Saturday, January 9, 2010

Fresh corners of my own

I read Soulemama's "Fresh corners" post earlier this week and desperately wanted some fresh corners of my own. So today, we tackled the kitchen. While Andi caulked and scrubbed, I emptied, scrubbed, weeded out, and reorganized shelves. It's amazing what a re-organized cupboard can do for your mood. So far...

I started small and manageable: the little tea cabinet. It was so stuffed, we couldn't shut the door properly! Now it all fits (barely):

tea cabinet

(I've got to polish off some of that boxed stuff, because I want to fill this cabinet with my own grown and foraged herbs.)

That was satisfying, so I felt able to tackle a bigger mess: the cookbooks in my island. They'd outgrown their space. I gave each book a critical perusal, and was able to weed some out. Nice fresh shelves:



(There are toys interspersed because if I put toys in there, the babies and toddlers are less likely to pull out my cookbooks. The basket contains the heap of bibs.)

Time for something more fun. I did these shelves, refolding my vintage aprons and dish cloths and re-arranging a few tchotchkes:



With all that accomplished, I felt able to tackle the biggest task of all: the dish shelves. These were a wreck. The dust! The spider webs! (The stuff way up high is rarely used, or, apparently, cleaned.) Some of the shelves were crammed too tight. Some of the stuff we use daily was on the top shelf, where (short) Andi could never put it away. Some stuff had no place. Now, it's SO much better. (Of course, I still envy lovely cohesive things like Martha Stewart's all-white dishes, but this is more real-life us; things given to us or bought over the years, old and new, all mixed together.)

re-organized dish shelf

2 comments:

Andi said...

Funny how that chicken plate stands out. (Thank you, Nanny, for the the Lucy-chick-a-dee plate.)

For me...I like looking in there and seeing things that are so significant to us. Like the platter on the top right--that was a wedding gift 14 years ago! As is one of the low plates on the top shelf. And I see a plate on the lower left that was a gift from Tim.

Apparently, being short narrows my vision...it's nice to see a picture that show me the whole thing!

Julie said...

Your shelves look fantastic! Oh how I love all that OCD order:)