Sunday, January 24, 2010

What I've Been Doing This Week


This is my kitchen.  It's not huge, but the space I had was not being used well.  It frequently looked like this.

That is the exact same corner.  With all the recycling, canning, baking, cooking and everything else I do, I needed more space to put my stuff.  It's amazing that with simplifying, you end up needing more space.  Odd, but in my case, true.  If I don't want to go to the store all the time, I need to have someplace to put all of the stuff needed to preserve and use all of our food.


I've always been a kitchen kind of person, so over the years I've acquired a good deal of kitchen stuff.  It all gets used and it all takes up space.  Before, I was storing a lot of this in my basement.  After I almost killed myself dragging things up and down the stairs, I decided it would be prudent to have it stored nicely up here.


The new shelving is Gorm from Ikea.  I was able to put it together by myself, but needed J to come over and bolt it to the wall.  The baking cart and other shelves have been around for a while and came from stuffmart.


I had originally planned to get rid of the shelves, but I think I may keep them.  The jury is still out.  The baking cart is staying.  J really wants it, but he can't have it!  It holds my Kitchen Aid and all my baking supplies.  I just wheel it over to the counter and do my thing.   You can see that my kitchen leads into my school room.  That is my main bookshelf for my school supplies.  The wall hanging was made by my very talented mother. 

So, that took me a bit, and will continue to take up quite a bit of my time.  It is however, functional now and I can actually cook dinner without a major breakdown.  Hubby will be very excited. 

9 comments:

Lise said...

What an exciting make-over! It will be so much more convenient this way. I'm still in the stage of lug-all-my-preserving-stuff-up-from-the-basement, and really wishing I'd started eating locally BEFORE I re-did my kitchen; I'd have done it differently for how we now cook. Congrats!

kitsapFG said...

I lug alot of stuff from the garage storage shelves into the house when I am preserving etc. How you have set your kitchen up is very efficient and handy.

The Mom said...

Lise, its amazing how much I was able to get into my kitchen this way. It all gets used, now it's just more convenient.

Kisap, I'm all about things being user friendly. This is now much more so for me. I'm so excited to get cooking in it.

Karen Anne said...

I have my Mom's kitchen, with big wasted space in the middle and not enough wall space for shelves, sigh. If it had been squshed together, Mom and I could have had a, yes, a walk-in storage closet in the extra space.

The wall hanging is beautiful.

The Mom said...

Karen, I would kill for a closet of any kind in my downstairs. You do what you can with what you have.

Karen Sue said...

I put a big shelf unit in the basement this fall that was SO NICE compared to what was there before. Storage for all my home-canned goods. A kitchen re-do may be in my future, but I'm more into collecting my thoughts and info right now. I know a great designer, but she doesn't 'cook'- you know - roll out dough and make bread and fix stuff. I realized there is really only 1 good work surface, so cooking together is WAY TOO together! Thinking about the changes...

The Mom said...

Karen Sue, we've had this house for 7 years and I've talked about redoing the kitchen since we bought it. The shelves were the cheapest, easiest and most useful redo that will probably happen in the next few years. Whoever I get to design the kitchen in the future, needs to understand how much the space is used.

Thomas said...

I've never understood why kitchens are often times one of the smallest rooms in the house. If I ever get the chance to build my own house one of these days, I was make it the biggest room! I really like those open shelves. I may get some basic chrome wire shelves for my kitchen...I just love the basic functional look of them.

The Mom said...

Thomas, when Hubby and I dream of building a house, it seems to be a giant kitchen with bedrooms off of it. I love the functional look as well. Shelves are a wonderful thing.