Kitchen Arrangement Part 3

Last post on the kitchen rearrangement and it's loaded with pictures! 

Drawers! Before I had two utensil drawers, one on either side of the sink. I didn't have any rules about which utensils went into which drawer and often was digging through both of them to find something. I moved my towel drawer so that I could have both of my utensil drawers together one atop the other. 

 

I parted with several items I didn't use.  

 

I moved the silverware drawer over one drawer. Now it and my utensil drawers are below my plates, bowls and glasses cabinet. 

Kitchen scissors and my can opener are on the left. I washed all of my silverware and hadn't gotten it all back in the drawer for this picture. 

Lower cabinets;

This looks kind of messy, buts it just looks that way. The bottom shelf holds my plastic food containers, paper and plastic plates and plastic spoons, etc on the upper shelf with special plates, pie pans on the white shelf. 

 

The cabinet that used to hold my plates now holds pots, pans, cooling racks, colanders and cake pans. 

 

And the last lower cabinet I'll share with you. 

This little cabinet is beside the stove. 

I purchased handled plastic storage containers for it. 

 

I use one container for measuring cups and spoons. The other for timers, meat thermometer and other odds and ends. 

 

The containers on the top hold odds and ends. 

While I was rearranging, I cleaned up my spice cabinet. I don't know if I ever shared this cabinet with you, but here's a nicer picture. The upper half;

 

The lower half;

 

This cabinet is built into the studs and I love it. 

So, that's most of my kitchen. There are seven cabinets and four drawers I didn't share with you, but they didn't get reorganized.  Onto the next big project. 

 

 

 

Kitchen Arrangement Part 2

So, I shared the before and here's the after!

The cabinet that used to hold my groceries now holds my plates, bowls and cups. Of note, my cabinets and drawers are different depths, though they're all on her same wall. The upper cabinet that used to hold my bowls and cups, could not hold my large dinner plates as it wasn't deep enough. You'd think you'd notice that they're different depths, but you don't and I only figured it out while rearranging my kitchen. The lower cabinet to the left of the sink is 23" deep. The lower cabinet on the right of the sink is 19.5" deep. Weird! 

So, here's my upper cabinet with plates, bowls and cups. My dinner plates fit on this side. 

 

The cabinet that used to house my bowls, cups etc sits in the corner. I could reach items on the left, but had to use a step ladder to reach items on the right. I decided to put some groceries there, but leave it basically empty as I didn't want to go up and down a ladder for most of those items. 

 

I love those plastic handled containers. I found them at Walmart. They come in several sizes and are less than $4. The two on the bottom shelf hold jello and pudding. Those on the second shelf hold tuna and seasoning packets. 

So, where's my food? In the basement. I like my basement. It's not scary and the stairs are in good shape. I decided I'd rather run down stairs for a grocery item, then to climb a step ladder to get something out of a cabinet. So, I bought a new shelving unit and moved most of my groceries to the basement. 

 

The lidded storage containers on the bottom hold boxed items I don't want rodents getting into. I don't believe I currently have any mice in the house, but that's not always the case. 

I have a second shelf that holds a few more groceries. (I cover the shelving units with plastic table clothes from Dollar Tree to cut down on dust.) 

Stay tuned and I'll show you the rest.  

Kitchen Arrangement Part 1

I took February 14 off and started this project. It's taken me longer than expected to complete, but I'm so happy with it! I present to you the before; 

Upper cabinets;

 

 

One of the lower cabinets;

The utensil drawers;

 

 

 

 

Food storage container storage!

Two months. Two months it taken me to address my plastic food storage containers.  During those two months, all my food storage containers have been sitting in a laundry basket on a table in my dining room. 

 

I used to store these containers in a drawer, but I don't have a drawer here that I can store them in. It recently occurred to me to put them on the bottom shelf in one of my cabinets.  

 

These are deep cabinets and they're hard to get anything out of them. They're 19" deep, 37" wide and 11" tall. I knew I wouldn't be storing anything in them that I'd use frequently.  

 

I took measurements, went to Walmart and got containers. I considered getting one long one, but the measurements were never just right. I ended up with three smaller, but taller containers.  

 

I sorted and stashed my containers in the larger containers and slid them in. 

Woo Hoo! No more laundry basket full of food containers sitting in the dining room.  

What's lurking under the stove?

A week after moving in I walked into the kitchen to find Josey looking under the stove.  Thinking it was a spider, I grabbed a flash light and got down on the floor to look with her.  The thing of interest under the stove??? Cheerios!  

 

 

The other evening Josey, Lyncoln and I pulled out the stove drawer to clean. Julie 30, Cheerios 1!  There was one piece I couldn't get out. Not by broom, yard stick or vacuum.  I also found 2 foam darts and a piece of Captain Crunch! 

 

It was obvious the previous owners hadn’t used their stove drawer.  I’ve used mine in the past to store cookie sheets, metal cake pans and muffin tins, but Pinterest alerted me to a better way of storing those things.  So, for the stove drawer at the house, I’ve decided to dump all my rarely used pot and pan lids in there.  

 

 

 

See that top lid on the left? Here's a better picture of it. 

 

I don't think I have the base for it. I'm thinking it belongs to a crock pot, but I don't recall packing or unpacking one that size. Weird. 

So, what do you keep in your stove drawer?