My journey toward a peaceful, organized family, home and life!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Kitchen Reorg: Hot Drink Zone and Clear Counters

  • For my pantry reorg post (lots of kitchen shots), see here. 
  • For my serving dishes and plasticware post, see here. 
  • For my baking cupboards post, see here. 
  • For my spice cupboard post, see here.
My kitchen reorganization project is winding down! I have only the cupboard above my refrigerator to do after this...

Here is what my kitchen counters looked like before:



Nothing horrific, but a bit too cluttered for my (and my husband's) taste. One of the things I was really hoping to accomplish was to move the toaster off the counter and the whiteboard/bulletin board into the laundry room.

My husband was the savior of the day (heck, the month!) when he finally put up the board in the laundry room!


I was able to make room for the toaster in the cupboard discussed below and so my counters now look like this!

Afters:
(The wire tray to the left is my inbox from my paper clutter course.)

A vast improvement!

My remaining kitchen cupboard looked like this...

Before:

  • Lunch making supplies, drink syrups and breakfast syrup on the bottom shelf was working for us and was left pretty much alone. 
  • The snacks were moved to the pantry
  • Can you believe that there were still breast pump pieces on that top shelf??? It's been almost 2 years since they've seen any action!
Here is what this cupboard looks like now:

After:

I'm still in the market for a tray that fits beneath the toaster yet also fits my cupboard parameters... Tricky! Love the idea, though, as it will keep crumbs from trickling everywhere! (No matter how much I shake the thing, they don't all come out!) I think a more compact toaster is in order, as long as it still has 4 slots...

On the top shelf, I've grouped together herbal teas (rarely used) and our novelty/nostalgia mugs. The front two quite humorously state "Queen of Everything" and "King of What's Left."  We love them because they were a gift from my sister but also because they fit a can of pop with ice perfectly (we use mugs to hide drink contents from mooching vultures children).

I am most excited to point out my "hot drink zone!"


We're not coffee drinkers but we definitely enjoy a mug of hot chocolate or hot apple cider on a cold day!

Using a cake pan and plastic containers that I had put in my "Donate" box, I grouped together hot chocolate and apple cider packets, as well as mulling spices and marshmallows that I decanted into a canning jar.

I got the idea for this station from the following pictures (click on them to go to the original post):


Such amazing ideas out there!

I've linked this at:

5 comments:

Sabrina said...

Your before pics looked not too bad since I've seen it worse, but the AFTER Pics...Wonderful! So many great ideas! Did you give Shawn a big hug for completing the "Honey-Do" project? Looking fantastic Dana!

Sabrina said...

P. S. With Christmas just around the corner, are you taking down the Autumn leaves soon?

Tigriswillreign said...

lol! The autumn leaves are down and those beautiful garlands you got me a couple of Christmases ago are up! ;)

April said...

I'm following here from the class forums and you mentioned you're still looking for a cookie sheet. Will that pan that you used for your cocoa mix stuff work for your toaster too?? Just an idea for a solution until you find the perfect size pan.

Beautiful job on the afters. You have been working!

Tigriswillreign said...

Thanks for the idea but the cake pan most definitely does not fit my toaster. It is most likely that I will not find a tray to fit my toaster and so I will probably just find a tray that fits my cupboard and then get a toaster to fit that tray! ;)

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