Adventures in organization

So, what do we do when we can't go on a road trip?  We tackle projects around the house.  Over Christmas, this meant hitting the tip of the iceberg that is our kitchen.

I have no love at all for my kitchen.  For a room that I spend so much time in, I'd like it to meet my exact specifications - recessed lighting, lots of countertop space, cabinets that fit the odd-sized pots and pans that come with being a budding foodie, and a deep walk-in pantry along an outside wall.  Instead, we have small cabinets, very little counter space, fluorescent lighting that buzzes and gives me a headache, and a pantry that, until very recently, was dark and crowded.

We have a dozen things we plan to do to the kitchen to make it at least tolerable if not more functional, but the first thing ended up being the pantry.  For Christmas this year, a lot of kitchen stuff was hiding under the various family trees.  Some of it is stuff not meant for every day use.  Randy also got me some storage items I'd been eyeing that were meant for the pantry, but a deeper look made us decide to just re-do the entire space.

All this coincided with the annual Elfa sale at the Container Store, and a couple of afternoons later, Randy was ripping out the rotting, warped wooden shelves, repainting, and putting together this gorgeous storage and organizing unit.  I married the right man, y'all.  :-)

Some before and after shots:

You can see the problems, right?  The shelving on the left was two feet deep, and I had to use the baskets as a way of just keeping certain goods from getting lost in the back forever.  The pictures don't really show how bad the bottom shelves were - the front-facing one in particular had begun to bow.  The interior walls were painted the same peach-beige color our entire house is done in.  The previous owner had the place painted, and generally we've made the color work, but in the pantry it just soaked up light.

So, all of this had to go.

The first discovery Randy made was that in some places, the wood shelves were painted to the wall.  In other places, they were barely sitting on the supports - we were surprised that the shelving lasted through all the stress we put them through the last few years.

Painting meant prepping the walls - this is Randy priming.

This is our pantry, existing on the dining table for almost a week.  Not everything here was in the pantry beforehand - a lot of the original box items were Christmas gifts we needed to create storage for.  This picture also really gives you an idea of the tiny space that exists as our dining room.  The orange curtains are covering the back door, and to the immediate left of the wine cabinet is our living room couch.

Randy putting in the shelves.  See how the pantry door collides with our refrigerator in the background?  What on earth made builders in the early 80s devalue kitchens so much???

Getting there!  This is all the Elfa shelving.  We opted to go across the back wall in full, instead of recreating the L-shape of the wooden shelves.  And see how the drawer unit created extra counter work space for me!

The drawer unit, and the spice racks installed above it.  The spice racks were actually what inspired this whole project - I wanted to move my ever-increasing stock of spices into the pantry, and had intended those racks to go on the back of the door.  When we decided to go for the Elfa shelving, this idea came to us at the store.

And this is to show off another awesome feature - the varying drawer sizes.  We customized this so that we now have a place to stow our wedding silver and extra cooking utensils.  In the drawer above that, I picked up a plastic divider to store teas of varying kinds.

I will have to share the final "after" picture another time, since I haven't actually taken it yet :-)  I got so excited about putting everything away that I forgot!

It is amazing to me what changes as simple as this can do for the peace one feels about one's home.  Clearing out the clutter, putting things in some kind of definitive order, really made a difference in the natural harmony in our home.  And just having things easily accessible and easy to put away made me like being in the kitchen more.  A good thing, since I love cooking, and not being happy about the kitchen took some of the joy away.  Also, hurray for finding a better, more efficient way to use small space like this.  The pantry is now one of my favorite places in the house!