Save The Counterspace!

While I have been patiently waiting for the final project to start in my kitchen, the walls, I have been brainstorming and strategizing new and fun ways to make my kitchen more organized. Like I’m sure I’ve mentioned before I have a lot less cupboards than what I’m used to. You wouldn’t believe the feeling you have when you go from having a pantry to no pantry at all. It takes some extreme creativity. My first step I took was figure out where to put my onions, garlic, and potatoes that can’t go in the refrigerator. They were too big and bulky for my food cabinet and I didn’t want to use up counter space to our found that awesome tiered basket at HomeGoods. I didn’t want it to sit right on the floor so I stopped over at Michaels and grabbed one of their wooden crates and just slapped on some of the same stain I used to finish the cabinets. Easy peasy.

The next thing I needed to tackle was my recipes. Mostly everything I cook I find the recipes online so I had a huge pile of papers that I’ve printed out throughout the years taking up much needed space in one of my cabinets. I cleaned out my mess and sorted through all of the recipes. I threw away ones I will never make again, and then sorted the rest in categories; easy dinners, weekend dinners, salads, appetizers, and desserts. I decidedly that instead of sorting alphabetically I would sort them by the ones I use most often for easy access. We’ll see how that works. Next was to place them all in plastic sleeves and put in this adorable 3 ring binder I got at Target. This was definitely something I didn’t mind keeping on my countertop. I use it almost every day so why hide it?

 Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but I only have five drawers in my kitchen and two of them are tiny. I was really struggling with fitting all of my towels and washcloths in a drawer, they just wouldn’t all fit. The first step I took was to take everything out and see what I didn’t really use anymore and brought those down to the laundry room to use as rags. Then I took all of my washcloths and rolled them up and put them in this white enamel bin I got at Ikea. I put this right next to my sink so I can easily rad a new one and they look super cute!

 One thing that we do every morning is make coffee and I’m sure most of you do too. So why have coffee filters one place and coffee in another. I was given this Halloween themed basket as a hand me down from my mother in law and put it to use. It sits next to our coffee maker and keeps everything together so I can make my next cup. Now I’m going to have to find a new basket for when Halloween’s over…

 When we first moved into our house and I was trying to get organized I bought a breadbox. The problem with this is that we go through a lot of bread around here (I love carbs) so I was actually having to put bread on top of my breadbox because it wouldn’t all fit. Now that doesn’t make sense. I ditched the breadbox and went to Michaels and found this linen lined basket (it matches my door curtain and my light fixture shades) and have been throwing all of my bread in there. It has been working perfectly!

 I really wanted to point out how important it is to keep your kitchen organized and how crucial counter space is. I see all too often beautiful kitchens online that have all this cute decorative things all over their counters. As much as I would love to have a statue of a rooster sitting by my toaster I just don’t have the room. The key is to figure out what you need to organize and try to put a decorative spin on it. Killing two birds with one stone.