Out With The Old.....In With 2010!

Today was a PERFECT day!  I got to sleep in, watch part of the Rose Parade from bed then roll out of bed and dive into one of my favorite things of all time...CLEANING and ORGANIZING!  New Years Day was an ideal day for this.  My husband was content to be on the couch ALL day with endless football games, most of the stores were closed so I couldn't really run errands or shop and it was raining so who wanted to go outside anyway?

After hosting both Thanksgiving and Christmas the kitchen needed some serious HELP!  First I attacked the refrigerator and freezer.  Here they are BEFORE I got started:

  

Inside of door before

Inside of refrigerator before

 Top shelf of freezer before

Bottom shelf of freezer before

I know, some of you may be thinking that it doesn't look that bad!  But trust me, I am pretty good at staying on top of keeping the fridge clean so when it looks like this I feel the need to take action!  So while the football games were on TV I emptied the fridge and freezer, got out the 409 to clean all the shelves and TOSSED anything that had expired.  The oldest thing I found in the fridge was some hot fudge sauce that had expired in January 2009!  After a while this is what it looked like:

Inside of refrigerator door after

Inside of refrigerator after

Top shelf of freezer after

 

Bottom shelf of freezer after

Another reason this is such a great project is because you can also take stock of what you have on hand.  I clearly don't need unsalted butter or yogurt anytime soon!  While I am tossing everything, I like to keep a list going on the kitchen counter of the things I want to restock next time I go to the store.

After conquering the refrigerator and freezer, it was on to the pantry!  My husband laughed at me as I did a little dance while cleaning out the shelves.  He knows how happy organizing makes me!  The pantry also needed some serious TLC after the holidays.  Here it is before:

 

 

What a disaster!  That honey bear looks like he's screaming "Help! The baking shelf is a mess!"  Again, some of you may think this looks pretty organized, but trust me I found some real TREASURES in there!  Stop by tomorrow to see the pantry get organized as well as the guest bathroom I took care of today.  Like I said, it was a PERFECT day!