From Bins to Drawers

I was able to carve out a few minutes, well let's call it less than 45 minutes, on Thursday to get items in bins transferred to the cabinet in our garage. It was pretty slick. I'm hoping it will be easier to find things with them in the cabinet, which has been passed from my grandfather, my parents and now us.

Bins full of garage type items

Cabinet waiting to be productive

Here are some pictures to show you what was in a few of the drawers before I unloaded the bins. The bins were already some what categorized, so that made it easy to unload and transfer to the drawers.

Garden items, including garden gloves

Sander in its own drawer

Something in each drawer, but plenty of room to add more!

Lots of room for more stuff! 

More empty drawers

I started my process by opening the bins so I could have access and visibility to see what items made sense where. I will be honest I put some items and drawers and later moved them to another one. It was a little bit of trial and error. I find that is how organizing is, trial and error. Move something and see if it works. You might know right away or a month or more down the road that it isn't quite right for your needs. That is perfectly fine either way. It is a process, no worries that it doesn't stay perfect right away or needs to be tweaked. It is all good.

After my tweaking and transferring my cabinet drawers ended up like this, with the top three drawers staying basically the same as the pictures above (the ones with the garden items and sander):

Some drawers have a divider. That was even more helpful in organizing!

Did you notice anything in common with all the drawers? No labels. Yet. I have it on my list of things to do. I'm thinking of putting a piece of plastic in each label slot that I can then write on with a dry erase marker. I might be able to then easily change the label when the contents change. Although I think a piece of paper with writing would be pretty sufficient, too. I may try that first. I will show you the labels when they are complete, because I know you want to see!

Darn. I should have taken pictures of my empty bins. I have at least seven large empty bins now that the garage sale is over and I have moved the items to the cabinet. I always think it is a good thing to have empty containers! That makes them available to use for temporary uses or for new uses if needed. I don't think I have personally bought new containers for over 8 years. Maybe more.

How would you label the drawers? Do you buy containers with some frequency or do you find that you can always find an empty bin to use when needed?

I have linked this post to A Bowl Full of Lemons.