Why hasn't anyone written about organizing a pantry or kitchen cabinet contents by purpose and height?

So I'm tried of not being able to find anything in the kitchen at home or at the condo. But I'm tackling the Condo first since it also needs a serious cleaning out of the cabinets. So I want to really think hard about the organization of what goes where for meal prep which I think the basic locations of most items make sense already. BUT I also want to figure out then why I can't find anything in the food shelves. Well first off I'm short. But I can't fix that except note to self need step stool in kitchen that's easy to pull out and use. That will have to wait.

So in order to determine how best to use the shelving I'm going to pull everything out, clean it and measure the height of all the items and see if I need to adjust my shelving spacing. Because this condo needs new cabinets bad but one crazy great feature is all the shelving appears to be adjustable.

So here's my "before's" and yeah wow it's a mess.

Your basic L kitchen.Can't see it but stove to the left and refrigerator to the right when you enter.

Diagram of Current Cabinets and Contents

I use floorplanner.com forever for designing interiors. Designing is all that's happened so far very little actual installation!

Cabinet 1 Laundry

Cabinet 2 Cookbooks, Spices, Missing Mixing Bowls but that's where I always put them. And some food has made it's way into here. 

Cabinet 3 only two shelves for food, much wasted space and I can't reach or see top shelf. 

Cabinets 4 and 5 on sink wall. The left one i started moving over my GF food when I saw how the "wheat" containing stuff was spilled all over cabinet! Ugh! The right onen is disehs and oh there are the mixing bowls where I can't reach them. It's hard living with tall people. 

Cabinets 6 under stove and 7 under cooktop. 6 contains baking sheets, muffin tins, pie plates, and a big container of art supplies. The drawer right under the stove is household stuff or the junk drawer. Under the stove top is the cookware. 

My main prep area with canisters, Cabinet section 8, top drawer measuring stuff, cooking utensils.  

Cabinet 9 and 10. Top drawer towels, dishrags, under mostly empty should be storage containers, tinfoil, plastic wrap etc. Tinfoil by the way was in very top of Cabinet 4 and when I finally got it down it was empty!!!! OK who puts and empty tinfoil container  back in the top cabinet top shelf. Sorry that has to be JOE!!!!!!

Cabinets 10 and 11. Undersink area is 10 and really should have less of that stuff in it. Since it can get wet. Top Drawer of 11 is flatware and under is pretty much empty because microwave cart blocks it from easy access. 

Microwave cart that one leg now shorter so wobbles. Broken food processor underneath and onions that are growing. wastecan next to it.

So first order of business. Pulling out all the food! Cleaning those cabinets! Wish me luck. Have to work fast so I can get to use the new labeler!

See how gross the shelves were! Yuck!

Turns out the "adjustable shelves" are either not adjustable or at least I'm not strong enough to get them to budge. But that's ok. I still have a plan.

All the food out!

AFTER

AFTER cleaning, rearranging, labeling and scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees the big reveal:

Cabinet 2 now is spices lower shelf, baking ingredients middle shelf, cookbooks and few odds and ends top shelf. 

Spices arranged fro A to Z

Shout out to salt'n pepa! LOL!

Cabinet 3 now with all the tall stuff. Paper towels right over where the holder hangs out. Cereal and breakfast stuff top shelf. GF stuff top left.

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Cabinet 4 beverages bottom left, pb, rice cakes and snacks borrom right, middle shelf canned goods, and top 2 empty as I can't reach them anyway.

Dishes we eat off that's it in cabinet 5. Corningware on the highest shelf since it's almost unbreakable.

That's it for the top cabinets now the bottom cabinets. I didn't photograph the one over or under the stove because I didn't change them much. Laundry is still over stove. Junk drawer I didn't touch, I need Pat here for that to ask what I can throw out. Below it I changed to seasonal items. 

Bottom cabinets starting under stove top with cabinet 7.

Ran out of shelf liner again. Found some from before that I didn't know I had but still not enough to do all of them. Here's pots and pans on the left and ovenware on the right.

Next the cooking utensil draw always a disaster!

Could use more dividers, but trying to do this without spending any money so I repurpose boxes and such

Cutoff solo cup

Top drawer in Cabinet 8 for cooking and measuring utensils

Below the utensils two more drawers of prep stuff. Top bowls and liquid measuring cups, sifter. Below that cutting boards on top of cookie sheets and loaf, pizza and muffin pans. 

Top Drawer cabinet 9 towels, sponges, hand soap and cream.

See I bought sponges today because I couldn't find any but turns out we had like 9 sponges. They just weren't where I would put them. We also had 3 cornstarches, 3 boxes of angel hair, 2 gingers, but an empty box of tinfoil and empty box of saran wrap. Why save the empties? I have no idea. But it was the realizaation that we probably often buy things we don't need just because we can't find them that made me decided to reorganize and label it all. 

I won't bother to show you under the sink but now it's basically empty except cleaners. That way no harm if things get wet. 

Last cabinet 11 Even scrubbed clean, labeled and filled flatware tray. I re-washed all the silverware too.

Last cabinet, tupperware type stuff top shelf and broken food processor bottom shelf. Pat wanted to look at it before I threw it out. But there's no way to fix it since plastic parts broke off. It was hard to use and small capacity so I don't consider it worth ordering replacement parts. So if he doesn't look at it in next couple months I'll pitch it. Like I did a bunch of things I found in cabinets broken years ago. 

Cleaned off cart and microwave. 

Scrubbed floor on hands and knees

Scrubbed garbage can and side of frig as well

Now that's how you break in a labeler!!!! Worked very well. 5 stars!

Well I thought I would finish this today midafternoon latest. It was after 6 pm when I was done. Whew. There goes the weekend!