Spring Cleaning: Kitchen Purge

I've recently discovered a blog that is right up my alley - it's called I Heart Organizing! From what I've gathered she posts a new project to work on each month and shows you how to follow along with her. April is all about "Project Purge" - something I seem to constantly be doing anyway, so I thought I'd follow along at my own pace. First up - the kitchen! I've needed to clean out the drawers and cabinets ever since our kitchen renovation (there was lots of dust & debris still hanging out). 

Of course, my little helper was around to "help", which usually translated to playing with my purged kitchen items. He was so helpful - ha!

Before I go on to show my pictures, it's important to note that I use my kitchen a LOT! I cook everyday, usually 3 meals/day since Little Man & I are home during the day. So, I do have quite a bit of kitchen gadgets, utensils, etc and the important thing is I use almost all of them on a daily-weekly basis. I also do a fair of amount of canning/freezing in the summer, so I have an entirely different set of gadget needs for those projects. Basically, don't be surprised if I still have a lot in my cabinets.

So here are a few of my before & afters...

And here are just some after collages (didn't want to bore you too much with so many pictures)...

Here is the pile of purged objects...some will be donated to Goodwill, others will be stored (like the knife block) until I'm really ready to part with it.

Due to time constraints, I skipped my spice cabinet & pantry. So, I will probably have even more to add to the pile! And now I'm feeling a bit guilty over the excess...

I'm also linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick's Before & After Party!