Worth repeating: A few products can transform a space

17 May 2021

Four years ago, I had the pleasure of going to New York City to help a dear friend organize her new apartment. I wrote this post then about how some key products really helped organize her items in her small kitchen.

This week, I had the opportunity to help a dear friend organize the storage spaces of her new apartment in New York City. Having just moved in, she didn’t need any decluttering, so I was able to get busy while she was at work. After I analyzed her needs, I went to the Container Store website and scoped out some products, making a Wish List.

Then I took the subway to the Lexington and 58th Street Container Store and told them I wanted same-day delivery of the products I purchased. I was given a scanner and I wandered through the store, scanning the products I wanted, using my Wish List as my guide. Then I checked out, went back to the apartment and within a few hours the products were delivered (for a $25 fee). It was fabulous.

I just want to show you a couple of photos of how some carefully selected products made a huge difference in this small space.

In the kitchen, my friend has a narrow (10 inches wide) cupboard in which she stored supplies to make hot beverages, primarily. She also had a little oil and vinegar and some peanut butter in there.

Here’s the before picture.

And here’s how the space was transformed with a few key products.

The game changer was the Linus 9-inch Divided Turntable, which now holds her bottles of oils and vinegars, plus some liquid sugar for coffee and her peanut butter. (I moved the oatmeal to the cupboard below, to live with the rest of the breakfast cereal.)

The YouCopia Coffee Stack Organizer was a revelation. My friend has a Keurig and this allowed us to store all her pods in a small, organized space. She buys them in ten-pod packages and each of the four levels of the organizer holds ten pods.

I used the Linus Sugar and Tea Packet Holder to hold her favorite tea bags (the rest are stored higher, in another cupboard; see the picture below) along with some individual packets of Sugar in the Raw. Everything else just fell into place.

Over the microwave, my friend had a bunch of boxes of tea, along with some pasta and some flavored syrup.

Here’s the before picture:

And here’s how it looked after adding just a couple of containers.

The 8-Compartment Acrylic Tea Box helped coral all those messy boxes. It fit in the space beautifully and held all her tea bags. Heaven.

I used the eight-inch square Linus Pantry Binz to hold her pasta. And I moved the syrups to the skinny cupboard.

I also worked in her bathroom and bedroom closets, which I can save for another post. (I have to get outside and enjoy New York!) It feels so great to be able to help my friend make her apartment so functional!

Tagged with: kitchen, organizing products, worth repeating