Organize Under Your Sink

Welcome to Day 3 of the Whip  Your Kitchen Into Shape challenge! If you missed the introduction to the challenge, go here to find out all about it.

Today's task is another tough one, but we'll tackle something easier tomorrow. Today we are going to organize the cabinet under your sink, which is definitely one of the most challenging cabinets for most people. (But just think, after today, you will have organized the toughest drawer and the toughest cabinet. It will feel great!)

I'm going to show how I organized under my kitchen sink some time ago, but please DO NOT think you have to do it the same way. Definitely don't let the lack of the perfect organizing gadget stop you from at least purging and tidying up what you can. Also, remember the basic steps we talked about yesterday and apply them to this project as well.

Here’s what it looked like before I got started:

Wow, what a mess! As always, the project gets worse before it gets better. I took everything out of the cabinet so I could start with a clean slate:

Next, I threw away the icky lining (I’ll spare you the disgusting picture) from the cabinet and vacuumed it out with the crevice attachment of my canister vac (so much easier than trying to wipe it out with a cloth). Have I told you how much I love my vaccuum? I finally splurged on a vaccuum that actually sucks up dirt when we moved into this house:

Next up, I put new shelf liner in the cabinet, and secured it with a little bit of museum putty:

Now comes the magic under sink organizing tool I found. I had been dreaming about these stacking bins from the Container Store, but at $2-$7 each plus some pretty steep shipping charges, I knew it wasn’t in the budget. Luckily, I ran across these things at Five Below (a store similar to the Dollar Tree where everything is $5 or less)! They were $4 for a set of 3, so I picked up a few.

I can’t exactly say that sparkly blue would have been my first choice, but, hey, the price was right! The way they stack isn’t quite as sophisticated as the container store ones, so I found them to be a little bit too wobbly, especially when they were full and I wanted to pull them out. However, that was easily solved by putting a little museum putty where they interlock:

And here’s three stacked up:

Next, I arranged them in the cabinet. On the side, I was able to put three high. Under the piping and garbage disposal, I was able to put two high. I really didn’t put anything behind them, because it would be too hard to access.

Then I put everything back. I took a few things out of their boxes for easier and neater storage.

Of course, I also labeled everything:

Here’s a short video I recorded where I show you how I made the bins more secure and do a quick overview of the finished project:

Go ahead and organize your undersink cabinet area.

Then stop by our challenge Facebook group to show us how it looks or share the before and after photos of your junk drawer on Instagram with the hashtag #KitchenChallenge. I can't wait to see your progress!