reorganize the kitchen

I have been trying to keep things in order little by little. I reorganized the canned foods cupboard and that felt great! I’ve been shifting a few things here and there trying to find the right place for them and it’s going well. I don’t know that it will ever get to where I’d like it, but that’s okay. Any effort I put into the kitchen will make it better.

It didn’t take much to do, since the things I use frequently tended to gravitate toward locations I could reach easily. The main thing I really had to do was move the infrequently-used items out of the way to clear up more space in the easy-to-reach places. The kitchen doesn’t currently look as organized as it was intended to, since I have all sorts of extra food from the birthday party that I wouldn’t normally have sitting around. As usual, I way overestimated the amount of food I was going to need.

The smoothies from my party were delicious.

I’m going to do it by Saturday (i.e. my birthday party) or else I don’t get to have any smoothies at my birthday party (other people do, regardless.) The consequence makes sense to me – if I don’t have an organized kitchen, I don’t get to reap the full benefits of the potential products of my kitchen.

I’d still get to eat cake, though.

full of junk. The goal is to organize the kitchen, not just randomly throw stuff wherever there’s room.

I’m going to try to tackle it this coming weekend.

is now in place. Time to fill it up.

Mom has one at work they’re trying to get rid of, which she can bring home, thus freeing up the current bookcase for my use. measured it and it’s 36 inches tall. I don’t really know exactly how tall the available space is (since I’m out of town right now), but I do have a cabinet from Bed Bath & Beyond that claims to be 36 inches high, and that fits.

but they are already using it in their kitchen. Mom suggested I look around for a cheap bookcase at a thrift store. I think that’s a good idea, because I don’t think we’ll be living in this apartment for much more than 6 months, so I don’t want to spend too much money on something that might not even work in our house when we buy one.

onto the top of the fridge and onto the counters. I really need a low, wide bookcase to put in the kitchen for extra shelf space. I simply cannot reach all the shelves in the cupboards.

Maybe I can help my parents out by taking a bookcase from their house. Something to think about, at least…

was to put some of my rarely-used spices in a box, which I put on a lower shelf that was underused. I can still get to the spices very easily, but it leaves room for the spices I actually use on my “spice shelf.”

I also put some rarely-used items from on top of the fridge into the cabinet over the fridge, and some things from the counter into the cabinet under the sink. I was even able to identify a few things to give away.

The kitchen’s not quite “there” yet, but it’s looking a little better.

When I moved in, I just kind of populated the kitchen cabinets as I unpacked boxes, and as I acquired food items. Now it seems like I have no cabinet space even though there are still some empty shelves. I need to reshuffle the dishes and food so that things I use more frequently are on the easy-to-reach shelves. While I’m at it, I want to clear off the counters and the top of the fridge as much as possible.