I cleaned and organized (my husband is SO happy!)

Since it is getting very spring-like around these parts (except, of course, today because I have the day off), I felt like a little spring cleaning is in order.  I started in the bathroom the other day.  It is what kicked off my tray modification.  Sadly, I didn't do before and after shots.  But, it was really only throwing away some expired medicine.  (Embarrassingly expired... like by years).  Then I moved on to the pantry closet in our mud room.  Again, so before pics.  I rock.  Totally on top of things.  But here is what it looks like now.  I promise, this is SO much better than before. 

This is looking from the kitchen into the mud room.

This door leads to the backyard.

Before we get into that closet, here is what is hanging on the wall.  They are the dog butt hooks from IKEA.  You can get them here.  Super cute.  The one sitting on the tub of dog food, is waiting to be hung up.  I actually found it while cleaning out this closet!  See, spring cleaning is a good idea.  We hang her leashes and harnesses on these.  I could also hang up one of her jackets or sweaters or any of her little outfits...  something tells me the husband would not be on board!

Anyway, here is what it looks like in the cabinet now.  I added the key hooks because they were just in a pile on the shelf.  I also bought the plastic shelf on the top part of the cabinet.  Again, before it was just all thrown in and when you needed something, you had to dig through and chances are things would fall down on you.  That is never a good thing.

Inside the lower cabinet was largely unchanged.  When we installed this cabinet I had the husband add an outlet so that we could plug in the dust buster.  We use that thing a lot and, to me, there is nothing uglier than looking at that thing hanging out.  It used to be mounted to the wall in this room and bugged the heck out of me.  Also, we mounted the IKEA plastic bag holder inside the cabinet too.  I didn't really want to look at that either.  Pretty uggo.  But SO convenient.  Buy it here.

In the interest of honesty, here is what the other side of the mud room looks like... the baby's bathtub, stuff that needs to be taken to the garage, and towels to wipe of Penny's muddy paws strewn about the room.  My cleaning and organizing is less than perfect.  A lot less.

Once I finished that, I moved onto the kitchen pantry.  I did have the where with all to take some photos before I dug into this. 
BEFORE:

Now some before close-ups :

The layout was okay pre-mobile baby.  But, now that he is crawling like a mad man, I have to rethink where EVERYTHING in my house resides right now.  Basically, anything glass needs to be moved to an unreachable position.  I would like for him to be able to grab his ups and puffs and things.  (I may regret that statement one day). 
I started by going through everything and throwing away all of the expired things.  Again, a little embarrassed to admit that there were A LOT of things that were well over their expiration date.  Let's just say, I have lived with my husband for 5 years now and some of this food made the move from my old house to this house... gross.  I know.  Even redoing the kitchen didn't cause me to throw some things away.  So gross. 
Then I started at the bottom and thought about what should be okay for reaching distance for the wee one.  I moved up from there.  Here is what I came up with.
AFTERS :

I removed the Swifter stuff and moved that to the mud room closet.  Didn't really make sense to have them with food, although not in the same exact area as food.  And with the new shelf in the mud room closet, I am able to get to them when needed.

I moved all of the stuff on this shelf from the second to the bottom, to second to the top.  There were lots of glass jars that I figured the babe could get into.  Not a good idea. 

There was some question as to whether I should move the Baby Bullet equipment up to a higher shelf.  I chose not to because I thought that the blades were not really sharp.  I may regret that later too, but I don't have anything to put on that shelf right now. 

That is it.  Not mind-blowing stuff, but I thought I would share.  I am happy to have a clean, well-organized pantry.  BUT, I keep forgetting where I put things and was fumbling around all day looking for things.  Oh well, I imagine that won't take too long to figure out.  It moved a shelf or two, not to a different room. 
One thing I would really like to do is put those same shelves as are in the mud room closet into the top cabinet in the pantry.  That would give me a little more storage area.  I love the big open cabinet, but when you don't have something tall, it doesn't really make too much sense.  I would also like to get all of my dry food stuff (rice, dry beans, cereal, etc) into plastic containers some day.  That will hopefully come in the future.  I will keep you posted, I am sure you are all on the edge of your seats.  A real nail biter over here.  :)