Unruly Kitchen Clutter

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I have a serious love/hate relationship with my kitchen. I love how large it is – and that’s pretty much where the love ends. I hate that I don’t have enough counter or cabinet space. And I hate that I don’t have a pantry. To sum things up, my kitchen may be large, but it’s not functional!

While working on my New Year’s resolution this week, I’ve found that trying to make space for all the gadgets, pots, pans, and dishes while still making room for food storage is darn near impossible! I just don’t have enough room for everything. To make matters a bit worse, we have this white fold out table which is not only an eye sore in the room, but too big for the space leaving little room for us to get around.

My solutions – well, it’s not exactly decided yet, but I have some ideas I’ve been playing around with. What my kitchen really needs is an island or movable cart of some sort to allow for extra storage as well as more counter space.

Ideally, I’d like to have something like this but it’s $379 and slightly out of my price range.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/14631607/

After shopping around, I’ve narrowed down my choices to these three:

FÖRHÖJA kitchen cart, $99.99

GROLAND kitchen island, $199


STENSTORP kitchen cart, $199

Each has its positives and it’s negatives, but I’m still undecided. I like that the FÖRHÖJA cart has 2 drawers and 2 shelves but I’m unsure about the style of it. The GROLAND island has bars to hang things like towels and such but only has 1 shelf and a heftier price tag. The STENSTORP cart is much more sleek with its stainless steel shelves but it’s smaller that the FÖRHÖJA and costs twice as much.

As for the pantry situation, I’ve also found a remedy for that.

Perfect Home 4-tier shelving unit $59.87

Hopefully I can make up my mind soon and share my newly organized and fully functional kitchen with you!

No Susie Homemaker – 15 minute kitchen clean up

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dishes

This week’s new habit that I’m implementing is loading and unloading the dishwasher daily. It sounds simple enough, right? Well, for me it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. I find myself, more often than not, loading the dishwasher when this sink is overflowing with dishes.  Rather than dishes getting put back in their rightful place after a cycle, they stay in the dishwasher until they are used. One reason for this is because my kitchen, though large, is very dysfunctional and space is limited. So basically not everything has a set space.

That brings me to another project I’ll be working on this week. Getting rid of the excess clutter and unused items in my kitchen! More on that to come…

Every night after dinner I go around the house and pick up any randomly left behind sippy cup, bottle, plate and utensil – mind you I do have 2 little ones running around and they tend to leave a trail wherever they go, which usually means dishes are scattered throughout the house. After the dishwasher is loaded and turned on, I give the countertops and stove top a wipe down, sweep the floor and in 15 minutes my kitchen is clean!

My biggest dilemma when starting this task was finding time to empty out the dishwasher and doing so on a daily basis. Everywhere I read suggested doing it first thing in the morning but let’s face it, that wasn’t happening here. My mornings are hectic enough as they are so adding yet another task to my morning routine was simply out of the question. My solution - unload the dishwasher when I get home from work. One thing I’ve found is that my daughter likes to help out with this. She’ll get the dishes off the rack and pass them to me to put away in the cabinets. I’m killing 2 birds with one stone! I’m getting my work done while teaching my daughter to help out with housework.

Another thing she likes to help out with is sweeping the kitchen. She loves to use my Swiffer. I think it might be time to start putting together a fun chore chart for my daughter since she seems to be showing an interest in helping me around the house.

Although my goal was to only implement on habit this week, it felt only right to take it a little further. It’s so much simpler giving the kitchen a quick once over when you do it on a daily basis. Who would have thought!
dishes2

<< Week 1 – A load a day