You’re on week 3 of the “Get Organized” challenge. At this point you’ve got a sock and underwear drawer worth bragging about from Week 1, and you are no longer carrying the stress of having 75 tubes of old mascara thanks to your hard work in Week 2. You’ve totally got this challenge this week . . .
This week’s challenge: Organize your spices in your kitchen and your medicine cabinet
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First of all, do you even really use spices? Pretty much, no. You may have some taco seasoning and some sort of multi-use seasoning you throw on fish, chicken, and anything else you’re frying up. So you should feel empowered by this week’s challenge, and can also thank me later for saving you from illness by encouraging you to toss your ibuprofen that expired in 2002.
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Things you’ll need: 1 trash bag and your phone or whatever device that will play your favorite music
Time needed: 20 minutes
Instruction: Follow these 10 simple steps!
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Step 1: Turn on your favorite music just like you did in Week 1 and Week 2. Crank up the Bruno Mars, Sia, whatever suits ya.
Step 2: Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Step 3: Move your trashcan or a trash bag over to the area where you store your cooking spices and your medicine cabinet.
Step 4: Take all of your spices out of the cabinet (or pantry) and put them on the counter top.
Step 5: If you’ve had the spice since you got married and have since been married for 10+ years . . . bye, bye spice. Toss it. If you’ve never opened the spice and didn’t even know you had it. Bye. If you are pretending to use a spice because you occasionally sprinkle it on a Christmas meal you make one time a year then check the expiration date — yup, it was expired for your Christmas meal this year, wasn’t it? Bye. Throw away any spice that you can’t foresee yourself using this month.
Step 6: Place all the spices you want to keep back into your cabinet or pantry with labels facing you.
Step 7: Drag your trashcan or trash bag over to your medicine cabinet.
Step 8: Take every medicine you have out of the cabinet and spread across the counter.
Step 9: Begin checking expiration dates and find that 85% of them are expired. Toss ’em in the trashbag. I mean, are you really going to argue this like you did the rosemary you thought you’d use in your next chicken dish, or the pair of socks or lipstick you thought you’d wear from Weeks 1 and 2? It’s medicine and if it’s expired . . . well, it’s basically . . . I don’t know what, but it’s not healthy. If you’re holding a bottle of multi-vitamins that are full because you only took 2 of them that one time when you were going to get super healthy and you feel guilty for throwing them away. Well, I don’t know what to tell ya other than “put ’em in the bag.”
Step 10: Pat yourself on the back for a job well done and stop to think about how great you feel.
Bonus step: Consider purchasing a lazy susan for both your spice cabinet and your medicine cabinet. You can get them as cheap as $5.99 (depending upon the size). Here are some options from The Container Store that are affordable. By having a lazy susan for these items, it allows you to still store them in a cabinet or pantry, but you can quickly spin to find the item you need and this will keep you from forgetting about what you have hidden in the back.
Congrats on freeing up some space in your kitchen (and your mind!). It’s freeing, huh?!
See you next week for challenge #4!
