Kitchen Organization Deconstructed (Sort of…)

I’m fascinated by those shows on television that focus on the concept of “before” and “after.”  It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s about flipping a house, remodeling, landscaping, Gordon Ramsay advising how to turn a restaurant around, and yes, even What Not to Wear — I guess I’m a sucker for the idea of anything being taken from a classic ugly duckling to a beautiful swan.  Cliche, I know, but it’s the closest thing I can come up with right now.

I also love perfectly organized spaces.  It doesn’t matter if it’s my Mac desktop, or my real desktop, my closet or garage,  I can see what it should look like — perfectly — and would love for it all to be just so.

But it all comes to a screeching halt right there, because as much as I can say I crave it, visualize it, and need it, something happens on the way to execution.  Well, at least the execution of the details, because I’m pretty good at making something look very attractive until you look a bit more closely.

I like to blame it on the very real idea that after years and years of being so busy with work, and realizing I’d organize something — anything — to avoid doing that work, I had to train myself not to notice.  I learned how to try and stay more focused, ignore dishes in the sink, or a stack of mail, magazines that needed to be gone through, and basic clutter.  I got more work done, I was more content, and my house became a wreck.

I can’t stand it, yet I’ve learned to tolerate it for my sanity.  Okay, so a tad over dramatic, but I’m trying to make a point here.

Now I no longer have the endless work I had to do.  I am fortunate enough to be on the other side of the “If Only I Didn’t Have To Work, I Could…” lament I indulged myself with, and now know is a load of crap.  A year and a half have gone by, and it’s taken me this long to get around to noticing that I can now obsess until the cows come home about all the picky details my brain wants me to take care of.

I can organize, label, and fuss over details to my heart’s content.

But have I?

Um, nope.  Unfortunately, I discovered the insanely addictive wonderful world of blogging a bit more than a year ago, and now I have a completely different area in which to split hairs and fuss over minutiae.

So what does this have to do with food?

It’s about my kitchen.

I have a  very nice kitchen.  When we moved to this house six years ago, I left an equally nice kitchen we’d had remodeled several years before.  I left an amazing 36″ Dynasty range with an infrared ceramic broiler and burners that put out BTUs that brought true meaning to the saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Then we moved here — to a house that had a kitchen with 25 year old appliances, an uncalibrated oven that a proper sized turkey wouldn’t fit in, and electric cooktop that I couldn’t squeeze all the pans I wanted on it at the same time.  I thought I’d never recover.  I’m exaggerating, of course, but it was quite an adjustment.  We moved in right before I took on a enormous new level of responsibility at work, so many of my kitchen things were just put in cupboards and a few years went by before we decided to remodel this kitchen.  It’s amazing how well we adapt when we have to, isn’t it?  You just learn how far off that oven’s temperature is, and do the math every time you bake while wondering whether baking over a camp fire  would be easier.

Three years have gone by, and I’ve had plenty of time to think about how well this new kitchen works.  I’ve tolerated the places I chose at the time to put baking items, and serving dishes, or small appliances.  I’ve also had time to realize after having gone through kitchen remodels twice now, that as much as I can say I like the way the end product looks, I’m probably never going to love the way it actually works.

When you cook as much as I do, the kitchen is rarely neat.  I want everything close by, and don’t want to have to pull anything out of a cupboard to reach something else — and that’s what I’ve been putting up with for three years. (Insert violins here.)  When I come home from the grocery store, I want my food to actually fit in the cupboard, and not have to sit on the floor near the cupboard, since buying less food isn’t a practical solution.

What is a practical solution is to get off my rump and reorganize my kitchen.

So that’s what I did.  And I’m not 100% finished, but I’ll get there.  I hit a few snags along the way with respect to finding the right containers to hold small amounts of opened product, and deciding what needs to stay in the kitchen because it’s used, and what needs to go in a closet we’re having racks fitted into for that purpose (My husband says we can do this ourselves a la weekend warriors, but trust me, pigs will fly first….)

So here are my before and after shots.  And if you have ANY suggestions that work for you, by all means, let me know.  This is a work in progress.

This is the area above the microwave.  You have NO idea how many times flour or sugar fell out onto my face or the floor.  Really.  Yes, I’m going to HATE having to reacy for that food processor, but it’s much lighter than the Kitchen Aid and you should see where that is…

You wouldn’t think three people would need a pantry bigger than this, but somehow we do.  Clearly that second shelf needed some serious help.  When you KNOW you bought star anise and can’t find it, you buy more.  You know, because you simply can’t be with out it.  Because.

That second shelf looks a bit different, doesn’t it?  It’s actually pleasant to be able to SLIDE the drawers out now.  What a concept.  Maybe that’s what they were designed to do?  Rocket Science, plain and simple.

But wait.  Where did all those messy little bags go?
I found the boxes at Ikea — cheap, but I’m not sure I like them yet.  Definitely an improvement since I now know where all my star anise is.  I better start looking for recipes since I have enough to last for a couple of years.

But there is a domino effect occurring in all this shifting of kitchen things.  I had to move my ceramic baking things into a different cupboard, which forced me to move my oversized plates and platters.

This is sooooooooooooo much better.  It only took me THREE years to figure out that these two twirly cupboards are different sizes and that those large plates fit right in there on the top instead of the bottom of the other.  More Rocket Science.  Who knew?

And the second area that helped give birth to this rather late spring cleaning endeavor?  My pan drawer.  I’m sure there’s some logic to the fact that if you continue to purchase pans, you’ll need more space and that no one but you will be able to figure out how to actually put the pans in there and still be able to close the drawer.  So, two drawers it was, which is what it should have been to begin with.  I knew that.
Criminal, isn’t it?

But look now!  Drawer Number One…
And Drawer Number Two…

Now that I’ve moved almost everything, my husband will have a real excuse to leave things on the counter after he’s unloaded the dishwasher.

It cleans up nicely, doesn’t it?

The only problem now is…WHERE TO PUT THE STUFF I TOOK OUT OF THE CUPBOARDS…