How many packets does one house NEED?

While putting away a recently acquired surplus of salad dressing and BBQ sauce that I got for pennies with awesome coupons, I came to the realization that I need a larger house.  With a larger kitchen.  And more cabinets to hold surplus BBQ sauce. And a cheeseburger.  But I digress.

I am always trying to reorganize the kitchen cabinets to make things fit and to make things easier to find, but I'm always trapped in the same 'this kitchen and these minimal cabinets are too tiny and why didn't you marry for money?' quandry.  I stared at the salad dressing cabinet and tried to think of a way to rearrange the items in it to make room, but every plan of action I thought of was stymied by one thing: packets of crap.

In that cabinet, I have Kool-Aid packets (I got a smattering of them with a coupon and awesome sale), chili seasonings, taco seasonings, cocoa packets, Chex Mix seasoning packets... you get the idea.  And I keep them all in there because I use just about every variety at least once a week but I don't need all of them at my reach every day.  This is what I'm living with.  Take the kiddies out of the room, this isn't for the faint of heart:

 The arrows show where the packets are.  The Kool-Aid packets were so rampant that I was forced to make a little box for them.  They are even sorted in two's by flavor and without repeating flavors for ease of use.  It's an illness how OCD I am. Here's the Kool-Aid box:

 The box works, and it certainly holds a good amount of Kool-Aid... but it's still taking up too much space.  Another idea had to pop into my head before I went mad... and it did.

I found this fabric at my friendly Wal-Mart for just a few dollars total... I love a bargain.

In case you were wondering, the tan color is called 'Hickory'. Did you know that there is someone who just thinks of names for colors all day long? That's their job? Awesome.

I measured the sizes of the packets in the cabinet and went to work.  I used the blue stripey fabric (I think 'stripey' is a technical term.  I may copyright it.)  and made two sizes of pockets, one small for Kool-Aid packets and one large that fits everything else.  I measured the cabinet door to see how much space I would have, and I went to work, hand-stitching pockets from the fabric.  When I was done, I glued the whole thing to some foam board to get my finished project:

Pockets on the inside of the cabinet door.  Revolutionary, I know.  But now I can keep my surplus packets into a separate box in another cabinet that isn't so cramped for space and I can have a small stash on-hand as well.  Win-win.  Actually, I hate that term.  Let's just call it super-duper awesomeness and be done with it.

 (If I had a sewing machine, the whole project would have taken an hour, but I like to identify with the Pilgrims who had to hand-stitch everything.  Also, I don't have a sewing machine. Insert sad face here.)

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