Kitchen Clean-up

I'm declaring victory over the kitchen. Last week, I realized that I was storing things that I crammed into cabinets years ago, and that Casey's food and my bread were just taking up counter space. So, I built some pantry and coffee shelves.

I noticed, for example, that I was keeping all my pantry foods in one of the least-accessible cabinets. Also, there was a lot of extraneous things making it difficult to get to plates and glasses, which we do everyday. The same was true with pots and pans--they were stacked on top of each other, with the most commonly-used pan farthest from the stove. This pan was so commonly used, I often left it out on the counter for ready access.

The area to the left of the sink was hyper-cluttered with Casey's collection of coffees, teas, and devices for making coffee (French press, grinder).

The solution was to buy melamine shelves designed to be mounted on flimsy metal standards. Instead, I used shelves as verticals and screwed into the edges of the horizontals. Not the strongest of constructions, but it will last until the kitchen remodel, I think.

They didn't have strapping longer than 3', so I couldn't tie the pantry with X-bracing. The shelves are 8", but they didn't have 8" sides, so I ended up ripping down two 12" x 72" for the sides.

The coffee station accommodates Casey's stuff, the K-cups, and a few mugs

The kitchen was fairly dirty, so I washed the cabinets inside and out, which meant pulling everything out and having a look at it.

Hopefully, a more usable kitchen

Oh, and the old, hard to access pantry cabinet by the refrigerator? It's now the appliance garage. I have a waffle iron that I didn't know about. The rice cooker that was balanced on the highest shelf over the plates and glasses is now front and center in the appliance garage.

I bought a plastic crate to hold the enormous paper bag collection, and a proper plastic recycling bin. I also labeled the two trash bins: Garbage and Recycling, with the rules from the sanitation people.