Christmas' inheritance of organizing accessories. :)

**MomToTwoBoys** · 01-03-2009, 10:22 AM

This Christmas, I inherited four plastic bins from Ikea. Two of them are for storage of sugar and flour. The other two are for recycling! Yay! Now instead of having the recyclables in plastic bags, I have a plastic bin to toss them in after I'm done. What does that do for the clutter in the kitchen?

More than I could ever ask for!

The white bins fit so nicely in the closet that's next to our refridgerator. They have a hinged top and look very nice.

The storage containers hold about 30-35lbs worth of sugar and flour. They also stack pretty nicely and I have one sitting beside the other on the second shelf in my kitchen closet. I now have my stockpile of sugar and flour to last me the next twelve months.

I also managed to get rid of the large bulky coffeemaker in favor of a two-cup coffeemaker that I got DH for Christmas. We inherited (from a Christmas gift exchange) four ceramic canisters that have sugar, coffee, flour and tea written on the front. What did I get rid of in the process? A metal coffee can that held our sugar, the old jelly bean plastic container that held the individual tea bags and my old plastic potato salad container that had FLOUR taped to the lid that we've used over the last six years. The coffee can that held our sugar was also about six years old! We can probably stand to pack away almost all of our coffee mugs too because the new coffeemaker came with two 14oz travel mugs! That's at least clearing out about 85% of the cupboard that held our coffee/tea accessories!

Now all I need to do is get off my butt and pack away a lot of the stuff we don't need anymore.

**emily_hope** · 01-03-2009, 11:07 AM

Nice inheritance. I like being organized. The bins with the hinges would be wonderful to have. And I've been wondering about flour and sugar, about how long you can keep them stored. You say you have enough for twelve months... so I guess you can keep them for at least that long.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 01-03-2009, 11:30 AM

Well both the flour and sugar probably won't last that long, given that we're making more foods at home instead of eating out or buying processed. I plan on using the sugar for making homemade jams and the flour will be good for our regular cooking and baking. I wanted to make my own Valentine's Day cake from scratch, so that'll be another good use for it.

I am completely in love with the recycling hinged bins because not only does it keep everything in one place, but I waste less plastic garbage bags in the process. I just need to get into the habit of emptying each of them every other week or so.

**homesteadmamma** · 01-03-2009, 11:40 AM

What a nice inheritance and what a great job getting everything organized.

**Sara Noel** · 01-03-2009, 01:19 PM

I love organizing solutions. Your recycling bins sound great (the rest, too). I saw a recycling bin "center" that goes into a lazy susan. We have one and I thought wow I could just put a couple of rubbermaid type trash cans in there like I saw for $129.00. Gabe said well the lazy susan isn't near the sink. Now if that didn't make me more determined to just do it...LOL

**peanut** · 01-08-2009, 09:32 PM

Nice inheritance! lol Be careful. I saw a show the other day where a home economist said flour shouldn't be kept longer than 4 months on the shelf.

Jean