Tips, Tricks and Trash Bags- these are what you need to get organized

I moved 5 years ago into my house in Baton Rouge. I did downsize, except I brought a lot of things with me and just put them into a space and closed the door. As I needed these serving pieces, wine glasses and coffee mugs for 12 it became troublesome and tiring moving stacks and putting them back.

Then I met Sarah West one day at Red Stick Spice Co. she had been hired to help with the cooking classes and it was one of my classes that we began to chat and she told me she had a business to organize people and their things. We immediately struck a deal. Sarah has a business named South Coast Organizers and we spent 2 days together knocking out my kitchen pantry and my butler closets.

It was a grand relief to have someone tell me what size containers to order from The Container Store & how many portable shelves I needed to buy at Bed Bath And Beyond and the energy to clean out everything off the shelves and start from scratch.

The First rule - check for expiration dates on all your packaging and this is where the trash bags come in to play.

I did have this installed before Sarah arrived these are the services she offers but, I had a super handy man install this for me. I know it seems like a lot of oils and vinegars, as a culinary instructor I need all of them (maybe).

The cast iron is much easier to get to and is not stacked on top of each other and so it is not as heavy to pull in and out of on the shelves. We categorized the food into food groups and ordered big baskets from Target that act like drawers on the bottom of the pantry.

Sarah organized all my appliances on one shelf where I could access them with ease

Sarah ordered super cute labels for the containers to keep me faithful to our clean up!

What to do here? I do know things are heavy and stacked on top of each other and I do have too many things! We started by clearing the shelves.

Remove everything and then start putting in the portable shelving.

I was amazed at what a difference these little shelves make. It doubled my space and all of the serving pieces are accessible.

This is the last closet to tackle and she organized it by size and how often I use the items.

How did this happen? I can not thank Sarah enough for all her skills and adorable personality. She made a dreadful task into fun.