Organized

I am really attracted to and drawn to organization.  I always have been, for as long as I can remember.  As a kid I always kept my room neat and my closet organized.  As an adult I've always kept my clothes organized, which also saves time in addition to looking nice.  My pants are hung together, my long-sleeve button up shirts are hung together, my short-sleeve shirts are hung together, my pull-overs are hung together, you get the point.  I always know where to look when I go to put on something specific.

Living with Spouse for the past 20+ years has presented challenges to my love of living in an organized home.  He is the opposite of organized.  He never knows where anything is because he never puts things away in an organized way.  Its not so bad when it comes to our shared closet, which is very large.  I have my organized side and he has his disorganized side.

The kitchen is a different story.  We both use the kitchen and its contents so I'm often frustrated when I look in the cabinet where something is supposed to be (ie: vegetable oil in the baking cabinet) and its not there.  Another frustration is the spice/herb storage.  To the left of the microwave is a tall, narrow cabinet with 2 shelves.  The spices and dried herbs are in 2 baskets, 1 on each shelf.  Spouse will grab what he needs at the time, then just randomly toss them back into 1 of the 2 baskets.  This means when we need something, we have to look through all of the items in both baskets until we find it, which wastes time, and also makes it impossible to know if you're running out of something.  

Thus, every Thanksgiving Spouse doesn't know how much poultry seasoning we have at home because it would take too long to look through the disorganized bottles to find it/them, so he just buys another one at the store.

And we end up with this -->

Yes, 5 opened containers of poultry seasoning.  And, poultry seasoning was not the only duplicated spice/herb, but it was most duplicated.  Several others had opened duplicates as well.

So yesterday, on my day off, I added "organize spice/herb baskets" to my to-do list.  1st I lined them up in alphabetical order on the counter.  Next I consolidated the duplicated seasonings to reduce the total number of containers.  I was able to consolidate the 5 poultry seasonings down to 3, and did the same with others.  Then I placed them back in the baskets in alphabetical order.

When Spouse got home I explained what I'd done and told him I was holding him accountable for keeping them alphabetized and organized.  I threatened physical violence against his person should he revert to his old habit of randomly tossing the containers into the baskets, although we both knew that to be an empty threat.  Hopefully he got the point though.