Keeping A Very Busy Kitchen Organized

Our kitchen is the hub of our home.  Even though the older boys both have desks in their rooms, they prefer to do their homework at our kitchen table.  They also love to eat.  So we all spend a lot of time in the kitchen and it quickly becomes a disorganized mess.  I posted recently about reorganizing our pantry, but even before that, I decided we needed to deal with our homework/dining table area.  This is what it looked like:

Everyone, including the dog had their own bin.  The boys used theirs for all their school papers.  At the end of each school year, I would go through each bin and pick out the masterpieces, and then recycle the rest.  We also have a bulletin board for photos, flyers, etc.  But it was a bit of a mess and an eyesore.  Anytime I'm looking for new storage pieces, I start with Ikea because they are affordable and everything we have gotten from them has held up very well.  So this time I decided to go with the Besta line in the dark brown/black.  I can't even tell you how roomy these bins are.  I originally bought 3 and ended up going back for more because I loved them so much.  And look at the difference it made...

I ended up with 4 big ones and 4 small ones against the wall and 1 more set over at the end of the counter.  Soooo much storage.  And they are big.  They hold my crock pot, my ninja, all my cake pop supplies... and still holds all the kids school stuff.  

Here is a link for the Ikea Besta line.  It comes in a few different colors and you can do it without doors or legs so its completely customizable.

Since I spent some pretty serious money on this, I tried to be thrifty on the new wall decor.  I bought a 4 pack of 12 X 12 mirrors from Ikea, and got some frames at AC Moore using my coupons.  They only had white so I used some leftover spray paint I had and painted them black.  I only used 2 of the 4 mirrors so expect to see the other 2 pop up sometime in some other room.  The other two frames are filled with some projects I made using my Silhouette. 

I love my new kitchen.  I prefer everything out of sight and this makes my OCD much less irritated.  I plan to add some pretty handles at some point, but for now I like that it is difficult for my littlest man to get into these.  He has his own cube which houses his playdoh, paint and sticker supplies as well... did I mention how roomy these things are.  Im seriously considering some white ones for the basement at some point.  And I put these all together myself while the Hubs was working so they are A+ in my book.  

*My middle child helped with the 2nd print, and said "just so you know, I don't love anyone more than Chick-Fil-A".  Told you my boys love to eat.