Emergency Laundry Room / Pantry Organizing

See this sweet little boy?

You wouldn't think he'd be a bit of trouble would you? You'd be wrong. He's been on a single-pawed single-handed mission to destroy all in his path. He recently discovered the top of the washer. He first got up there to pull down his favorite toy from the very top shelf above, which he somehow accomplished even though I can barely reach up there. We moved the toy (it has a string so he can't play with it alone), but he still wants to get up there now. In the process he's pulled down the tension curtain rod, along with all the hangers and the clothes hanging on it and he's knocked the entire washbasket down, where it crashed into his food and water bowls, scattering soggy kibble everywhere.

I didn't take pictures of his hurricane path of destruction, but I figured as long as I was cleaning up after him anyway, I'd take the opportunity to do a bit of emergency organizing.

Here is a before pictures of the laundry area. The two overflowing wash baskets that are normally on top of the machines were in the middle of the kitchen floor when I took this picture, trust me, it normally looks much worse than this.

For now I didn't do anything about the shelves but I did cull the hangers, tossing the dry cleaner ones and moving most of the others to the master closet (where they're currently piled on the floor, I swear I always have more hangers than places to hang them). The stuff hanging on the curtain rod was moved and the baskets stored back on top of the machines, but at least I can close the curtain again, the main purpose of which was to hide this mess.

See those boxes on the top shelf? Yeah they've been there since moving in. I'm pretty sure they are Christmas decorations.

The other half of the room is my pantry area. I have a nice assortment of baskets and bins, so again. for now, my main focus was tidying up and rearranging a bit. I still want to get magazine boxes for all the magazine back issues on the bottom shelves and maybe do some sort of trim on the Wally World laminate shelves - the uneven gap between the two units drives me insane.

Here are some before shots.

The canvas bins were all askew, the plastic bags were overflowing their container, and canned goods were starting to overflow onto the top of the tan craft cabinet in the back of the space. To make more room, I moved some small appliances that aren't visible in these photos into a kitchen cabinet (which had freed up space thanks to my china cabinet redo), labeled my bins, put my cereal into big jars and moved them to the middle of the table (I'll do a separate post on this soon, it turned out really cute) and just generally tided up. Here are the results:

The "wood grain" boxes on the right are Ramen Noodle boxes (yes, I buy them by the case, don't judge) covered with faux bois contact paper. The 3-tiered wooden rack on the left houses our kitty food and treats (we were out when the picture was taken - normally there are small white paper plates on the bottom and cans of Fancy Feast on the middle shelf). The plastic forks I use to dish out their canned food moved from my overcrowded silverware drawer into a small metal tin on the top of their rack, I tossed the ones that were too big to fit in the container.

Oh, and did you notice the print propped on the top of the craft cabinet? Its main purpose was to cover the fuse box, which is ugly. I say was because in a separate failed jumping incident that went crashing down behind the cabinet. Sigh.