Modge-Podge on the back of the papers with a foam.
Then laid it on the side of the trash bin.
Then sealed the paper with a coat of Modge-podge over it. Modge-podge makes the paper water-resistant.
And placed both the labeled trash bins on the black tray where it fit perfectly. Does it not make you happy when things happen the way you would have wanted it to happen?


I used to have an IKEA plastic bag dispenser stuck on the inside of the cabinet door. 
When our County took out the "No more plastic bags" ordinance, I removed the dispenser and the white adhesive sticker on the door was part of it. I will scrape it out when we remove the doors to paint sometime in future.
I used two of the adhesive hooks to hang the dish washing brushes. I did not want to mix my sink cleaning brush/foam with dish washing brush.
I painted the inside of the cabinet a darker color for the reasons:
  • I wanted to use the paint that I had on hand.
  • And darker paint would not show any dirt that might happen.

For when we have to recycle a lot, we open up one of the big trash bags or use one of bags that came from shopping at stores.
I am sharing these two labels that I created. You can save them and print on the paper of your liking and to your measurement.
I have plans to rework on this whole cabinet when I get enough time.

Wish you all a great week ahead.
Reshma

9 comments:

  1. Zabardasst Reshma (Y) I'm clapping for ur this post ,listen to did my dear frnd :)

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  3. That is very clever. I believe simple solutions like that lead to lasting results as well. Waste management can just be a matter of let's say rearranging the chairs, whichever accommodates the flow within a space is best. It's all a matter of placing the bins, which would be where a type of waste would be most dropped, with as little intrusions and obstructions as possible, for both the bin as well as the people moving around them. Thanks for sharing!

    Clarence Rios @ Bins By Jo

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