Labeled cabinets only when Mom and Dad got caregivers, so the caregivers could find things!

I have labeled shelves, baskets, and the three lazy susans in the 11” square cabinet for spices (just A-L, M-Z, and Baking or misc Mixes). Helped only when DH was traveling all the time. Now he is home all the time, does most of the cooking, thank goodness because I can’t find anything. Neither can he, but I do actually pay attention and can tell him the last time I saw something. Good thing he’s a good cook.

The perpetrator? Rolls eyes, goes off on some tangent like "when are you going to put up more shelves, you took away all our storage space", waves away my calculations of cubic ft storage pre- and post-, draws self up to full height and she's tall, prepares her Red Queen act wherein heads are offed and the headless sent to make a latte STAT. No, I cannot approach the problem directly with SWMBO, I have to resort to meek little labels or some other inoffensive measure.

On laundry . . . after the all backpacking kit all the time phase, there were the decades when most of my clothes were dry cleaned, pressed and starched. Remember those days? Then there was the all bike kit all the time phase - you know, after the Revolution when we threw off the yoke of starched shirts, ties, collar stays, and pressed suits - and today the just an old slob phase - sung to the refrain of "oh why don't you buy new cloooothes, oh why are you wearing your new shirt to fix the plumbiiiing". Left to my own devices, I just don't produce much washing.

The benefit of living in an apartment with a small-ish kitchen. If what you are looking for is misplaced, there aren't too many other locations it can be in!

I'm type A about lots of things in my life, but kitchen utensil placement is thankfully not one of them. Our house cleaner puts things away in completely random places. It makes me laugh.

I have no idea what SWMBO means.

I have a friend with 5 kids whose cabinets are labeled. But it sounds more like a relationship issue than a kitchen issue for you! I have a less extreme yet similar spouse. My two kids know where just about everything goes bc putting away the clean dishwasher contents has been one of their jobs since they were quite small. My DH of 15 years can't find or put away anything but plates and cups which sit out in the open on shelving. He claims he loves to cook, and I know he did some decent cooking as a bachelor, but he has not attempted to integrate himself into the kitchen since then! He has had various excuses... my restricted dietary needs don't overlap with the recipes he's familar with, or I moved some stuff around a couple months after we moved so why bother learning where things go if I move them, or we thinking about renovating in a year or two so again why bother learning! Oof. He has successfully run a few Thanksgivings and parties from our kitchen basically by himself, so the underlying thing is probably something he's not articulating, also likely some ADHD out of sight out of mind tendencies, but I speculate perhaps he only wants to be top chef and not wanting to learn "my ways" cause yes I am the main food providing person who at a minimum makes dinner every night.

"So no-one labels their kitchen?" Hell to the no - no one is sticking labels on my kitchen cabinets. I feel like most of my items make sense where stored (pot holders by the range? Check. Corkscrew by the wine glasses? Coffee cups above the coffee maker? Check and check.) Yes, I do have some weird little things that others would have to ask about (grilling planks in a drawer by the coffee center? Yes. Because they fit.) My husband is in charge of breakfast and morning coffee so he knows where that stuff is. When my kids visit, if they cook or cocktail, they'll ask if they can't find anything. I'm the one who empties the DW and puts things away so I know where they are.

I will say in a shared kitchen, like the one at my church, labels are very helpful. But those are hard-used, stainless cabinets. And people still will say "where can I find a big spoon?" I dunno... maybe try the drawer labeled big spoons?

My late dad had one of those label makers that spit out the tape with the raised letters. I get very nostalgic when I see something he labeled - like his myriad boxes of slides (yes I have them and even look at them sometimes) and my son treasures his Swiss army knife because it has grandpa's last name on a label.

Woo! How'd I get so emotional thinking about labels? LOL

I cannot approach the problem directly with SWMBO, I have to resort to meek little labels or some other inoffensive measure.

Oh, that will not be seen as inoffensive.

A member here who had the most glorious reveal post ever, never matched since, described the knife drawer, without a physical label no matter how Pinterest-ready, as ”things that can draw blood”. If you start putting labels like that on the drawers, that’s the first drawer the Red Queen will go for.

Here, in digital crayon, is the battlefield. This is the sink run of cabinets.

The general idea is that

- when standing at the main prep counter, all your knives, other peely-graty-cutty-stabby things ("sharps") like SWMBO's favorite ice pick (gulp), workbowls, spatulas (in "Banking 3), flour and sugar, are directly in front of you, with the prep sink to your left. Eventually I want to mount a herb-growing shelf in front of the window with grow lights above.

- the left counter is mostly a landing zone for the combi oven above and for the range which is in front of that cabinet but not shown. The right stack of drawers is other stuff needed for prep, the left stack is less-used stuff plus the slum called "Junk Drawer".

- the right counter is more prep, but its drawers are mostly for things to be put away from the dishwasher, things related to beverages, and too many leftover containers (a purge is in the planning). Above that counter is the tea and coffee stuff plus microwave.

- pots and pans are hung from the ceiling rack (not shown) or the pegboard.

I've made the general location of things logical, I think, but the problem at hand is the details. If the whisk gets dropped into "sharps" or the peeler in "baking 3", they are still in the generally correct "zone" but not Where They Should Be and that costs time and serenity.

On the facing side of the kitchen is the pantry cabinet wall, which has its own whole set of problems. There are western pastas and there are Asian noodles, they are to be segregated and not secreted in the cookie+cracker pullout, etc. Labels there are hidden by the cabinet doors, fortunately.

Good, Lord no! It would drive me crazy to have any area of my home so regimented.

Different strokes.

When my Mom moved from her house of 40 years to a small apartment, I put blue tape on the cabinet doors and drawers, listing category of contents, so she didn't have to open every door/drawer to find what she was looking for, until she got used to the arrangement. The labels stayed on for a few weeks at most, but they were very helpful during that transition.

@bpath - I actually have a shelf in my basement "Things that cut" - includes all kinds of knives, blades, special purpose scissors, saws, saw blades . . .

@John Liu, I don't label mine because I live alone—well, not completely alone, but the dog is too short to reach the drawer pulls and also lacks opposable thumbs.

You have my sympathy, and I'm going to suggest a couple of things in case they help directly or inspire some other ideas.

Here's a tough-love approach: If it matters to you and not to SWMBO, then take responsibility for all putting away. SWMBO leaves items on counter or in large dishpans on counter (or something like that) and you put items away the way you like them. Convenient for you? Probably not, but your current situation is hardly convenient for you, now is it? You have to decide which is more important: control over your partner, or control over your space. In your place, I'd choose control over space vs. trying to control a whole other person I loved, but what do I know, I'm a single dog-lady.

A possibly less contentious approach, beginning with a question: Does SWMBO have ADD or ADHD? If she does, what you are asking of her is not a reasonable ask. Even if she doesn't have that particular neurodivergence in her makeup, I suggest working with her on finding another organization solution—one she can keep up with, even if it isn't 100% ideal for you, but that you can live with. Give a little, get a little!

For help with the "working with each other" idea, I recommend investigating Clutterbug. [The name is a link]. Cas has broken down organization styles into four main types. (She also admits that not everyone fits neatly into each category, but it can be a great way to start figuring stuff out.)

Decades back, when I was digging myself out of CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome), my favorite book was Julie Morgenstern's Organizing from the Inside Out. I was single then, too, so I only had myself to please, but what if you both read it, and worked together to identify roadblocks and solutions?

I've spent years working on decluttering and organizing, and periodic maintenance, because I never want go back to the way I was living in CHAOS. I spend a lot of time looking into resources, hoping to find some that help me improve my systems, even a little bit. I hope these ideas are helpful, but if not, please know they were offered in helpful spirit.

Oh, and apologies if it sounds like I'm trying to insert myself into your relationship. I don't know either of you, and I can't possibly know all the potential ramifications of taking my suggestions. If they stink, just don't use them.

Amy, curious if you are/were also a Flybaby? PS I also like Cas and Clutterbug, still deciding which category I am! But I’m not sure this is John’s issue, he seems to know what works for him, there’s just a difference in style!

John Liu, when our tools were in a former storage system, we did label drawers ”cutters” and ”measurers”. I still have to do that on our red metal tool cabinet. Love that thing.

@AnnKH, SWMBO= She Who Must Be Obeyed. 😊

@bpath, I was never a Flybaby, but back when I was digging myself out of Level 1 squalor, I did check out Flylady (Marla Cilley) fairly frequently (and I think her coinage of CHAOS was brilliant). I was also a regular visitor to Organized Home before Cynthia Ewer got rid of all the forums. I made household binders based on her ideas and they helped a lot at the time. (Nowadays most of that information is on my hard drive, or in a cloud, or both.). And I spent a lot of time on Squalor Survivors. I never posted there, but it was so helpful in making me feel not alone. And also, I watched a heck of a lot of (mostly) HGTV shows, plus Clean House (still love Niecy Nash!) and Clean Sweep. Depression is a fierce issue, and I "self-medicated" with any tools at all that I could find. It took me two full years, but I got my home and my life back.

I recommended Cas of Clutterbug to John because she often talks about how to manage when there are different organizing styles among the members of one household. I thought that could be useful. I don't see how you can resolve the issue he describes without both (or all) the parties involved working together. Possibly that explains why it's just me and the dog.

I don't label the drawers. DH is trainable.

I would like to gently point out that maybe the locations the OP has deemed appropriate for these items, in reality don't make sense to the other user of the kitchen. we've all experienced working in a unfamiliar kitchen and not finding what is needed or finding it in an location that doesn't make sense to your workflow.

when laying out locations was this a joint effort with input from both household members? if the above is a likely scenario, would it be possible to reevaluate the location of some items?

SWMBO doesn’t cook very much. Maybe 1X week, and pretty simple stuff. DD and I are the ones who do big cooking days. SWMBO also does everything on the island (not shown), so the organization of the cabinet run I showed doesn’t really affect her. Someday when I build a new island, I will include a drawer just for her favorite knife, ice pick, etc.

The zones (prep 1, prep 2, cook, wash, etc) were part of the original kitchen design, which SWMBO approved. I can’t actually recall how we subsequently decided the details of what went where, or if there even was a discrete decision process. It think it was more that we unpacked the boxes and bins of kitchen stuff, cleaned off the sawdust and concrete dust (yes, I got in trouble), and started loading things in drawers willy-nilly as we tried to use the work-in-progress kitchen with plywood counters and unfinished floors.

The actual assignment of object to drawer, then, was a trial-and-error process over some weeks, with little or no participation from SWMBO as i) she doesn’t cook much as noted, ii) was grouchy at having to cook in a W-I-P space, iii) was enjoying ordering food in while we still had an excuse.

Okay, my conclusion is:

1. I will label the drawers as a forlorn, performative statement

2. I will continue chasing around behind SWMBO and moving things from where they are to where they should be

3. I will create a large spreadsheet of each item with the drawer in which it lives, print and post it, and watch it be ignored

4. I will color code items to drawers, and watch magenta be confused with purple daily

5. I will set up a camera to record the putting-away transgressions and confront the wrong-doer, who will retaliate and evade

6. I will go back to #2

Sitting down with my popcorn to wait for the next episode!

this is a great thread!

for amystoller I am happy for you for getting to where you are now. It's nice that with all that is going on in the world, there are shows and communities online that help people. I remember a show with 2 British cleaning ladies that came in and cleaned up - usually leaving a small sink of cleanup bleach solution and the words Detritus and Clostridium perfringens forever imprinted in my mind. <3 . (Looked it up -"How Clean is Your House?" - fabulous! there was a sort of kind, tough love in all their episodes, IIRC)

I have been considering labeling the drawers - at least temoporarily - in the new house as my little implement storage scheme isnt that great. The drawers are too spead out and I am not sure there is a good / logical home for everything. I managed the pots and pans, the larger "tools", small kitchen appliances, bakeware, etc - but the little items (melon baller, oyster knife, can opener, thermometers, are all over the place.) . I too have edge pulls, so a clear plastic label with small print would be fairly unobtrusive. It's also possible that the right answer is stacking a few 5" high drawers all together (3) instead of the 5/10/15" config i have everywhere with my IKEA drawers. But that is a lot of reconfiguration and the drawer fronts I have are no longer produced. I don't know if I should keep the way I have it, or try again. Imprint on the sub optimal, or try again to be better?

And I also have a bucket of sharp things in the shop labeled "I will cut you" as a warning.

For John - I think you are stuck finding and moving back. I do get the "JUST PUT IT SOMEWHERE" approach to removing clutter. It helps calm people down.

I managed my spouse by dropping him off in the Nevada desert when I moved from CA to PA.

But I do have a question - are you sure about the perfectly organized starting point? Do you have too much stuff to create a truly well organized space? I have never understood the "Junk Drawer" concept. I have a drawer that has a section with freezer tape, a sharpie (not sharpies), a post it pad (not pads), and a pen and a small bag that holds my string for tying roasts. It does not have any rubber bands - what is the need for rubber bands in the kitchen? My 10x10 kitchen with 3 doorways doesn't allow enough room for a junk drawer.

Does SWMBO actually put silverware in with Bags Rolls and Wraps. What else is in that drawer? Why is anything other than bags, rolls and wraps in that drawer? Do those items (bags, rolls and wraps) need to be in a drawer in the kitchen or should they be in the pantry? Less stuff=more organization.

Im back to add to my previous comment. looking at your schematic, i find the organization would not be how id lay it out. i do think you should have a convo and be open to adjusting.

you say the organization of the cabinet run doesnt affect her, yet maybe it does. if she is prepping on the island and has to turn constantly to locate what she wants its not working well for her either.

i do want to say that i understand you cook 99% of the time and this affects yous yiu way more. but it might be less frustrating to adjust to new placement of items than the frustration of never finding what you need. of course if the SO is the type to never put something away in the same place twice then im not sure what solution would work.

good luck. i dont have this issue but i do recall early on the frustration my DH had in my way of folding laundry. ( and to be clear he does laundry way more than i do

)

My sister labels all the containers in her cabinets - we both love our containers - keeping like items in one container rather than just loose in a drawer or cabinet really helps keep things organized.

Snapped a picture of my sister's spice and cooking additives (oils, vinegar . . . ) cabinet.

I don't bother with labels, but do use containers to organize my much smaller spices and condiments cabinet.

I keep my baking spices in the pantry with my other baking supplies - not enough room - have to keep only the things I need daily/weekly in the kitchen.

@just_janni, I used to watch Hoarders, Hoarding, and How Clean is Your House, too! Thank goodness my home was never filthy or unsanitary. Even when things were at their worst, I cleaned the cat boxes promptly, and I didn't leave food lying around. I needed to reprogram myself to recognize clutter for what it was, and dispose of it.

Most people didn't know how hard I was struggling, because the worst of the mess was confined to one room, and I kept its door closed. The other spaces were in what many people would consider a reasonable state of cleanliness and tidiness. But I knew I was in trouble, and I was suffering.

Somebody asked me earlier about FlyLady. The one thing I took from her, and it did make a positive difference, was shining my sink at the end of each day.

I do categorize things in my kitchen (without labeling, though). I have a "things I use at the stove" drawer, a "things I use to wash and dry" drawer, a couple of "things I use to wrap and contain" drawers, a "things I use for baking" drawer, and so forth. My kitchen knives live in my flatware drawer because that's where I have room for them. I have a couple of drawers of fairly miscellaneous kitchen items—can opener, box cutter, tape, pens, scissors, apple slicer/corer, egg slicer, bottle stoppers, funnels, measuring cups measuring spoons, etc. These are filled on the "where would I look for this item first" principle. Occasionally I open the wrong miscellaneous drawer first, but in that case, I can always find what I need in the second drawer. It wouldn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

Junk drawers are controversial. I've always had one. What is in the "junk drawer"? Screwdriver, tape measures, charging cords, remotes, extra oven bulb, blue tape, Crazy Glue, box cutter, spare cat collar, stuff like that. Its gotta go somewhere.

@John Liu We have always had a junk drawer. We have similar items in ours except an extra cat collar. No cat in this house.

" We have always had a junk drawer. We have similar items in ours except an extra cat collar. No cat in this house. "

LOL. My junk drawer has twine, bag clips, bottle stoppers, coffee filters (no coffee maker in the house), and mouse traps (when I had a problem, they hung out behind the stove)

My kitchen is too small. Frequently needed tools (hammer, wrench, screwdrivers, tape measure, single use crazy glue, masking tape) are kept in a small tool box in the front closet. All pet stuff related objects that are not used daily are in a bin in the garage labeled Pet Stuff. All lightbulbs are in the basement in the tote labeled Light bulbs. My remotes go to a TV or my fireplace. They stay in the room where what they control is in. Same with charging cords. Phone and blue tooth chargers are in the bedroom - used daily. All others stay with whatever needs to be charged. Maybe if my kitchen was bigger I would have a junk drawer, but I only have 8 drawers in my kitchen (Two deeper lower drawers and 6 shallow upper drawers - 2 that are only 12" wide.) Can't give up a drawer for junk.

It may be that you have too much, some of the drawer seem like they must be jam-packed. It may be overwhelming to try to find or put back items when there is so much to deal with, especially if she does not care as much about having those items at all. Looking at your dishwasher set up is a glimpse at how different you operate than most (not meant as negative, just realist), it is not surprising that it may be hard for your partner to follow your thought patterns without difficulty.

Looked at your map. Here's some feedback...

I would expect Baking 1, Baking 2, Baking 3 and Flour and Sugar to all be in the same stack. They are not.

i would expect towels to be more with flatware and serving. They are not.

I would expect Flatware 1, Flatware 2 and Serving all in the same stack. They are not.

And you have 4 drawers with descriptions of: Unassigned, Hard to Say, Junk, and Important yet Random. Do most of the misplacements involve these drawers? if so....

And I know it's easy for me to look at this and say "well of course that shouldn't be there" - I am struggling with the same. There's drawer depth, and interior fitments and other things that could easily limit my ideas above - so I feel you - but that was my initial read.

I sort of have 2 junk drawers:

Just_janni, the positon of multiple same-labeled drawers can depend completely on how the contents are used. For example, Flatware 1 might be “the flatware we use all the time”. Flatware 2 might be ”except this is the flatware we use when SWMBO’s great-aunt comes to visit weekly”.

We have the baking stuff we use most often, and then there’s the ”less often” angel food, big sheet pan, pie crust fluting wheel, etc.

Aren't brains weird (and fun)?

Yes! DH and I have discussions over how many scissors we need and where they should be. We do in fact have three in the kitchen, all different uses (and users). Like reading glasses, some things really do need to be all over the house. But DH doesn’t need readers so he disagrees.

bpath, since you have been waiting eagerly, here is how the drawers and pulls look with the labels.

Not too bad, I think. The labels face straight up, thus you only really notice them when you are standing at the drawer, about to drop a microplane into the spatula drawer.

I am limited in what goes where by the drawer heights. Only the upper drawers make sense for flatware. Only the bottom drawers make sense for workbowls and flour. And so on.

Next kitchen, I will do frameless with sidemount sliders so the drawers can be moved around.

Thanks for the visual! Now I can sleep, knowing no one will be attacked by a misplaced microplane. Assuming of course that they find their readers to look at the label.

Oh, fer cryin’ … I read that as microphone. Could not figure how that would end up in a spatula drawer at all!

Strange things have ended up in my spatula drawer.

Clyde, I think I love you.

My junk drawer is also organized, but yours are a thing of beauty!

If it's organized, is it still junk?

John - question for you -

Does your wife/SO know that you refer to her as SWMBO to people? I assume that by the way you've thrown that acronym here so freely that you also use it when texting or talking with others.

I was going to add a helpful comment - however, I was offended by the "SWMBO" reference - and how you used it EVERY time you referred to her, If you had used it only once, it wouldn't have bothered me as much (I guess because I would have thought that you were just being funny - and didn't actually refer to her that way).

You probably think that it bothers me so much because I'm the type of partner that would be referred to as SWMBO - but that is absolutely not true. I just know someone who found out that her husband was referring to her as SWMBO to his friends when texting (another wife in their "friends group" saw the text and told her) - and was devastated (and very embarrassed).

She was not controlling - she was an extremely nice and caring person. The nickname started because he didn't feel like he needed to share his schedule/plans with her. All she asked was for him to let her know if he was going out for happy hour after work/playing golf on the weekend/etc. in order to plan around his schedule (example - have dinner ready later for when he'd arrive home - or if he would be eating dinner out, she just wanted to know so she didn't waste time cooking dinner for him). He didn't have to ask permission to do things (he's a grown man after all) - all she wanted was a "heads up" = be treated respectfully.

Referring to her as SWMBO so many times in this thread makes you appear to be a disrespectful partner - even if she is a very demanding/controlling partner . . .

Clyde's drawers deserve a designation higher than "junk". Something like "Household Essentials". So organized!

On "hoarding", a topic touched on upthread, I am super sympathetic to and worried about that. My dad is a terrible hoarder, it has kind of destroyed his life. SWMBO and I show, in my opinion, clear hoarder tendencies, albeit the size of our house and our ability to spread stuff among house, studio, office, and a corner of my dad's 5,000 sf storage building full of his hoarded stuff means you wouldn't necessarily peg us as having an affliction. My organization problems in the kitchen are about one-twelfth due to hoarding-adjacent behavior - that is my estimate of the total drawer-equivalent of stuff that we should throw out (containers without lids, lids without containers, and that peculiar never-used device meant, I think, to skin armadillos? etc): two full drawers of the 24 on the sink run. DD, being a young person who so far only hoards books, has taken charge of culling the kitchen stuff. Since SWMBO is protesting the culling more than me, I smugly conclude she and I respectively is and am not the problem . . . in the kitchen. My problem manifests elsewhere.

As soon as we dispose of something whose complementary part is missing, the complementary part shows up!

DH decants couscouses, rices, all grains, without labeling, and without cooking instructions. There is a big difference between simmering for 5 minutes and 20 minutes! and I don’t know them. So, if he doesn’t cook one night, I just don’t make those.

The SWMBO is kinda a time honored internet thing.

I suspect that John's wife wouldn't be surprised he uses that nor offended.

But maybe that is my own projection.

I pick on my husband RELENTLESSLY about his OCD like traits (he rotates the dishes when he puts them back in the drawer - removing the stack, placing the newly washed dishes on the bottom, then replacing the stack.) . My life moves at a different speed and I am not really worried that the lesser used plates may get dusty. But I still love him to the ends of the earth. ;-)

When did Houzz turn into Reddit?

FWIW, I prefer SWMBO to "the old ball and chain." It's generally used ironically and with affection. It probably helps that I'm a fan of Rumpole of the Bailey. Maybe it wouldn't work so well if you're only into Rider Haggard, but I've never read She or seen any of its film adaptations, so I'm only going by others' descriptions.

I do the "next on top" or "next in front" type of rotation with clothing and linens. Not with dishes, because most of my dishware and glassware is in "deep storage" in my dining area. I have plenty available for entertaining guests. Meanwhile, I keep one plate and bowl of each size in a cabinet in the kitchen, along with a couple of glasses and coffee mugs. Those are for daily use, and that way I'm "forced" to stay on top of dishwashing.

Code names for my lovely spouse: SWMBO, Red Queen, demagorgen. She knows about the first one because she’s seen it, and the last one because we use it around the house. The disturbing thing is, she seems to embrace these references. Especially likes demagorgen. We just finished binging “Stranger Things”.

I had to look up that last one. Don't start calling her the Queen of Hearts, or your head may roll.