If Betty Crocker had OCD

I love to bake.  Decorating cupcakes is my favorite.  I think it’s the idea that if the first one doesn’t turn out quite right, you have 23 more to make it perfect.  It’s the OCD perfectionist in me.  A few weeks ago, I made my nephew Camouflage cupcakes for his birthday.  (Yep.  Pinterest).  When I opened the cabinet to get started, I was hit in the face with a bottle of vanilla extract.  Guess who found a new organizing project?  This girl! 

During a Christmas baking extravaganza, I performed a very minor organization of the baking cabinet.  Originally I just had everything tossed on a shelf.  Ingredients, cupcake liners, icing bags, icing tips, food coloring, etc.  It was always the rouge rolling pin that got me. 

So, I found some empty canisters I had stashed in my organizing bin and proceeded to give everything a home.  Cupcake liners in one canister, food coloring in another canister, nuts in a third.  I tossed all the chocolate chips, coconut, and other various ingredients in a plastic bin and the cookie cutters in a cute tin left over from Christmas.  The few remaining items stayed on the shelf.  One of which was the jumpy vanilla extract bottle.

However, although this quick and dirty system got the chaos under control, it still wasn’t a completely functional setup.  If I needed cupcake liners, I had to move three other items out of the way, get the cupcake canister out, get what I needed, put it back, and then put back the three random items.  Not so good.  But it was an improvement, so I carried on with life.  Then I walked into my local Bed, Bath, &Beyond to kill time one afternoon and discovered the Bake Stack.  It is what I have been missing my whole life.  My life to this point has been a lie.

This handy contraption made use of the vertical space in my small cabinet instead of simply the horizontal space allowed by the shelf.  It has three drawers with dividers you can space as you see fit.  (I love this feature.  I hate organizational products that restrict how you can use them). 

I was able to house my cupcakes liners, pastry bags, icing tips, food coloring, birthday candles, sprinkles, and the vanilla extract in the drawers.  I then found glass canisters at World Market to hold the baking ingredients – chocolate chips, coconut, powdered sugar, marshmallows, brown sugar, nuts, etc.  I also now had room to move my sugar and flour canisters into the baking cabinet and out of the pantry (a massive pantry renovation is coming in the next few weeks – I’m sooooooo excited.  Stay tuned!).   I had a few random items that didn't fit in the Bake Stack or in canisters so I tossed those into small tins I found at Wal-Mart.  The last step, of course, was adding labels.  The Bake Stack came with printable labels however I went with cute red ones from the Martha Stewart Avery line at Staples.

I now love my baking cabinet.  Might have to whip something up tonight.  But more than that, I love how a quick, meaningless trip into Bed, Bath, & Beyond opened my eyes to an organizing project I had completely ignored.  Who knew that big box retail stores were the breeding grounds for creativity and imagination!  And people say shopping is a waste of time.

Please let me know of ways in which you have organized your cabinets. And if you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area and could use my help in taming any organizational issue in your home, email me at TheNeatFreakOrganizer@gmail.com.