Under the Kitchen Sink: A Before & After

Many years ago now I went through and painted the inside of a whole bunch of cabinets and cupboards in our house.  They all started as either a faded mustard yellow (my office) or as particle board (the kitchen) and adding a fresh coat of white paint made them instantly look better.  Of course, there is no better time for purging than when everything is already out of the cabinets so those were incredibly satisfying projects.  They made the house of a bit of a mess for a few days, with entire kitchen cupboard contents all over our dining table, but for very little money (a gallon of white paint went far, and then contact paper) I got spaces that were much more organized and pretty.

It has been a few years since I wrote about one of these projects.  All I had left were the lower kitchen cabinets and those all seemed like a lot of work.  I tackled two of them probably about two years ago now and still have yet to do the biggest lower corner cabinet (still working up the motivation to crawl in there to paint it) but over the last couple months (this has honestly taken a few months) I've been working on finishing the under the sink cupboard.

Here is where I started:

 

I think that qualifies as a mess.  We had been using the ice cube bucket from our freezer for organizing every since the automatic ice maker broke...around 10 years ago?  There is a Hot Wheels track that Luke liked to use for pointing at sight words.  There are a whole lot of paper bags from stores which I'm not even sure why we have.  It was a mess.

I took the before pictures the day after Sam's 1st birthday.  He's 18 months next week.  But I haven't had the cupboard torn up for that long.  Eight days after my before pictures I had this:

That's at least 3 coats of primer and/or paint.  It's hard to make under a sink look too good because there are all those pesky pipes to deal with and painting around them was a bit of a challenge.  They got a lot of paint on them which Matt assured me was fine.  I laid down the contact paper (I can tell where I rotated the pattern to better use scraps but I doubt many people notice in person besides me.)  Then it was a long process of best figuring out how to organize all the things that have a home under the sink.

We keep our main cleaning supplies and rags in a different cupboard (this has changed around a little but essentially the same) but we still needs space under the sink for:

-dish soap
-dishwasher detergent
-kitchen trash bags
-various scrubbers and sponges
-magic erasers
-watering can
-watering mister
-gloves for doing dishes (I'm not sure why we have these, Matt might use them once a year)
-all the little brushes for cleaning bottles, baby and water variety
-my homemade goo gone
-baking soda for cleaning
-frequently used tools

It's not a lot of things but enough.  And I knew I needed most of them corralled somehow.  Here is where I ended up:

 Let's look a little closer!  On the left we have:

Measuring cups and funnel for making my homemade cleaners (hung with Command hooks) and various dish and vegetable scrubbers in a clear organizer I bought from Lowes and hung with Command Strips (I could write an ode to Command Strips).

Both of the larger blue - blue/silver containers came from seasonal departments at Hobby Lobby (plain blue) and Target (silver and blue).  The Hobby Lobby one holds trash bags, Clorox wipes (an extra from back to school shopping), and a free bottle of cleaning spray I got in a Grove order that I have yet to use.  (I'm rather attached to my plain vinegar.)

The divided Target container holds dish soap, bottle brushes, a few more scrubbers from orange bags (as in, the bags oranges come in, they make great free scrubbers), the rubber gloves that are barely used, and a hospital scrub kit (I have NO idea how that ended up at our house, definitely not my husband who used to have to scrub in for some surgeries...two jobs ago).    There is also our box of dishwasher detergent (I just thought this morning that I should go back to making my own, I finally feel like I have the brain space for that again).

In the back is a bottle of some cleaning stuff Matt bought for something...I really have no idea but that is where it is kept now.

Onto the right:

There are more of those plastic Command containers I bought at Lowes (both times I bought them the cashiers remarked on how handy they looked, they are!).  Bottom is magic erasers (Target brand), I don't know why I have so many.  On top are sponges from IKEA and free ones from Grove as well as my baking soda shaker (great for scrubbing counters, sink, and stovetop).

On top are my homemade goo gone, watering can for house plants, and a water mister for my high maintenance plant sitting on my desk.  In the back are all my extra dish soaps, again, I'm not sure why I have so many, there must have been a sale (but I would stock up solely on lilac scent, it's the best one).

This wire basket on the bottom holds all our basic tools (Matt has PLENTY more in the basement, garage, at the lake, etc.).  Hammer, a couple screwdrivers, a wrench, duct tape, utility knife, laser level.  In the back are a bottle of Christmas tree food and on the right is a grabber Matt got in a Christmas stocking which has proved to be useful more than once.

And that's it!  Finding containers that matched what I had in my mind definitely took awhile (and then finding the time to write about it took another month) but I am very happy with the result.  Other than finding the containers, this didn't take much time, a couple hours spread out over many days.

Some good before and afters:

 

Now maybe this will be the motivation I need to finish up the LAST lower cabinet and then this almost 6 year (!!!) project will be done.  The end results speak for themselves (but of course I added another couple hundred words.)